tom eagleton was, by all measurements, a good candidate. george mcgovern was from a small agricultural state in the north. tom eagleton was from a border state, a catholic with strong ties to labor. on key issues, he was in agreement with mcgovern. it looked like a pretty good fit. you have to remember that we did not have any fbi, any security agencies available to check anybody out. we assumed that tom eagleton who had run with nixon at this time, but first, let me show you a couple of campaign ads from this. >> one of the reasons i am disturbed by the president's $10 million secret election fund is that it indicates that there is something he is afraid to disclose. whether they hiding? i am perfectly willing -- what are they hiding? i am perfectly willing to publish to be donated every single dollar to my campaign. but the president is covering it up. it is the sort of thing that puts the tarnish on the whole nation. >> i can only say the thing that motivated might change -- might change -- my change was a year of collecting pure, unaffe

tom eagleton in 1982 did not and was dropped from the ticket.o serving as attack dog but principle role is to unify their base, their party, and to assure the american people that they are ready to assume the presidency if something were to happen to the president. >> two sides of that. one, the vice presidential nominee can offset weaknesses here. pence can address veterans issues and talk about how he understands the operation of a state in calling perhaps some favors in the battleground states to those other governors that say, okay, we both understand each other and what we need but then there's also this year of pence and his statements and beliefs with rega to lgbt policy that will go the other way. where do you sort of assess and put pence? >> he's an interesting pick because he and trump have a good cop/bad cop dynamic. trump does clean up in aisle 4 dynamic. we can't see a ton of results from the work that pence has been doing. what stands out to me is the fact that in the case in senator jeff flake, one of the most staunch opponents to

we assumed that tom eagleton who had run statewide and won four or five times as he had, if there was anything that could be it would haveim , come out. what were you being told about the candidate? >> the vetting candidates was a very casual sort of thing at that time. mr. witcover: there was very little time, or any reason really, not to take his word for it. they had at nothing that would damage the campaign. so, after the convention, you go to sioux falls. what is happening? what is the story about eagleton? mr. witcover: i was not there at the time that eagleton went there and met with mcgovern. when word came that eagleton had had mental health problems and had taken shock therapy twice. mcgovern at first was satisfied with eagleton's explanation. and he stood up for him. he said, he would support him but there were questions coming back and he made the mistake of saying he was for him 1000%. and it was very hard to back away from that when they realized, after the reaction that they were getting, after the disclosure of eagleton's problems -- it was clearly going to damage the

tom eagleton, it was revealed after he got the vice presidential nomination that he had undergone someroshock therapy from a psychiatrist, and people thought this isn't going to work. but he left the ticket voluntarily, was replaced by sergeant schreiber, and that's another party. but there's nothing on the republican side -- >> no, and the key point is he left. it's kind of difficult to negotiate with somebody whose negotiation strategy just blow up the room. >> so assuming somehow they actually made this move, the next thing you're up against is getting names changed on ballots in each of the individual states. and the deadline to do that is different in every state. >> it's all over the map. some deadlines have passed, for example, in delaware, and some deadlines won't pass until the end of september. so you could have a situation where donald trump's name is on the ballot in some states and let's just say paul ryan's name is on the ballot in others. even in that case, though, in most states even if donald trump's name is on the ballot, most states allow the party to really designat