I met Eugene McCarthy. He was indeed diffident, giving up his Senate seat, never holding another office, supporting Reagan in 1980.
The tragic figure in this time is Hubert Humphrey, who helped McCarthy become his fellow Senator from Minnesota. Humphrey was not merely the leader in the Democratic Party for civil rights and social justice. An originator of the Peace Corps idea, he found himself, as Vice-President, unable to stop the war but certain to make things worse by resignation.
Multiple factors kept HHH from being elected President in 1968. Among them, Nixon's Southern strategy. Eugene McCarthy's late and tepid endorsement. Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war ("four more years"). Nixon's secret collaboration with foreigners (Anna Chennault, the Diem regime) to sabotage the Vietnam peace talks that could give Democrats and Humphrey credit for getting us out.
Of all the politicians alive in the miserable situation we faced in fall 1968, Humphrey offered the best chance for accelerated withdrawal from Vietnam, greater racial harmony, and attention to promoting what the Preamble calls "the general welfare."
Instead, he went back to the Senate and advocated on behalf of progressive ideas there. Ultimately, as Walter Mondale eulogized, "First, he taught us how to life, and, ultimately, he taught us how to die."
3
Why did Lyndon Johnson quit the race? I have spent much of my life savoring
the memory of the misplaced relief I felt when he announced his withdrawal that I've never questioned whether or not it was the best outcome. Why didn't he do better; he certainly started with assets. True electoral mandate, political skills, common sense, an adequate amount of decency and skepticism should have seen him through better than it did. Instead we got another slain Kennedy, an indifferent Minnesotan, a ridiculed Humphrey and then Nixon.
Falling in love with love, we really loved the idea of shaking things up and then we got Nixon.
2
As a high school senior I got to interview Sen. George McGovern for a thesis I was writing on the Congressional role in Indochina policy. It was March, '68 and McGovern actually bragged that Lowenstein and the Dump Johnson movement had come to him first, but as he was running for reelection to the Senate, so he sent them "down the hall to see Gene." Which led to LBJ's narrow margin in the NH primary and RFK's opportunistic leap into the race after McCarthy had demonstrated the vulnerability of the president Kennedy had initially declined to challenge.
As Mr. Zeitz was born in '74, he never attended a McCarthy rally. I went to several, as I was working on his campaign as a dedicated 18yrs-old. Maybe it was Clean Gene's crowd whose excitement generated an atmosphere that caste McCarthy's thoughtful, jargon-free speeches as compelling. I do know that I was never impressed with RFK's clunky imitation of his brother; clearly, that Kennedy charisma got his crowds worked up. Different strokes for different folks. The "uninspiring Minnesota senator" went on to pick up the clear majority of primary votes at 38.7% to RFK's 30.6%. Humphrey was eventually hand the nomination by party bosses, having only garnered 2% in the primaries.
One thing is for sure, Zeitz wasn't there to capture the zeitgeist of the times and his dismissive take on McCarthy doesn't stand up to a good many who were there. Zeitz has a drum to bang, and it is a beat out of sync with objectivity.
4
This is a serious misreading of history. Johnson while campaigning told voters "I'm not about to send Americans boys to do what Asian boys should be doing." Likewise, Nixon conveyed, if never stated explicitly, that he had a secret plan to end the war. Americans were duped into beginning the war with Johnson and then into continuing it with Nixon.
2
No one that was not involved in the anti Vietnam war movement in the late 60s has no idea, none, how important it was to us to have a sitting US Senator come out not only against the war but to run for POTUS with that as his goal.Yes we went 'Clean for Gene' and loved him for what he was doing.
I saw Bobby Kennedy as a craven opportunist who up to that point had said or done nothing to stop the war. Once LBJ was politically wounded and vulnerable he stepped in.
Zeitz admits what is common knowledge now that LBJ fought the war not because our national security was at risk but his political career.
And for that selfish reason 60,000 + American soldiers died, hundreds of thousand were maimed in mind and body and hundreds of thousands Vietnamese died and trillions of dollars were thrown away.
I admired LBJ for the 1964 Civil Rights legislation because he knew its passage would doom the Democratic Party in the South and it did.
But no one should try to excuse his behavior in pursuing the war in Vietnam.
5
"A majority of the electorate remained committed to Cold War ideology "
In essence the "Who lost China" of the '50s became "Who will lose Vietnam" in the '60s & '70s.
2
I was never a McCarthy fan. I was glad when RFK got in the race. To me McCarthy was a bit of a fraud who happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was aloof and everything Zeitz says. Moreover, he was anti Kennedy. Never had any respect for him.
