"If the South falls to the Communists, we can have a serious backlash here at home," he warned.[284]
During the 1972 presidential election, Johnson reluctantly endorsed Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, a senator from South Dakota; McGovern had long opposed Johnson's foreign and defense policies. The McGovern nomination and presidential platform dismayed him. Nixon could be defeated, Johnson insisted, "if only the Democrats don't go too far left".[270] Johnson had felt Edmund Muskie would be more likely to defeat Nixon; however, he declined an invitation to try to stop McGovern receiving the nomination as he felt his unpopularity within the Democratic Party was such that anything he said was more likely to help McGovern. Johnson's protégé John Connally had served as President Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury and then stepped down to head "Democrats for Nixon", a group funded by Republicans. It was the first time that Connally and Johnson were on opposite sides of a general election campaign.[285]

Heart issues
Johnson wearing a cowboy hat at his ranch in Texas, 1972
In March 1970, Johnson suffered an attack of angina and was taken to Brooke Army General Hospital in San Antonio. 