George Mitchell Interview (page: 3 / 6) Presidential Medal of Freedom	Print Interview

Tell us more about Senator Muskie's influence. What was he like?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. George Mitchell: Senator Muskie was a truly great man. First: the smartest person I've ever met, in terms of pure intellect. I've never met anyone as intelligent as he was. He was a great senator, a great legislator. He created what we now think of as the environmental movement in America. He wrote the clean air law, the clean water law, the basic environmental laws which protect our air and water in this country. They are so taken for granted now that people tend to forget that it was an extremely difficult and bitter political struggle to attain enactment of those laws. He was a man of towering intellect and integrity, and he taught me just about everything I know about politics and public service.

It was a different life back then.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. This was in the '60s. Senators had small staffs. I did a lot of things, including driving Senator Muskie around Maine. There wasn't much money available, so oftentimes we shared a motel room -- two of us in a motel room in some small town in Maine. And late at night -- I was a young, awestruck kid, and Senator Muskie was a former governor and senator and soon to be a vice presidential and presidential candidate. So he used to talk, and I used to listen, and I really came to admire him, and later in life, we became close friends. For me, he was an employer, a mentor, and ultimately, a close friend -- a truly great man.

You were involved in his campaign in 1968. What was your role in the campaign at that point?

George Mitchell: I was the deputy campaign manager both of his 1968 campaign for vice president and then his 1972 campaign for president.

Can you talk a little bit about what you were up against in '68 and then '72?

George Mitchell: Well, 1968 was a very interesting election year. Vice President Humphrey was the Democratic candidate. The internal conflict over the Vietnam war raged in the country and within the Democratic Party, and it created a huge burden for the Humphrey-Muskie ticket.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. In addition, there was the year of the infamous dirty tricks campaign that the Nixon campaign ran against Senator Muskie, particularly in the primary. And I myself was the direct object of a good deal of that campaign. We encountered what then seemed inexplicable crazy events. Everywhere I went on the road, there would be a bill for $2,000 in the restaurant and bar signed with my name. One day, 15 limousines showed up signed with my name. At four o'clock in the morning 500 pizzas were delivered to the hotel, ordered in my name. Crazy actions to disrupt the scheduling, phony photographs of Senator Muskie, cropped photographs distributed at various events. We couldn't figure out what was happening. We had no idea that it was coming from President Nixon's campaign. We thought it might be other Democrats in the primary. It had a tremendous disruptive effect on the operation of the campaign. And then later events, which got a lot of publicity, involved phony letters to the editor and Senator Muskie's response and so forth, which affected the campaign.

I'm not certain that the result would have been any different. No one will ever know. But to read about it later, it was really like a light bulb coming on. All of these crazy things that happened that seemed trivial and insignificant and inexplicable at the time suddenly became clear. So it was quite a dramatic time for me, personally, a young guy not really knowing too much about that, thinking, "Gee, I wonder if this is the way all campaigns are run."

The presidential campaign was difficult for Senator Muskie. He was a centrist candidate. The political parties tend to be more extreme than the populace in general in their own parties, and he couldn't generate the enthusiasm to maintain the initial early lead that he had, in part because of these dirty tricks and other things. But he took it very hard when he lost the nomination to Senator McGovern. I remember when we went back to Maine afterwards, I back to my job, and he back to his summer place, we reminisced about it quite a bit. It was tough on him. He would have made a great president, I think, and it's very unfortunate that he didn't make it.

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