University Daily Kansan
Friday, November 3, 1972
7
Shriver Brings Vigor, Tart Humor To Democratic Campaign Efforts
By KAREN KLINKENBERG
Kansan Writer
For years he was the brother-in-law in the Kennedy family portrait, the dapper and handsome husband of Eunice Kennedy and one of the clan's ranking ambassadors to the outside world. And that in a sense was the driver. Sir George Shriver, 66, resumed in August when Sen. GerrishGovernment lapped him for the vacant vice president slot on the Democratic ticket.
"I am not embarrassed to be George McGovern's seventh choice for vice president, but we are more short of money and we're not aware of lack of talent," he said in his August acceptance speech.
At this they laughed and applauded, inadvertently stepping on the punch line that George McGee was getting to. "And now George McGee has been laughed at there is no discrimination against in-law's."
Stepping immediately into the role of a partisan cheerleader, he went on to liven up his audience. "John Kennedy's victory ended discrimination against Catholics. Lyndon Johnson's victory ended discrimination against Southerners. Richard Nixon's election ended discrimination against losers."
SHRIRI IS the son of a proud out Baltimore family. His father, in investment banker, married Hilda Shirra, a second cousin. They sent their son, Robert Jr., to Centenary Boarding School. But the family lost its wealth in the 1929 crash, and he was sent to himself through college. On a scholarship from chairman of the Yale Daily News and graduated cum laude, class of '38, with a law degree in '41 from the Yale Law School.
After serving in the Navy in World War II and achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel, he returned to work for a New York law firm as an assistant editor of Newsweek.
HE THEN began moving in Eunice Kennedy's social circles. She introduced him to her father, Joseph Kennedy, who was considering publishing the journals of his son, Joe Shriver read the journals, blinding him. Then they were unpublished and was offered a memorial to Kennedy's new Merchandise Mall in Chicago. He accepted the job and from 1948-61 he was responsible for obtaining tenants for one of the world's largest office buildings.
McGovern ..
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CIVIL RIGHTS legislation has consistently received McGovern's endorsement. Beginning in 1964 with a vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the discrimination in a wide range of problem areas, McGovern also voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Civil Rights-Open Act of 1988, the Voting Rights Act of 1970 and a 1971 bill to provide funds for desegregation.
McGovern wrote in his 1968 book, "A Time for War—At time for Peace," that the status of the Negro in our society was the most serious moral crisis facing the nation.
WHILE CHAIRING the commission, McGovenn did not forget his own political activism. A year ago, he was interviewing potential staff members for a second bid for the presidency.
It is not surprising that McGovern has shown special favor toward farm programs because it is increasingly agricultural state. Notably he voted to establish of quotas for meat imports, against a $20,000 ceiling on government spending. He also billed a bill in 1971 to modernize the farm credit system.
MgoCerver's career was boosted in 1968 when he was chosen to chair a Democratic commission to recommend reforms for the 1972 elections. The commission studied abuses in the delegates for the 1968 convention and made recommendations to minimize the chances of "stageo" would recur in 1972. These guidance letters were adopted for the 1972 elections.
McGOVERN ALSO has supported bills providing for campaign and income disclosure and reform, including legislation to require members of Congress to disclose their incomes, an ethics bill requiring government official earnings more than $19,000, a limit TV and radio campaign expenses to 7 cents per constituent. In February 1973 he disclosed the names of his campaign contributors up to that time.
In 1971, with a campaign organization and the knowledge that he needed recognition, McGovern announced his candidacy, fully 22 months before the Presidential election. His Jan. 18 announcement generally rejected old-time politics, rhetoric and smoke-filled rooms in favor of "candor and reason."
IN CHICAGO he was director, chairman or fund-riser for 25 educational, cultural, hospital, welfare and charitable groups and was president of the Chicago Board of Education from 1955-60. He married Eunice in 1953.
John F. Kennedy in his 1960 campaign called on Shriver to be a contact man with minority groups. It was Shriver who engineered Kennedy's new famous call to Mrs. Martin Luther King after King was put in jail in Georgia, a gesture that greatly boosted Kennedy's position with previously standoff black voters.
Appointed first director of the Peace Corps by Kennedy in 1961 and director of the Office of Economic Opportunity under Johnson, he made a reputation on Capitol Hill as a persuasive advocate for higher appropriations for his agencies. His one-
man lobbying campaign got the tripped Peace Corps appropriations in two years.
SUDDENLY SHIRVER was being talked about widely as a running mate for LBJ. But Johnson in 1968 named him ambassador to France. While embassy staffers grazed at his 18-hour work days, Quai d'Orsay, the French foreign office, was alternately amazed and appalled at the one-man public relations program Shirvager waged.
Since his return to the United States, Shriver has received a bit at loose ends. He made a half-hearted bid for the Maryland Democratic primary, but windwind 32-state tour to drum up support for Democratic congressional candidates. A man who has never held an elective office and makes $108,000 a year, Shriver has become an attractive candidate in this year's election.
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