1
Very perceptive article. Yes, history is written by those who hire the journalists and historians - as the Kennedys have always done. I was a teenager in 1968 and I can tell you that the vast majority of people were FOR the war in Vietnam and in favor of LBJ's policies. Those who opposed LBJ did so mostly because they wanted to use nuclear weapons or at the very least, fight with all of our incredible resources. As someone who opposed the War, I would bring up my opposition only if I wanted to fight - yes, a real physical fight. That's how strongly people felt. And when RFK entered the battle, most looked at him for what he was, an opportunist. Especially the McCarthyites. Of course it is a shame that the public was unaware of LBJ's misgivings about the war. Frankly I don't believe the other myth about 1968 and the War- that Johnson was fearful of a Republican backlash if he withdrew. He didn't fear the rise of Republicans in the South that his stance on Civil Rights caused. As he memorably said, what the hell is the Presidency for if you can't do the right thing.
2
Nixon got elected because RFK got murdered. 1968 was the pivotal year due to McCarthy's and Kennedy's stance against the war. That said, what really turned the nation against the war in 1968 was Uncle Walter calling the war what it was -a lie and a sham.
4
Nixon won a very close election by publicly and falsely promising that he had a secret plan to successfully end the Vietnam War. He also won that very close election by privately committing treason while urging Thieu to resist any negotiations that might end the war before the election. The author's main thesis that Americans supported the war is shaky at best. Just enough Americans lazily and gullibly believed that we could have "peace with honor".
McCarthy had to live with the galling reality that he, and we, lived through a line of inadequate presidents.
4
Judging by the comments, Dr. Zeitz's revisionism has performed a service by riling up the old guard. Not that I am against the old guard, it's just nice to see people pushed to thoughtfully defend McCarthy rather than simply polish St. Gene's stained glass.
2
I question that there is a myth. The nation clearly remained divided over Vietnam, enough for Nixon to be a shoo-in four years later despite having broken his '68 campaign promise by continuing the war and creating roughly as many casualties as Johnson had. Ultra-hawks supporting McCarthy to send a message to Johnson, when that campaign's message was withdrawal from Vietnam, seems incongruous. McCarthy's campaign did pave the way for McGovern's nomination four years later, contributing to Nixon's withdrawal from Vietnam via his reelection campaign's "October surprise”.
It was McCarthy's cause, and the fact that he had the guts and integrity to take it on when others wouldn't, that was inspiring. It convinced RFK that waging his own insurgency would not be self-destructive for the party and himself nor viewed as a personal vendetta against Johnson. McCarthy’s aloofness was one of the reasons RFK didn’t hesitate to challenge him. Thus, I think it was more a case of increasing the chance of victory over Humphrey and Nixon than opportunism by RFK as the piece contends.
McCarthy was endeared for his sharp wit, which the piece omits. If he was “aloof and uninspiring”, he became even more so after that, sitting out the ’68 general election, declining to run for reelection to the Senate in favor of writing poetry, becoming a little-noted perennial candidate in subsequent presidential races, and endorsing Reagan over Carter and independent candidate John Anderson in 1980!
7
This piece and the previous one on Vietnamese Nationalism are the worst kind of revisionist history- unlikely but not previously prominent conclusions supported by incomplete facts, and argued as if the author hias special insight. Baloney. To someone without interest or a background in the subject, it might appear original, or at least plausible. To someone who was there at the time, the author is just embarrassing themself.
Mr Zeitz sets up a strawman in the form of opposition to the incumbent's nomination, then reveals Allard K. Lowenstein as "only person of consequence" who thought Johnson could be denied the Democratic nomination. McCarthy was the last one Lowenstein called, Zeitz points out. Sounds meaningful. But why would Lowenstein call another potential candidate AFTER getting McCarthy on board?
Only Theodore White's semi-contemporaneous comments are quoted- is there a source *OTHER* than White? I'm not taking Zeitz's word that the majority who voted for McCarthy in New Hampshire thought Johnson hadn't escalated the war enough. Nobody I met in California thought a vote for McCarthy was a vote to expand the war. Further reducing confidence in this text, if Zeitz's quote of White is correct, neither Zeitz nor White knows what a ski boot is: “They came with sleeping bags and ski boots,” White wrote" When I tried ski boots in 1969, they had rigid soles that didn't flex. They were for skiing, not door-to-door political campaigns.
8
As a person who reached adult maturity during the Vietnam War and was involved briefly in the McCarthy campaign - I find this article largely inaccurate. Eugene McCarthy was an inspiring candidate who spoke directly and elegantly to the concerns of mainstream Americans who had realized they had been duped and mislead into supporting this war for so many years.
