Button, George McGovern, 1972

After George McGovern, senator from South Dakota, won the nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, the difficult task of selecting his running mate began. Following hours of debate over numerous candidates, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate. Less than three weeks after the convention, Eagleton withdrew from the ticket in the aftermath of the revelation that he had been hospitalized three times for depression and had twice received electro-shock therapy. He was replaced on the ticket by Sargent Shriver, former head of the Peace Corps and brother-in-law of President John F. Kennedy. The McGovern-Shriver ticket lost in one of the worst landslides in history to the Republican incumbents President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew.