TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/68elect/68elect.002

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                                                                                March 22, 1968

DEMOCRATS

Unforeseen Eugene


     He was laughed off as a windmill tilter, shrugged off as
a lackluster campaigner, written off as a condescending cynic.
But last week, when the votes in New Hampshire's
first-in-the-nation presidential primary were counted,
Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene J. McCarthy came off --
to practically everyone's surprise -- a hero. THE UNFORESEEN
EUGENE, proclaimed a placard toted by one of his fans after the
balloting, and that said it all.

     McCarthy's entry into the primaries against an incumbent
President was unforeseen. His appeal on the stump, despite a
low-key approach, was unforeseen. Most unforeseen of all -- by
the pollsters, by newsmen and by a shaken Lyndon Johnson -- was
his showing on election day. When McCarthy first ventured into
New Hampshire, Democratic Governor John W. King, a Johnson
loyalist, predicted that the President would "murder" him.
Opinion samplers have him 10% to 20%. Instead, he polled a
stunning 42.2% of the Democratic vote to Johnson's 49.4%. With
an additional 5,511 Republican write-ins (McCarthy,
astonishingly, ran third on the G.O.P. ticket), he trailed the
President in the overall tally by a scant 230 votes, 29,021 to
28,791.

     Galvanic Effect. Despite the fact that L.B.J. was a
write-in candidate while his challenger's name was printed on
the ballot, the narrowness of the President's lead amounted in
all but figures to a victory for McCarthy. "I think I can get
the nomination," the Senator said later. "I'm ahead now. There's
no point in being anything but optimistic." His showing had a
galvanic effect, particularly on the legions of enthusiastic
students who poured into New Hampshire to help him. Outside his
once moribund New York offices appeared a crude sign: WELL DONE,
CONQUERING HEROES! MCCARTHY V. NIXON IN NOVEMBER. In the Senate,
Oregon Republican Mark Hatfield, who shares McCarthy's doubts
about the war in Vietnam, and several colleagues wore McCarthy
buttons -- but on the inside of their lapels.

     And then Bobby Kennedy entered the picture. Would the
appearance of so formidable a foe force McCarthy out of the
running? "Look, what do I have to do to convince you that I
have no intention of withdrawing?" he snapped at the question.
"I have said at least 20 times: I don't have in mind becoming
a dropout."


     Man For All Seasons. The quiz afforded ample evidence that
there is a broad and hitherto little-appreciated streak of steel
in the man, just as his showing in New Hampshire called to mind
the usually overlooked fact that in 20 years of electoral
politics he has not yet lost a race. All of his previous
contests, however, have been waged in his native Minnesota.

     Son of an Irish-descended livestock dealer and a
German-descended mother, he was born 52 years ago next week in
the farm hamlet of Watkins, Minn. (pop. 744). Gene whipped
through St. John's prep school and university at Collegeville
in a total of six years instead of eight, getting A's in
everything but trigonometry, starring in hockey and basketball.
One of the few mementos in his office is the bat that he used
to win a Senate-House baseball game for the upper chamber with
a home run. Another is a bas-relief plaque of St. Thomas More,
the man who, for all seasons, is the Senator's hero.

     McCarthy gulped deep draughts of liberal politics and
theology from the Benedictines at St. John's, later returned to
the order as a novice. After a year of isolation, he left the
novitiate to marry Abigail Quigley, a handsome, brilliant girl
from Wabasha, Minn., whom he met while teaching high school in
North Dakota. She has since become a leading advocate of
ecumenism, is one of the two Catholics on the National Board of
United Church Women.

     McCarthy's Mavericks. McCarthy returned to the secular
world during a time of political ferment in Minnesota. Hubert
Humphrey, Orville Freeman and other liberal Democrats were
engaged in a bitter struggle to coalesce the Democratic and
Farmer-Labor parties and root out the Communists who infested
both. McCarthy, then teaching sociology and economics at the
College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, joined the struggle. By 1948
he had helped Humphrey's coalition take command of the new
party, decided to run for Congress, went on to win the first of
five terms.

     In 1952, he had the temerity to debate his namesake,
Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy, on a radio program. "The
moderator told me that the only reason he asked me to oppose
McCarthy was that he could not get anybody else," recalls Gene.
When campaign time rolled around, the Minnesotan was smeared as a
Communist by supporters of his opponent. Nevertheless, he won by
37,000 votes.

     To combat the Republican-Southern Democratic coalition
that flourished in the House in the mid-1950s, McCarthy formed
a liberal discussion group that later evolved into a formal
bloc. Reminiscent of a similar group founded in the 1930s by
Texas Congressman Maury Maverick, it was tagged "McCarthy's
Mavericks." After McCarthy went to the U.S. Senate in 1959,
having ousted a two-term G.O.P. incumbent, the McMavericks
evolved into the still-functioning Democratic Study Group.

     Though the more baronial Senate sniffs at the
feet-on-the-desk atmosphere of the House, McCarthy remained his
old self, relaxed, languid, sardonic and urbane. Many of his
colleagues, however, resented his occasionally professional
air. "He gives the impression that we aren't quite as smart as
we ought to be," said one. He focused on a few major issues --
taxation, agriculture, and congressional overseeing of the
Central Intelligence Agency -- but no major bill bore his name.

     To complaints that he is lazy, he points out that he has
written four books since 1960 and averaged 125 major speeches
a year outside the Senate. "Did they expect me to go to the
Senate and do hand springs?" he asks. "To fulminate like Wayne
Morse? Or to listen to the same speeches on the same issues?"
He refuses to worry about roll-call votes "just to get on the
record." And though he scorns fence-mending chores that can
devour a Senator's time, Minnesotans don't seem to mind; they
seek out Senator Walter Mondale or Congressman John Blatnik
instead, and continue to vote for McCarthy.

     Twice in recent years McCarthy found himself in the
national limelight -- and both times he came across as an
engaging, articulate partisan in a losing cause.

     The first time was at the Democratic Convention in Los
Angeles in 1960. There were those who thought he wanted the
nomination for himself; though he vigorously denied it, he was
credited with having said that he deserved to be President
because "I am twice as liberal as Humphrey, twice as Catholic
as Kennedy and twice as smart as [Senator Stuart] Symington."
But at the convention, McCarthy, no fan either of the Kennedys,
whom he accused of "lavishness and ruthlessness" in the
primaries, or of Lyndon Johnson, rose to nominate a man who had
no chance at all to win the nomination: Adlai E. Stevenson. "Do
not reject this man who made us all proud to be called
Democrats!" cried McCarthy. "Do not leave this prophet without
honor in his own party." It was an electrifying speech -- and
an entirely quixotic gesture.

     The second time occurred in 1964, when Johnson dangled the
vice-presidency before McCarthy (and Connecticut's Senator
Thomas Dodd) before throwing it to Fellow Minnesotan Hubert
Humphrey. Lyndon lavished praise on McCarthy, called him "the
kind of man -- as we say in the ranch country of Texas -- who
will go to the well with you." McCarthy went to the well with
Lyndon -- and got dunked.

     The Wildest. Unlike many of his colleagues on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, he was neither an outspoken critic
nor an eloquent defender of Vietnam policy until January 1966.
Then he joined 14 other Senators in an appeal to the President
to continue a pause in bombing raids against the North. Four
days later, Johnson ended the 37-day pause, and by mid-1966
McCarthy had become an unremitting opponent of the war.

     Last August, when Under Secretary of State Nicholas
Katzenbach imprudently told the Foreign Relations Committee
that Johnson did not need any congressional declaration to
conduct the war, McCarthy stormed out of the hearing. "This is
the wildest testimony I ever heard," he told a newsman in the
corridor. "There is only one thing to do -- take it to the
country."

     Two months later, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk
suggested that U.S. policy in Vietnam was a response to the
threat of Communist China, McCarthy condemned him for injecting
the "yellow peril" issue into the debate. "This was the point
when I decided that someone had to challenge the
Administration," he says. Nobody seemed anxious to undertake
that chore.

     Finally, at the end of November, he took the plunge
himself. The Administration, he told newsmen, evidently intended
"to escalate and to intensify the war in Vietnam," and showed
no disposition "for a compromise or for a negotiated political
settlement."

     Courageous or Foolhardy?  His colleagues did not exactly
flock to his banner. Of 247 House Democrats, only one --
California's Don Edwards -- came to his support immediately.
Despite the sizable dovecote in the upper chamber, not one
Senator endorsed him; McCarthy was alone in the arena. He might
well have recalled a fourth-grade treatise that his son Michael,
now 16, had written about the early Christian martyrs -- from
the viewpoint of the Colosseum lions. [Who calls himself "the
family mute" because he alone declines to make speeches for
Daddy. The other three McCarthy children: Ellen, 20, who
graduates next year from Georgetown University's School of
Foreign Service; Mary, 18, who took leave from Radcliffe to
campaign for her father; Margaret, 12, a seventh-grader in the
Catholic Stone Ridge school in Maryland, whom McCarthy calls his
"secret weapon." Says he: "I'm going to bring her on at the
right time. She's been thinking and not saying very much."] "Who
was that we had for dinner" asks the first lion. "Christians,"
replies the second. "Well," muses the first, "I admire their
courage, but I'm glad I'm a lion."

     After his initial forays into New Hampshire, McCarthy
seemed less courageous than foolhardy. His dry, scholarly
addresses turned off audience after audience. He seemed
impatient with the routine requirements of campaigning. In the
midst of a handshaking session, he blurted, "This is sort of a
strange ritual." Several 6 a.m. factory-gate tours were scrubbed
because, he protested, "I'm not really a morning person." When
former White House Speechwriter (for John F. Kennedy and
Johnson) Richard Goodwin joined the entourage in February, he
found that "there wasn't a single reporter, no speechwriter, no
secretaries, not even a typewriter."

     McCarthy was more interested in the issues than in the the
mechanics of the campaign. At first there was only one theme --
the war. He urged a bombing pause (except, possibly, against
enemy supply lines), a halt to search-and-destroy operations,
a pullback to populated enclaves and determined efforts to open
negotiations. "I don't know how you negotiate this thing," he
said candidly. "But the alternative is worse."

     Later, McCarthy began exploring the whole galaxy of
problems troubling the U.S., from the economy to the urban
crisis. Said he: "The great issue in this contest between
President Johnson and myself is not Vietnam. It is not rising
violence in the cities or rising prices. It is one of leadership
and the direction of our nation."

     Low Crouch. Slowly, his campaign gathered momentum. "You
fight from a low crouch," he explained. "You wait for events."
Sure enough, events began breaking his way: the Communists'
bloody Tet offensive; rumors that upwards of 200,000 more U.S.
troops would be sent to fight in the war; a new round of Vietnam
hearings in the Senate and talk of higher taxes.

     The President's inept operatives also helped. Johnson
"pledge cards," designed to ensure a big write-in, irked many
voters. Capitalizing on the resentment, McCarthy posters
proclaimed: YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN ANYTHING TO VOTE FOR GENE
MCCARTHY. As the balloting neared, L.B.J. loyalists began
hitting below the belt, offending Hampshiremen's sense of
fairness. When McCarthy supported "selective conscientious
objection" to the draft, Senator Thomas McIntyre described him
as one who would "honor draft dodgers and deserters." Governor
John King declared that any significant vote for McCarthy "would
be greeted with cheers in Hanoi." Radio commercials attacked
"peace-at-any-price fuzzy thinkers who say 'Give up the goal,
burn your draft card and surrender.'"

     Gradually, McCarthy perked up as a campaigner, too. He
even suggested that he play a few minutes of hockey for the
cause (his supporters later distributed thousands of 7-cent auto
windshield scrapers showing him on skates and saying "McCarthy
Cuts the Ice"). Big names rallied to him. Harvard Economist John
Kenneth Galbraith, who as chairman of the Americans for
Democratic Action helped throw the group's endorsement to
McCarthy, turned up. So did Poet Robert Lowell, who told
listeners that the Republicans offered no alternative because
"they cannot sink and they will not swim." Actors Robert Ryan
and Tony Randall took to the stump, but Paul Newman's
appearances had to be circumscribed for fear of a riot among
Hampshirewomen.

     Alienated & Uncommitted. And, of course, there were the
kids. They came from as far south as the Carolinas and as far
west as the Great Lakes. Not only the alienated but the merely
uncommitted were drawn by McCarthy's antiwar stand and by a hope
of revitalizing a political system that many had been at the
brink of disavowing. "We're almost afraid to ask them what their
intelligence quotients are," said McCarthy, "because they open
with M.A.s and an I.Q. of 150 and go on from there." On the
final weekend, his headquarters had to turn away 2,500
volunteers, including a group that was ready to charter a plane
from California.

     Thanks to the unpaid youths, McCarthy's staff was able to
ring some 60,000 doorbells, reaching most of New Hampshire's
89,216 registered Democrats, and to mail out some 700,000
pieces of literature at a minimal expense. As it was, the
campaign cost anywhere from $170,000 (McCarthy's figure) to
$300,000 (the Administration's figure). Key moneymen: Dreyfus
Fund President Howard Stein, who is said to have raised some
$100,000; Arnold Hiatt, executive vice president of Boston's
Green Shoe Manufacturing Co.; independently wealthy Harvard
Social Scientist Martin Peretz; and San Francisco Heiress June
Degnan.

     "Anti" Votes. On election eve, Johnson Campaign Manager
Bernard Boutin declared that anything under 40% of the vote
would be a defeat for McCarthy -- figuring that he had chosen
an unattainable figure. He had not. The following night, an
anguished Boutin sat in Johnson's Manchester headquarters,
reluctant to put through the telephone call that White House Aid
Marvin Watson was waiting for in Washington. The picture would
improve, Boutin kept saying, as soon as the results came in from
Berlin. McCarthy carried Berlin. By 10:40 p.m., one of the two
bars that had been set up hours earlier in the
Sheraton-Carpenter motel had to close, since the L.B.J.
"victory" crowd had only 26 patrons.

     In a record Democratic turnout, McCarthy outpolled Johnson
in the state's 224 towns and in suburban areas, and showed
surprising strength in a few cities. He carried Rochester,
Concord and Portsmouth, did better than expected in Nashua,
Keene and Dover. He fared worst in the labor-dominated cities,
such as Manchester, whose blue-collar French Canadian population
gave the President a 4,000-vote margin -- enough for victory --
despite McCarthy's Catholicism. Because Johnson's operatives
unaccountably allowed 45 candidates to run in the President's
name for 24 convention slots, thereby splitting up one
another's votes, McCarthy walked off with 20 of the delegates.

     Was the vote a repudiation of the war? An NBC poll showed
that more than half of the Democrats questioned were not aware
of where McCarthy stood on Vietnam. Clearly, the vote was as
much anti-Johnson as antiwar.

     Everybody a Winner. Whatever it was, it was flowing to
McCarthy. Johnson tried to dismiss it as "insignificant." The
New Hampshire primaries, the President scoffed on election
night, "are the only races where anybody can run -- and
everybody can win. New Hampshire is the only place where
candidates can claim 20% as a landslide, and 40% as a mandate
and 60% as unanimous."

     At McCarthy's headquarters in Manchester students shouted
"On Wisconsin!" as the candidate came in from a heavy snowfall.
"I'm feeling somewhat better," beamed McCarthy. The youths
began chanting: "Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go!" Said McCarthy: "If we
come to Chicago with this strength, there will be no violence
and no demonstrations, but a great victory celebration."

     Of Wisconsin's April 2 primary, he declared: "I expect to
win." Indeed, several factors will help him. It is a
neighboring state, more than one-third Catholic, traditionally
fertile ground for progressives (as well as isolationists). Both
Wisconsin Senators and two of its three Democratic
Representatives are on the fence and refuse to support the
President. Moreover, registered Republicans can cross over to
vote for McCarthy in the Democratic column instead of writing
his name in the Republican column, as they had to in New
Hampshire. Said McCarthy's Wisconsin manager, Jay Sykes: "If we
can't do 12% better than his vote in New Hampshire, we'd better
quit." Initially, at least, New Hampshire also gave him a big
boost in fund raising. "After what happened here," McCarthy
said, "we'll be able to pay our hotel bill, I'm told."

     Another Dog's Bone. Bobby Kennedy's entry had McCarthy
supporters furious. Growled Actor Newman: "It's a shame Kennedy
chose to take a free ride on McCarthy's back." Bobby was called
a "claim jumper" and a "cowbird." Said a student: "Hawks are bad
enough. We don't need chickens." Commented New Hampshire
Attorney Eugene S. Daniell Jr.: "It is something like trying to
steal another dog's bone." Pulitzer-prizewinning Historian
Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), whose daughter Jessica
worked for McCarthy, fired off a telegram accusing Bobby of
"cynicism and opportunism" and voicing "outrage" at "Kennedy's
indecent rush to exploit another's efforts."

     One of the things that prompted Kennedy's belated decision
to take on Johnson was the evidence that his "squealers and
jumpers" were growing up and drifting away from him. Since
1964, at least 12.6 million Americans have reached voting age,
and Bobby once laid claim to a large percentage of them.
"Kennedy thinks that American youth belongs to him as the
bequest of his brother," noted ardently pro-McCarthy Columnist
Mary McGrory. "Seeing the romance flower between them and
McCarthy, he moved with the ruthlessness of a Victorian father
whose daughter has fallen in love with a dustman."

     McCarthy was not about to submit meekly. The morning after
the election, he flew to Washington for a meeting with Bobby.
Aboard the plane, he ran into Johnson Loyalist Tom McIntyre,
and unleashed one of the sly barbs of which he is a master.
"You shouldn't be traveling first class this morning, Senator,"
said McCarthy.

     After 20 minutes with Kennedy, McCarthy emerged with
another sardonic quip. "Now," he said, "at least three people
in Washington are reconsidering their candidacy." Later, he
urged Kennedy to "leave the primaries to me," hinted that at
the convention "some kind of settlement" might be arranged. He
also announced plans to enter two more primaries -- in Indiana
and South Dakota -- in addition to those in Wisconsin,
Nebraska, Oregon and California.

     Cluttered Track. Before Kennedy took the plunge, he sent
Brother Teddy, the Senator from Massachusetts, winging out to
Wisconsin to inform McCarthy. Teddy reached Green Bay's
Northland Hotel shortly after midnight, spent three-quarters of
an hour with a drowsy, just-awakened McCarthy. Said the
Minnesotan afterward "It was hardly worth the trip. It was a
courtesy on his part and I appreciate the effort, but there was
no offer of any concession from me."

     Watching Bobby the following day on television, a
tight-lipped McCarthy smiled only when Kennedy lauded his
"remarkable victory" in New Hampshire. He stood firm on his own
candidacy. "There's room for us both, yes," he said. "But it
may clutter up the track a bit." For a while, he added, "I had
begun to look as though I was the front runner, and I'm not sure
I liked that. Now I am back in the race again, looking like a
challenger, beset on both sides. I think it's a slight plus."

_______________________________________________________________
TART, TOUGH & TELEGENIC

     Eugene McCarthy's tart, tough campaign style got national
exposure during a memorable television interview following
Robert Kennedy's announcement. CBS correspondent David
Schoumacher conducted the quiz in the Green Bay, Wis., studio
of WBAY. Excerpts:

     Q. I keep hearing there's some sort of a rumbling
intimation of a deal at some point in the future. Are you
prepared to deal with Bobby Kennedy?