He was a breath of fresh air who showed great courage in opposing the "bosses" in the Democratic Party stuck in the war economy treadmill. If McCarthy had the same financial resources as the party mainstream, he would have gone much further than he did. Mr. Zeitz barely mentioned the fact that this amazing campaign accomplished so much on a "shoestring" budget - depending almost entirely on volunteers to move forward.
8
The author of this piece has a vested interest in President Johnson. McCarthy , for all his aloofness , his dislike of glad-handing, was deeply infused through and through with Catholic social teachings. He often said " I'm willing to be president", not I want to be. He understood the arcane ways of both houses, having served in each. His platform would be welcome news to the insipid Democratic Party of 2018. Intelligence , wit and a definite flinty, edge would be like a cold shower. The myth of Bobby Kennedy , separated from the reality , hurt McCarthy, divided the anti- war people, and probably soured the senator from Minnesota. Now a non imperial presidency? That would have been revolutionary...A side note, Nixon offered McCarthy the Un Ambassador job. The sitting governor of Minnesota refused to appoint a democrat to the available seat. Hence Pat Moynihan in the UN
8
After losing the Democratic nomination McCarthy would not support Humphrey. Quite the opposite of Bernie Sanders. If he had...who knows?
Have a look at the Police Riot outside the convention and ask yourself, would you want endorse the guy who benefitted from it? HHH's stand for integration and civil rights was bracing stuff, in its day. Much as Johnson was added to Kennedy's ticket to shore up a (Southern) base that wasn't sure it wanted a northeastern liberal, Humphrey was added to Johnson's ticket to shore up a (Liberal) base that wasn't sure it wanted a Texas power-broker. He's somewhat tragic.
Johnson was a complex man with many faults. But his ultimate Washington deal was using Kennedy's ghost as a bludgeon to push through the Civil RIghts Act and then the Voting Rights Act. It's hard to imagine Kennedy losing to Goldwater, but there's no certainty that a living Kennedy could have gotten either of the Acts passed, certainly not with the show of unity Johnson produced. Looking back from today, Johnson's Civil Rights credentials seem solid, and we wonder how he could have screwed up US involvement in VIetnam so thoroughly. At the time, Johnson's finer feelings for Civil Rights were only becoming visible against the background of 1960-1963 and with the assurance that he didn't need to win another statewide election. Put the CIvil Rights and Great Society legislation time lines next to the Vietnam time line. Johnson knew what he was doing in Vietnam wasn't leading to victory. He didn't know how to get out of it. But wouldn't admit it. Very tragic, compared to HHH.
4
Perhaps only tangentially relevant to this story: Lowenstein was murdered in his Manhattan office on March 14, 1980, by a mentally ill gunman, Dennis Sweeney. Liberal to the core, Lowenstein knew how to reach across the aisle; he was eulogized at his funeral by both William F. Buckley Jr. and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and his family campaigned against the death penalty for anyone, including his murderer.
5
The Clean for Gene crew were undoubtedly inspired by McCarthy, but they made the mistake that the American left has always made. They overestimated the broader appeal of their candidate - and their philosophy, just as the Bernie fans do today.
McCarthy in the general election would have definitely seemed cold and aloof, always a lethal deficiency, as well as far too “Red” for the larger electorate. In 1968, over half of them still supported the war. Bobby Kennedy could have pulled it off, but that was not to be. He was the one candidate who could have maintained the FDR coalition. When the left refused to support Humphrey, the Southern strategy was enabled and the conservative insurgence became inevitable.
3
The writer of the opinion piece perpetuates another myth about the '68 campaign: that challenging the nomination of an incumbent president from within the incumbent's party was unprecedented and "unthinkable." Look at 1952. The Democratic primary of 1952 was practically a template for the primary of '68. A challenger arose out of the Democratic party and defeated the incumbent president in the New Hampshire primary. The incumbent withdrew from the race. Historians seem to have forgotten 1952. Eugene McCarthy was running for his third term in the House in 1952; Robert Kennedy was managing his brother's Senate campaign; the model for 1968 was in front of them.
3
Perhaps history shouldn't be written until all those who were there are dead. I was seventeen in 1968. The author was not yet born. To me and many like me, Eugene McCarthy was anything but "uninspiring". For the first time we heard a politician speaking the truth about the Vietnam war. It was life-changing. Yes, he was diffident, an intellectual, he read poetry, he didn't like retail politics. But he was a candidate with honesty and principles we could believe in. He inspired many.
