Gene McCarthy: Man of Conscience

10 December 2005 |permalink | email article

Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, 89, the Minnesota liberal Democrat and one-time college professor whose insurgent campaign toppled President Lyndon Johnsonís re-election drive in New Hampshire amid the Vietnam War tumult of 1968, died Saturday. But he forced the Democratic Party to take his anti-war message seriously.

An angry McCarthy, after hearing the Johnson administration arrogantly defend its right to reinterpret the Constitutional war-making powers of Congress, shouted in a Capitol corridor 15 months before the 1968 election, ìThere is only one thing to do ñ take it to the country.î

Deciding to challenge Johnson, the senator, a former Catholic novice monk in the Benedictine order, said, ìThere comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag.î

His death is a dÈj‡ vu moment for a sputtering Democratic Party. A shameful number of Senate Democrats voted for the Iraq war, including many potential 2008 candidates - with the notable exception of the McCarthyesque anti-war Russ Feingold. Perhaps some solons may now find the courage to unequivocally speak out.

Interviewed a month before the 2003 invasion, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel, ìLord of the Flies,î in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.

ìThe bullies are running it,î McCarthy said, ìBush is bullying everything.î

At the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles McCarthy nominated Adlai E. Stevenson, a twice-defeated candidate for president as delegates were preparing to select John F. Kennedy. ìDo not reject this man who made us all proud to be Democrats.î He never quite matched that electrifying moment as an acid-tongued campaigner in 1968, which attracted a legion of followers to his insurgent message.

After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, McCarthy lost the nomination to Hubert H. Humphrey in a riotous Chicago donnybrook. For decades afterwards he played the self-styled Democratic Party scold and contrarian ñ endorsing Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980. He left the Senate in 1970. Quirky yes but, as has been observed, cant free which marks him as a rare and seminal U.S. political figure.

In 1993, the New York Times asked McCarthy, who ran for president four times, whether he still had the Presidential bug - a phrase William Safire describes in his New Political Dictionary as a mythical insect whose bite results in Presidential fever.

He relied, ìWe McCarthys live a long time. My grandfather made it to 98Ö. Iíve still got time for ñ letís see ñ five more tries.î Baseball, politics, poetry and theology were his metaphors for life. But he had a sardonic sense of humor, long gone missing.

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