     A. I'm not really prepared to deal with anybody so far as
my candidacy is concerned. I committed myself to a group of
young people and, I thought, a rather idealistic group of adults
in American society; I said I would be their candidate, and I
intend to run as I committed myself to run. I'll run as hard as
I can in every primary and stand as firm as I can at the
convention, and then, if I find that I can't win, I will say to
my delegates: You're free people, go wherever you want and make
the best judgment that you can make.

     Q. What if a Kennedy trend becomes apparent before then?
Would you consider negotiations?

     A. Well, I wouldn't have anything to negotiate with. All
I have to run on is my commitment, and what I thought was my
integrity as I committed it to people who were prepared to
raise this challenge against the Johnson Administration at a
time when it seemed to me a lot of other politicians were afraid
to come down into the playing field. They were willing to stay
up on the mountains and light signal fires and bonfires and
dance in the light of the moon. But none of them came down. They
weren't even coming in from outside, just throwing a message
over the fence.

     Q. Senator Kennedy says today that he'll come into
Wisconsin.

     A. We'll have to wait and see. I could have used help in
New Hampshire. I kind of listened and waited. But I did do all
right. I think I can win in Wisconsin without help, but I'm
certainly not going to turn down help from any of my colleagues
in the Senate.

     Q. One of the things that he listed in his statement was
the qualifications that he had that he seemed to feel would make
him a good President. What do you think of his qualifications?

     A. Which of us would make the better President, that's
rather conjectural. I don't mean to be arrogant or
unnecessarily humble, but I make two points. I think I'm as well
qualified, or better qualified to run for the presidency now,
in this year of 1968, than President John Kennedy was qualified
in 1960, when he made the bid. And I think if you take into
account the matter of the knowledge one should have of
government, and the identification with the people of this
country, and look at my record in both cases, on that broad base
I think, even after the announcement this morning, that I'm
still the best potential President in the field.

     Q. Senator, you're speaking in terms of relativity. Let me
ask you flatly: do you think that Robert Kennedy would make a
good President?

     A. I don't say he would not make a good president. He has
had experience in the administration, as he said. I'm not sure
that that is altogether a compelling argument, since at least
two members of this Administration, who have had most to do
with sustaining the policy in Vietnam, were members of the
Kennedy Cabinet -- the Secretary of State and also, until
recently, the Secretary of Defense. I don't see that association
with those two members of the Cabinet would particularly prepare
one to deal well with the problem of Vietnam.

     Q. Senator, in the morning you had a visitor, Senator Ted
Kennedy. What did you two talk about?

     A. Well, we didn't talk about anything very important. I
don't think people do at three o'clock in the morning. It was
kind of a good-will mission -- a courtesy call -- and I
appreciated very much the effort that Ted Kennedy made in
coming out. It's a long flight from Washington in the middle of
the night, and he flew back again the same night -- simply to
say that what was announced this morning was going to be
announced.

     Q. Senator, I notice in a column it says that Senator
Kennedy cares more deeply about the war than you.

     A. In every society it seems that you have to develop a
kind of an institution for making rash judgments, whether it's
the soothsayers or the oracles or the high priests. In our
society, this seems to have been taken over by columnists. I
don't really know how any columnist knows how deeply I feel
about the war. I think the record shows, however, that of the
members of the Senate, I was the first one really to risk what
people refer to as a political career, whatever it may have been
worth, to lay it on the line with reference to the war in
Vietnam.

     I was the first one who said you can't change the policy
unless you change the man and challenge the person.  So it
seems to me that on the record it would appear that I felt
either more deeply about it or at least I sensed the problem
earlier than others did.

     Q. A lot of people have expected you to fold.

     A. Well, I don't know how many have. I don't think the
people who know me very well expected me to fold. I expect I'll
be discovered as we go along this campaign trail, but I have a
reasonably good record of standing up to some pretty tough
tests in my own political career. The image that somehow someone
picked me up and took me out of the academic halls and put me
in Congress and then decided to run me for the Senate is not
quite true. [He then detailed the elections he had won against
long odds.] So on the record, there's not much to indicate that
I would be likely to fold, either for want of money or for want
of courage.