The Yanks bought a presidential pup before. Will they do it again?

SOME have predicted that Barack Obama could turn out to be another George McGovern.

Back in 1972, McGovern won the Democratic party nomination by much the same route as Obama — with the help of the archaic caucus system.

If the same system were used in the primaries as will be used in the forthcoming presidential election, Hillary Clinton would have won the Democratic nomination comfortably.

Nevertheless, Obama was the star of the Democratic convention. He had a fantastic setting for his acceptance address before 80,000 people in Denver.

The contrast with George McGovern could hardly have been starker. The 1972 convention was plagued by squabbling and it was 2.30am before McGovern started his televised address.

“By the time I got on, I think everyone was asleep, except those in the convention hall,” McGovern said afterwards.

Within hours he was further undermined by the shock disclosure that his running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, had been hospitalised on three occasions for depression and had undergone electroshock therapy.

Eagleton wasn’t barking mad, but he might as well have been, the way the media reacted.

Columnist Jack Anderson, who had been savaging the Nixon administration, reported that Eagleton had been arrested for drunken driving on six occasions. Anderson subsequently withdrew the allegation, but not before Eagleton had been forced to quit the ticket. It was just one of the dirty tricks in a campaign that became synonymous with dirty tricks. Richard Nixon beat McGovern in 49 of the 50 states but he had to resign within two years because of his involvement in covering up the illegal behaviour of his campaign team in the Watergate building.

Obama enjoyed a magnificent convention in Denver. Teddy Kennedy, his most influential backer, made a powerfully emotional appearance at what was probably his last party convention. Hillary and Bill Clinton came out strongly for Obama.

The former president basically put it up to the candidate by offering his support in any way Obama desires. Of course, Obama will have to ask for the help.

Normally candidates get a big ‘bounce’ in the polls after their televised acceptance speech. A CBS News polls showed Obama got a bit of a boost of — an extra 3%. But that was less than one-third of the bounce enjoyed by Al Gore in 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1992. This could be an ominous sign of latent racist and religious reservations. Unlike the Democratic convention, which went off without a hitch, the Republicans were upstaged by Hurricane Gustav and its threat to New Orleans. Then John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, admitted her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.

The Republicans apparently expected Democrats to invade and occupy what has long been Republican territory — the high moral ground. What would the Republicans have said if Chelsea Clinton became pregnant as a teenager? Obama hit the right note, however, by announcing that candidate’s families should be off-limits.

It hardly helped McCain that his running mate’s problems afforded Obama an opportunity to shine, but Palin could yet be a bigger political attraction than Biden.

Why did McCain chose Sarah Palin? Was it a ploy to win over disaffected white women supporters of Hillary Clinton? Remember there are more women voters than men, and Hillary defeated Obama in the most populous states like California, New York and Pennsylvania.

Why did Obama pass over Hillary to select Joe Biden who was washed out of the presidential stakes 20 years ago? Was Obama that desperate to distance himself from the Clintons?

Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 in the midst of the McGovern debacle. He briefly ran for president in 1988, but he withdrew in ridicule after he was accused of ripping off a speech by Neil Kinnock, the British Labour party leader.

“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?” Kinnock once asked his audience. Pointing to his wife, he then added: “Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?”

Biden asked in his speech: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”

Pointing to his wife, he continued: “Why is it that my wife, who is sitting out there in the audience, is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?”

He wasn’t very smart!

The first of the modern scandals involving a vice-presidential nominee was in 1952 when the New York Post reported that Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, California Senator Richard Nixon, had received an $18,000 dig-out from business friends. Some prominent Republicans began calling for Nixon’s removal. Thomas E Dewey, who had been the unsuccessful Republican nominee in 1944 and 1948, called on Nixon to step down.

Nixon defended himself on television. “Not one cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use,” he said. “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses.”

He said he owed the bank for mortgages on his homes in California and in Washington. He had a couple of other bank loans. “I owe $3,500 to my parents, and the interest on that loan, which I pay regularly, because it’s part of the saving they made through the years they were working so hard,” he continued. “I pay regularly 4% interest.”

THEN he came to the crunch of the speech. He admitted that he and his family had kept one gift. “We did get something, a gift,” he said. “A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying that they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?

“It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.”

And, of course, the Yanks forgot about the $18,000, and told him to keep the damn dog!

Sarah Palin’s daughter has nothing to do with the American presidential election, anymore than Checkers should have had anything to do with the 1952 election.

The Yanks figuratively bought a pup then, more than half-a-century ago. Nobody was saying Nixon should get rid of the dog. And nobody is saying Sarah Palin’s daughter should get rid of the baby. The issue is an irrelevant distraction.

Obama is not using it, but the Republicans are. If the American people can’t see that, they are even more gullible than anyone could have reasonably suspected.