Outmaneuvered on Peace.

McGovern entered the fall 1972 campaign with little political ammunition to attack the president. To McGovern Vietnam remained the most important issue. He had a record of introducing antiwar legislation, characterized Vietnam as "the wound in American life that will not heal," and often portrayed the war as a symptom of a larger moral failure in the United States. The majority of the voters did not see the war that way. By the fall of 1972 Nixon had succeeded in removing all combat ground troops from Vietnam, and the air campaign against the Vietnamese inspired little moral indignation. As a peace candidate, moreover, McGovern was no match for Nixon. Nixon had journeyed to Moscow and Peking, he had drafted the SALT accords, and he had stopped American boys from dying in Vietnam.

Outmaneuvered on Defense.

McGovern ardently maintained that the Vietnam War...