EUGENE J. MCCARTHY |
1916-2005
NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY DAY,
1968: McCarthy talks to campaign workers and the media. His presidential bid
caught fire with young people, many of whom went to New Hampshire to help his
cause. He lost by 7 points. (Associated Press)
Eugene McCarthy; Candidacy Inspired Antiwar Movement
By Art
Pine
Special to The Los Angeles Times
December 11, 2005
Former Sen. Eugene
J. McCarthy (D-Minn.), whose surprisingly strong showing in the 1968 New
Hampshire presidential primary dramatized deepening public opposition to the
Vietnam War and effectively ended President Lyndon B. Johnson's political
career, died Saturday. He was 89.
McCarthy died at a retirement home in
the Georgetown section of Washington, where he had lived for several
years.
"McCarthy essentially knocked Johnson out of the race," Georgetown
University history professor Michael Kazin, coauthor of "America Divided: The
Civil War of the 1960s," told The Times on Saturday. "McCarthy made it
politically palatable to start moving toward ending the war."
Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called McCarthy "a man of compassion and a
tremendous figure in the Democratic Party."
"He dedicated his life to
public service and made an enormous difference for the people of Minnesota and
the entire United States," Reid said. "Though he left the Senate many years ago,
he remained an important, respected voice in our nation."
Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy (D-Mass.), whose late brother Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) vied
against McCarthy for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, said Saturday:
"In spite of the rivalry with Bobby in the 1968 campaign, I admired Gene
enormously for his courage in challenging a war America never should have
fought.
"His life speaks volumes to us today as we face a similar
critical time for our country," Kennedy said, alluding to the war in
Iraq.
Former Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.), who won the 1972
Democratic presidential nomination when McCarthy ran a second time, said
McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement
from "a movement of concerned citizens" to "a national political
movement."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a volunteer in McCarthy's 1968
campaign and a co-founder two years later of an antiwar group called the Marin
Alternative, said: "During the Vietnam War, Eugene McCarthy had the courage to
stand up and be a voice for peace. He will always be remembered for
that."
Political scientist Steven S. Smith of Washington University in
St. Louis told The Times on Saturday that McCarthy "remains the most important
national symbol of the peace movement and the view that the U.S. reverts to the
use of force too quickly. No one has symbolized that in American politics like
McCarthy has."
McCarthy, a relatively obscure senator who turned against
the war as the United States escalated its troop buildup in the mid-1960s,
entered the New Hampshire presidential primary partly to fill a vacuum: Antiwar
politicians who were more prominent assumed that Johnson was unbeatable and
decided not to challenge him.
McCarthy's candidacy initially was
dismissed as quixotic. Johnson's biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that the
challenge "was regarded by official Washington as a somewhat baffling exercise
begun by a hitherto stable member of the Senate liberal
establishment."
But McCarthy's campaign caught fire with young people --
the vanguard of opposition to the Vietnam War -- and hordes of them traveled to
New Hampshire to help his cause. They stuffed envelopes and passed out leaflets
in what was dubbed "the children's crusade." Many cut their long hair and put on
fresh clothes to help impress older voters. Be "Clean for Gene," their watchword
urged.
Johnson had not yet formally declared his candidacy, so his name
was not on the primary ballot. But it was widely assumed he would seek
reelection, and New Hampshire Democratic leaders organized a write-in campaign
for him, fully expecting a win.
Johnson did win -- but not easily. He
garnered 49% of the vote, McCarthy 42%. The results shocked analysts, showed
that the president was vulnerable, and jolted other politicians into
action.
Four days later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who earlier had decided
against seeking the nomination, reversed himself and jumped into the race. Two
weeks after that, Johnson stunned the nation by announcing he would not seek a
second term.
McCarthy's glory was short-lived. Kennedy captured much of
the momentum that had been propelling the McCarthy campaign, and the laconic
Minnesotan proved unable to sufficiently expand his base of support. Some placed
part of the blame on his diffident campaign style. The poet Robert Lowell said
of his friend McCarthy: "The last thing he wanted to do was to be charismatic.
He was a mixture of proud contempt and modest distaste…. Usually the cheers were
greater when he came in than when he finished speaking."
Kennedy scored a
major triumph when he won the California primary in early June, but that night
he was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after delivering his
victory speech. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey -- a Minnesotan who had served
in the Senate with McCarthy -- went on to claim the Democratic nomination.
Humphrey narrowly lost the November election to Republican Richard M.
Nixon.
