Thomas Francis Eagleton (September 4, 1929 – March 4, 2007) was an American lawyer who served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1968 to 1987. He was briefly the Democratic vice presidential nominee under George McGovern in 1972. He suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life, resulting in several hospitalizations, which were kept secret from the public. When they were revealed, the McGovern campaign was humiliated, and Eagleton was forced to quit the race. He later became adjunct professor of public affairs at Washington University in St. Louis.
Early life and political career
Eagleton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Zitta Louise (Swanson) and Mark David Eagleton, a politician who had run for mayor. His paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, and his mother had Swedish, Irish, French, and Austrian ancestry.
Eagleton graduated from St. Louis Country Day School, served in the U.S. Navy for two years, and graduated in 1950 from Amherst College, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Sigma chapter). He then attended Harvard Law School. After graduating in 1953, Eagleton practiced law at his father's firm and later became associated with Anheuser-Busch's legal department.
Eagleton married Barbara Ann Smith of St. Louis on January 26, 1956. A son, Terence, was born in 1959, and a daughter, Christin, in 1963. He was elected circuit attorney of the City of St. Louis in 1956. During his tenure, he appeared on the TV show What's My Line? (episode #355) as "District Attorney of St. Louis". (He stumped the panel.) He was elected Missouri Attorney General in 1960 at age 31 (the youngest in the state's history). He was elected the 38th lieutenant governor of Missouri in 1964, and won a U.S. Senate seat in 1968, unseating incumbent Edward V. Long in the Democratic primary and narrowly defeating Congressman Thomas B. Curtis in the general election.
Eagleton suffered from depression; he checked himself into hospital three times between 1960 and 1966 for physical and nervous exhaustion, receiving electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy) twice. He later received a diagnosis of bipolar II from Frederick K. Goodwin.
The hospitalizations, which were not widely publicized, had little effect on his political aspirations. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted in 1972, immediately after Eagleton's vice-presidential nomination: "He had been troubled with gastric disturbances, which led to occasional hospitalizations. The stomach troubles have contributed to rumors that he had a drinking problem."
1972 vice-presidential candidacy
On April 25, 1972, as George McGovern won the Massachusetts Democratic primary, conservative journalist Robert Novak phoned Democratic politicians around the country. On April 27, 1972, Novak reported in a column his conversation with an unnamed Democratic senator about McGovern. Novak quoted the senator as saying: The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty for draft dodgers, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—finds this out, he's dead. Because of the column McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion, and acid", even though he only supported the decriminalization of marijuana and maintained that legalized abortion fell under the purview of states' rights.
On July 15, 2007, several months after Eagleton's death, Novak said on Meet the Press that the unnamed senator was Eagleton. Novak was accused in 1972 of manufacturing the quote, but said that to rebut the criticism, he took Eagleton to lunch after the campaign and asked whether he could identify him as the source; Eagleton refused. "Oh, he had to run for reelection", Novak said. "The McGovernites would kill him if they knew he had said that." Political analyst Bob Shrum says that Eagleton never would have been selected as McGovern's running mate if it had been known at the time that Eagleton was the source of the quote. "Boy, do I wish he would have let you publish his name. Then he never would have been picked as vice president," said Shrum. "Because the two things, the two things that happened to George McGovern—two of the things that happened to him—were the label you put on him, number one, and number two, the Eagleton disaster. We had a messy convention, but he could have, I think in the end, carried eight or 10 states, remained politically viable. And Eagleton was one of the great train wrecks of all time."
Selection as vice-presidential nominee
After a large number of prominent Democrats declined to be McGovern's running mate, Senator Gaylord Nelson (who was among those who declined) suggested Eagleton. McGovern chose Eagleton after only a minimal background check, as was customary for vice-presidential selections at the time. Eagleton did not mention his hospitalizations, and in fact decided with his wife to keep them secret from McGovern while he was flying to his first meeting with McGovern.
On July 25, 1972, just over two weeks after the 1972 Democratic Convention, Eagleton said that news reports that he had received electroshock therapy for clinical depression during the 1960s were true. McGovern initially said he would back Eagleton "1,000 percent". McGovern consulted confidentially with preeminent psychiatrists, including Eagleton's doctors, who advised him that a recurrence of Eagleton's depression was possible and could endanger the country should Eagleton become acting president. On August 1, nineteen days after being nominated, Eagleton withdrew at McGovern's request and, after a new search by McGovern, was replaced by Sargent Shriver, former U.S. Ambassador to France, and former (founding) director of the Peace Corps and the Office of Economic Opportunity.
A Time poll taken at the time found that 77% of the respondents said "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his "shock therapy", and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform.
McGovern's failure to vet Eagleton and his subsequent handling of the controversy gave occasion for the Republican campaign to raise serious questions about his judgment. In the general election, the Democratic ticket won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Eagleton was reelected to the Senate in 1974 with 60% of the vote against Thomas B. Curtis, who had been his opponent in 1968. In 1980, he was reelected by a closer-than-expected margin over St. Louis County Executive Gene McNary.
During the 1980 election, Eagleton's niece Elizabeth Eagleton Weigand and lawyer Stephen Poludniak were arrested for blackmail after they threatened to spread false accusations that Eagleton was bisexual. Eagleton told reporters that the extorted money was to be turned over to the Church of Scientology, to which Weigand and Poludniak both belonged. Weigand appealed her conviction, arguing that her trial should have been moved out of St. Louis because of extensive publicity that might have prejudiced jurors. The U.S. Supreme Court declined her appeal in 1982.
Eagleton did not seek a fourth term in 1986. Former Republican Governor Kit Bond succeeded him in the Senate.