Initially, Senator Ted Kennedy was expected to seek (and likely win) the Democratic nomination, but he opted to sit out the election following the Chappaquiddick scandal. During the primary season, McGovern faced Maine senator Edmund Muskie (whose campaign was derailed by a bizarre combination of fabrications and rumors), New York Representative Shirley Chisholm (the first major-party African-American to make a run for the presidency) and pro-segregation Alabama Governor George Wallace (victim of an assassination attempt during the campaign), among many other contenders vying for the nomination.

McGovern, a liberal, anti-war progressive, saw his campaign rocked by revelations that his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had been treated for a mental illness. McGovern might have mitigated the fallout had he not quickly shifted from full support of Eagleton to then jettisoning him in favor of John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law Sargent Shriver. Ultimately, Nixon would be re-elected by a landslide.

Two years into his second term, facing probable impeachment for his role in the Watergate cover-up, Nixon resigned from the presidency. Though pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, it would take years for the tarnish of the scandal to diminish, and for Americans to be able to focus on the accomplishments of his administration, including introduction of the Clean Air Act and creation of the EPA, abolishing the draft, negotiating nuclear weaponry agreements with the Soviet Union, opening diplomatic talks with China and, of course, ending the Vietnam War.