Truculent as well as contrarian, McCarthy abruptly decided not to
seek reelection to the Senate in 1970, disappointing many supporters who hoped
he would use his office to continue to push for an end to U.S. involvement in
Vietnam. Humphrey reentered the Senate by winning the election to succeed
McCarthy.
McCarthy ran for president in 1972, 1976, 1988 and 1992 but
never came close to recapturing the constituency he had originally forged in New
Hampshire.
Still, historians regard his 1968 candidacy as a turning
point: a campaign that focused Americans' previously scattered opposition to the
war and pushed successive administrations to try to extricate U.S. forces from
Southeast Asia. It also stands as one of the most vivid examples of successful
grass-roots activism in U.S. politics.
It also helped inspire an overhaul
of the political process, particularly within the Democratic Party. After
antiwar demonstrations disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention,
damaging the party politically, Democratic leaders revamped party rules to pare
back the power of political professionals to determine candidates and
platforms.
"It opened the way for major changes in the party that pushed
it toward the left and enabled Republicans to capture the White House through
most of the next several elections," said Marshall Wittmann, a 1968 McCarthy
volunteer and now a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council
in Washington.
McCarthy never overcame his bitterness toward Robert F.
Kennedy, whom he believed had exploited the New Hampshire results for his own
political gain, detracting from the broader antiwar campaign.
Once he
entered the race, McCarthy said later, "we weren't able to run the kind of
campaign we wanted to, which was to focus on the issue of the war."
Much
of McCarthy's last two decades was spent in rural Woodville, Va., about 65 miles
west of Washington. He bought a rebuilt 18th century stone-and-clapboard
farmhouse, where he would entertain the occasional out-of-town visitor in a
pine-paneled -- and book-laden -- library. He also maintained a modest apartment
in Washington.
Although McCarthy insisted in his latter years that he no
longer paid much attention to politics, he remained knowledgeable and
keen-witted, turning out a steady flow of books and magazine articles and making
occasional speeches.
He also continued to write poetry, a talent -- and
avocation -- that had always set him apart from other politicians.
He
repeatedly declined to assess his place in history, insisting the record would
stand for itself. "You just kind of let it happen," he said.
McCarthy was
born in tiny Watkins, Minn., on March 29, 1916, the son of Irish immigrants and
the third of four children. He finished high school at age 16. At 19, he
graduated cum laude with a degree in English from St. John's University
in Collegeville, Minn., a school run by Benedictine monks.
He took a job
as principal of a country school at Tintah, Minn., and later taught English at a
public high school in Mandan, N.D. There he met another teacher, Abigail
Quigley, to whom he became engaged.
Before their wedding, though,
McCarthy decided he wanted to become a priest and entered St. John's Abbey as a
Benedictine monk. He changed his mind after nine months but retained a strong
interest in theology and philosophy.
During World War II, McCarthy was
classified 4-F -- ineligible for military service -- because of an acute foot
ailment, but in 1944 he took a job in Washington with the Army Signal Corps
deciphering Japanese codes.
After the war, he returned to Minnesota,
married Quigley and taught economics and sociology at the College of St. Thomas
in St. Paul.
While on the St. Thomas faculty, McCarthy became involved in
politics and helped Humphrey and other young Minnesota liberals purge the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of communist influences. With the party's backing,
he was elected to the U.S. House in 1948, where he remained until his election
to the Senate in 1958.
The senator was a steadfast supporter of the
landmark legislation Johnson pushed through Congress in the mid-1960s, including
civil rights and voting rights bills, expansion of the Social Security program
and creation of the Medicare program for the elderly.
McCarthy and his
wife separated in 1969. The devout Catholics never divorced. They had four
children.
On the day his term officially ended in January 1971, McCarthy
marked the occasion by reading to a Georgetown gathering from his new book of
poetry, "Other Things and the Aardvark." The opening lines of the book's title
page were wryly self-descriptive:
I am
alone
in the land of the aardvarks.
I am walking west
all
the aardvarks are going east.
Some years ago his dry wit was
on display when television interviewer David Frost asked him: "How would you
like the first line of your obituary to read?" McCarthy replied: " 'He died,' I
suppose. That would be most reassuring."
McCarthy's wife died in 2001 and
a daughter, Mary, died in 1990.
He is survived by a son, Michael; two
daughters, Ellen and Margaret; and six grandchildren.
Pine wrote this
obituary while a member of the Times staff. It was updated by staff writer
Claudia Luther, and staff writer Janet Hook in Washington
contributed.