Following the assassination of RFK, it had been suggested Shriver be a running mate for eventual Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, but it didn't happen because the Kennedy family wasn't happy about the idea. Instead, Shriver ended up being a running mate for George McGovern following a big controversy over his original running mate Thomas Eagleton, who stepped down. Since Nixon's boys picked McGovern over more electable candidates via the Watergate dirty tricks campaign, it was a foregone conclusion the McGovern-Shriver ticket would take a beating.
WSJ:
Mr. Shriver stayed on in the Johnson administration, where he added to his portfolio a New Deal-style flowering of programs meant to alleviate poverty under the rubric of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Among these was Job Corps, to train urban youth; Vista, a kind of domestic Peace Corps; and Head Start, a child-development program. He spoke of eliminating poverty within a decade.
When he took on the post, Mr. Shriver said the War on Poverty would be "noisy, visible, dirty, uncomfortable and sometimes politically unpopular." He may have understated just how unpopular it would become in some quarters.
NYT:
“Shriver’s relationship with the Kennedys was complex,” Scott Stossel wrote in “Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver,” a 2004 biography. “They buoyed him up to heights and achievements he would never otherwise have attained — and they held him back, thwarting his political advancement.”
The book and reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications suggested that Mr. Shriver’s hopes to run for governor of Illinois in 1960 and vice president in 1964 and 1968 were abandoned to help promote, or at least not compete with, Kennedy aspirations. Mr. Shriver’s vice-presidential race in 1972, on a ticket with Senator George S. McGovern, and a brief primary run for president in 1976 were crushed by the voters.
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