Video: 'SYND 6-8-72 MCGOVERN NOMINATES SHRIVER'

(Saturday, August 5, 1972, early evening EDT) — Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, a U.S. Senator from South Dakota, chose Sargent Shriver as his new vice presidential running mate today after Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine had rejected his invitation to join the ticket.

Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps under his brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, and of the anti-poverty program under President Lyndon B. Johnson, would be formally nominated before an expanded 303-member Democratic National Committee in Washington on Aug. 8, 1972.

Shriver would succeed Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri, who resigned from the ticket on July 31, 1972, after disclosing that he had been hospitalized three times in the 1960s for nervous exhaustion and depression.

Muskie, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1968 and the early front runner for the presidential nomination this year, cited family considerations in becoming the sixth man to reject McGovern’s offer.

Video: 'American Idealist-Sargent Shriver'

Earlier this week, McGovern was turned down by Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, and Abraham A. Ribicoff of Connecticut. In addition, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and Gov. Reubin Askew of Florida were thought to have been given chances to express interest but declined.

McGovern made his announcement tonight for television cameras, sitting before a wooden desk in front of a false marble fireplace in a small room in the Capitol.

Shriver, who had sailed off Hyannis Port, Mass., was playing tennis at the Kennedy family compound when he received McGovern’s firm offer.

Before leaving for Washington from the Barnstable, Mass., airport Shriver, said he was “very happy and very proud” to have been chosen.