Assessing Mental Health in American Politics: The 1972 Tom Eagleton Affair

Abstract

This thesis explores the intersection of politics, psychiatry, and media by examining the 1972 Eagleton affair. Presidential candidate and democrat George McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton, a Senator from Missouri, hastily as his running mate that July. However, Eagleton lasted for only eighteen days on the ticket after it was revealed that, on two occasions, he received electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) to treat his depression a decade earlier. Though many might assume that Eagleton’s depression itself was responsible for waning American’s confidence in him (and McGovern), this paper argues that it was prior ECT treatment – not depression – that ultimately convinced Americans that he was not fit to run for such a high office. Eagleton would quickly be replaced and continue his career solely in Missouri politics, no longer a household name on a national level. However, the so-called Eagleton affair is still important to understand in that it exposed midcentury American attitudes towards psychiatric treatment and also highlighted the media’s role in further stigmatizing mental health conditions and treatment at that time.