1972 Nixon VS. McGovern

"Welfare"

Transcript

Museum of the Moving Image
The Living Room Candidate
"Welfare," McGovern, 1972

MAN: They're paying people on welfare today for doing nothing. They're laughing at our society. We're all hard-working people and we're getting laughed at for working every day. Why not have them go to work and clean up the dirty streets in our towns...

MCGOVERN: Well, I agree-

MAN: ...for that money?

McGOVERN: Richard Nixon goes around talking as though I'm some kind of a radical because I believe in guaranteed jobs for people that he's throwing out of work. He said he was going to cut the welfare rolls. He put four million people on welfare. That's not my idea of delivering on a campaign pledge. Now, I'm telling you, and I mean it, we're gonna do whatever is necessary to provide a job for every able-bodied man and woman in this country who wants to work, and those who don't want to work shouldn't be paid anything in the way of public support.

MALE NARRATOR: McGovern. Democrat. For the people.

Credits

"Welfare," McGovern, 1972

Maker: Charles Guggenheim

Video courtesy of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

From Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012.
www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972/welfare (accessed June 16, 2025).

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1972 Nixon McGovern Results

In 1971, President Nixon’s approval rating fell below 50 percent. Despite his 1968 promises to end the Vietnam War, the conflict was dragging on. At home, inflation and unemployment were rising. Nixon restored his popularity through several actions: he took unprecedented diplomatic trips to China and Russia; stepped up efforts to end the war by ordering the bombing of Hanoi; instituted wage and price controls; and ended the draft, partly because of the recent lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18. Nixon’s opponent, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who won his party’s nomination with a grassroots campaign sparked by the antiwar movement, called for withdrawal from Vietnam and a significant reduction in military spending. McGovern named as his running mate Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, who, shortly after the convention, revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression and had received shock therapy. McGovern dropped him from the ticket and replaced him with former ambassador R. Sargent Shriver. The incident created an impression of ineptitude. McGovern was also unable to convince the public of any connection between the Nixon administration and the June break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex.

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