Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern’s one-time running mate, was a likely alcoholic who went undiagnosed by a reviewer.
Untrue quote of the month:
“[Thomas] Eagleton, little more than an acquaintance of Mr. McGovern’s, was hurriedly picked despite vague rumors of alcoholism (untrue) and mental illness (true).”
So wrote Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, in a review of Joshua M. Glasser’s new book, The Eighteen-Day Running Mate. Partly as a result of the failure to properly vet the late Senator Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) while running for President in 1972, George McGovern suffered a landslide defeat. Eagleton was diagnosed with clinical depression and clearly suffered the extreme and prolonged highs and lows of someone with bi-polar disorder. However, friends also “noted his drinking” and described him as having “drank quite a bit….Sometimes he was funny, sometimes he was frightening, sometimes he created some stirs about that,” which implies he caused trouble. If there is trouble and there is heavy drinking, the trouble, as they say in AA, is alcoholism. It would appear Mr. Eagleton had this disease and alleged “rumors” stating as such weren’t just “rumors.” It would also appear history was greatly affected by one alcoholic and, as usual, completely missed by historians.
Alcoholism is often confused for and may trigger mental illness. In Drunks, Drugs and Debits, I noted that actress Vivien Leigh was “repeatedly diagnosed as bipolar (manic-depressive) even while she drank regularly and heavily,” and that “Patty Duke’s autobiography is suggestive of heavy drinking and other (legal) drug use as a trigger for her bipolar disorder….[which] doesn’t usually appear until at least the late teen years, well after most have had their first of many drinks.” Duke, in fact, was fed Bloody Mary’s by her obviously alcoholic business managers at age 13 or 14 and she didn’t experience her first bipolar episode, by her own testimony, until she was 18 or 19. In her 20s she was “hung over most of the day because I drank most of the night.” In this case, both Glasser and Barnes should have considered the underlying trigger for Eagleton’s bipolar disorder as alcoholism, as was likely true for Duke and Leigh. If there’s a problem, a personality disorder, or something otherwise inexplicable, the cause is usually alcoholism. Barnes, by being so cock-sure, helps to increase the myths surrounding the public’s vast misunderstandings of alcoholism. You’ll find 118 other myths debunked in Alcoholism Myths and Realities.