Kennedy opposition to Shriver as running mate in '68 may have swung election to Nixon, according to Shriver bio
Kennedy opposition to Shriver as running mate in '68 may have swung election to Nixon, according to Shriver bio
As ironies go, it's impressive - did opposition within the Kennedy family, specifically from U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, deter Hubert Humphrey from picking Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver as his running mate in 1968, thus helping Republican Richard Nixon to a narrow victory that year?
Apparently so, according to Scott Stossel, a senior editor at Atlantic Monthly magazine and author of the new biography, "Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver."
In Stossel's meticulously researched account, Shriver incurred the wrath of U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, others in the Kennedy family and RFK's inner circle by continuing to work for President Lyndon Johnson well into 1968, long after RFK and others had left the Johnson administration.
In March that year, Shriver agreed to Johnson's request to serve as his ambassador to France, exacerbating tensions within the Kennedy family, according to Stossel.
Anger toward Shriver was so intense that after Robert Kennedy was asassinated in Los Angeles that June and his body flown to New York City for the funeral, "when Shriver tried to help unload the casket, some of the aides pushed his away, bitter in their grief," Stossel writes.
Within a few short weeks, with Edward Kennedy equivocating as to whether he would accept Humphrey's offer to be his running mate, Humphrey turned his attention to Shriver.
But "the former JFK aide Kenny O'Donnell made clear to Humphrey during the convention that the Kennedy family would consider it an 'unfriendly act' if he were to select Shriver as his running mate," Stossel writes.
Humphrey, apparently unwilling to alienate the Kennedy family, went with Maine Senator Edmund Muskie instead.
Two months later, the Humphrey-Muskie ticket lost to Nixon and Spiro Agnew by only 500,000 votes in one of the closest presidential elections ever.
Shriver was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee four years later, running with South Dakota Senator George McGovern. But the opportunity for the Kennedys to regain the White House had passed, lost to an assassin in Los Angeles and a young woman's death on Chappaquiddick a year later.
McGovern and Shriver were trounced in '72, losing every state but Massachusetts. Four years later, running for president himself, Shriver struggled in the primaries and dropped out early. And in 1980, Ted Kennedy made his first and last run for the White House, only to face humiliation from Jimmy Carter, an incumbent president in his own party.
An excerpt from Stossel's book on this aspect of the '68 campaign was published in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly. Access to the online version of the article is limited to subscribers, but an interview with Stossel on Shriver can be found here.
