George McGovern's 1972 candidacy and Democratic Party realignment

¶ … McGovern's failed candidacy reshaped the Democrats. His followers gave full convention voting expression to a gamut of groups who make up the "liberal coalition."

Despite the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon won by an unprecedented landslide against his Democratic rival, Senator George McGovern. ("The Presidential Election of 1972," 2005) The incumbent Nixon received 61% of the popular vote and 520 votes in the Electoral College to McGovern's 17. The American electorate had apparently granted Nixon the popular mandate that he had always craved. After the debacle of the rioting that took place during the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Democratic Party had undergone internal reforms that had important repercussions in the 1972 campaign, resulting in the nomination of the liberal anti-war pacifist from South Dakota who had little popular appeal.

The traditional power brokers of the Democratic Party, such as big labor, lost representation in the 1972 convention, while women, minorities, and leaders of the peace movement gained greater influence in the party. This transformation angered many of the traditional supporters of the Democrats, such as labor unions, Catholics, and Southerners. ("The Twilight of Liberalism: The Nixon Years," Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 1999) This kind of extreme pluralism of interests represented by the new members party caused it to fragment and lose a large part of its broader, older and more cohesive ideological base. McGovern was criticized for promising amnesty to Vietnam draft avoiders as well, an issue that angered many working class Democrats, who had sent sons to fight in the front lines. These boys were not subject to the exemptions enjoyed by many wealthier sons, such as having the status of college students.

Question 2

In hindsight, did his nomination triumph help or hamper the party until Bill Clinton's election in 1992, or might it have been a combination of both?

McGovern's nomination deprived the Democratic Party of many of its core constituencies. Even worse, the interest groups that did hold sway in the party were often at war against themselves, making the Republicans appear more unified and better leaders. Early on in Bill Clinton's own political career, he learned the dangers of appearing overly liberal. "Clinton's defeat" as an Arkansas governor "motivated him to adopt a more cautious, pragmatic, and moderate approach." ("Clinton: William Jefferson," "The American Presidency," 2005) Clinton was motivated to take a more conservative social stance on a personal level. His wife took his name, for example and became Hilary Rodham Clinton.

Although these gestures may have seemed small, they were an important symbolic steps in avoiding the association of anti-Americanism that had tainted the Democratic party ever since the slogan 'Amnesty, Abortion, and Acid,' had caused Republicans to suggest that the Democrats were far to the left of 'real' Americans, or Nixon's silent majority. ("The Twilight of Liberalism: The Nixon Years," Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 1999)

What were the political views of Ashbrook and Reagan?

The opening to China was one of Ashbrook's primary problems with the Nixon administration. In his failed 1972 challenge to Nixon in the Republican primary, Ashbrook said: "He has led the drive to admit Red China into the United Nations, and watched the cynical expulsion of the Republic of China from that body - though the government on Taiwan is one of America's oldest and closest allies, and despite the fact that he had pledged less than a year ago that we would never desert it." (John Ashbrook: 1972 Announcement Speech," 2005, 4 President Speeches) Ashcroft also criticized Nixon's choice to allow the federal budget to remain unbalanced as fiscally irresponsible and anti-Republican and anti-conservative in spirit.

Ronald Reagan supported Ashbrook, but would ironically upset his own conservative ideological base in his overtures to the Soviet Union during the latter half of the 1980s, during his own presidency, an act that proved even more fruitful than Nixon's extension of relations to China. Hawkish anti-communism and a debt-free fiscal policy may have gained votes for Ashcroft and Reagan, but once in office, Reagan's policies conflicted with this rhetoric -- in the age of glasnost and record-high federal deficits that coincided with both of his terms in office.