20
This article misses all of the energy and events behind the end the war movement. I to meet EM in a small meeting of students at the University of Denver in 1970. My group CRC Community Relations Committee was primary organized to educated our fellow students on the US involvement in Vietnam. With this information they could effectively convince their parents to vote for peace. By June 1970 EM was out of the race but he was still on the road for peace. We were impressed with his intelligence, honesty, and humility...all the qualities lacking in government today.
10
Lest we forget, Nixon ran as an antiwar candidate, claiming to have a "secret plan to end the war."
6
he really didn't. Nixon really did not run as an anti-war candidate. That's another myth of History. I was alive in 1968 and very closely watching the election. Nixon was pretty far right, and Nixon supported the war very much and so did most of his support. yes he had a secret plan to end the war, but he was not anti-war not by any means and neither were the people who supported him. This is a myth of History that he was anti-war at this point
3
I am now 67 years old. I went Clean for Gene. Fifty years ago my mother threw me out of her house to punish me for my opposition the the Viet Nam war. I paid a personal price. I still believe it was the worst mistake that the US perpetrated in my entire life, worse even than Iraq.
12
I revered Eugene McCarthy, and this article berates the legacy of one of the finest men, in U.S. Politics, in the 20th century..
First, the writer misses what was Gene's rare and over-riding virtue: Guts. Lyndon Johnson was an imperious, imperial ruler given to volcanic fits of rage and sadism. Almost everyone in politics was terrified of him. The writer notes that Gene got 42 % of the vote in N. Hampshire, but he neglects to note that polls showed him running at 10 percent. But Gene still had the guts to run.
Today's politicians are, for the most part, cowards who will not do anything, stand for anything or say anything without the go ahead from polls, focus groups or the campaign contributors who own them. Mc Carthy ran for a different reason: He knew we had to take a stand against the war. What clinched the decision for him was his daugther's statement: "A Christiian's duty is not to judge the world but to save the world." (I am a Jew)
He was made of much finer stuff than the moral mice who occupy Washington today.
The article suggests McCarthy was wrong because most Americans were supposedy pro-war. In Nazi Germany, a huge proportion of Germans loved Adolf Hitler. Did that make Hitler right?
The author says the Gene was too laid back, but Gene said people were too agitated and that we needed reason, not gusts of emotion.
My deep regret is that RFK and Gene did not settle their differences; they were great men fighting for the same thing.
22
YOU ARE MISSING THJE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS RE THE VIETNAM WAR, ITN WAS FOUNDED ON A FRAUD, THE GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION, IF YOU Read the correspondence between tHE NAVAL COMMANSERS AND THE WHITE HOUSE, IN A NUTSHELL, NAVAL COMMANDERS INFORM THE WHITE HOUSE THAT HOSTILE NAVL SHIPS FIRING TORPEDOES AT US NAVAL VESSELS` FOLLOWED SHORTLY BY WAVE ACTION MISTAKEN FOR TORPEDOES, THE NEXT DAY LBJ TELLS THE NATION WE WERE ATTACKED, THIS WAS THE TRIGGER FOR 58,200 AMERICAN DEAD, MILLIONS OF ASIANS DEAD WITH THE ILLEGAL BOMBING OF LAOS AND CAMBODIA, THIS ACCURATE INFO WAS REVEALED BY THE NON PARTISAN CSPAN, IT WAS LATER REVEALED THAT US NAVAL VESSELS WERE PROBING THAT COASTLINE TO PROVOKE A RESPONSE, WE ATTACKED VIETNAM TO THE DISGRACE OF AMERICA CAPS VISION PROBLEM
7
"As easy as it was then, or is now, to blame the war on one man, in reality, a large portion of the country demanded it, including most of the experts." And why did they "demand" it? Because the leadership sold it to them, particularly with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, inspired by fake news (if ever there was such a thing), and years of propaganda. So the implication that we remember wrong assumes that we all believe that the whole country had suddenly come to their senses. Nobody I know believed that-- we all know who won the election, after all.
14
Bill:
Lies have a thousand lives. Generations of Americans have been misled by the story that LBJ lied us into the war by fabricating an attack on US vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats.
No one disputes that US vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by North Vietnam. The question that subsequently arose was whether a SECOND reported attack, two days later, had been based on errors or misreadings of the radar data. None of this changes the fact that LBJ believed that the second attack had happened when he ordered retaliatory bombing of North Vietnam and drafted the so-called "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution by which Congress approved expansion of the war, (Read Leslie Gelb's The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked).
If the well of our public discourse has been poisoned, that was done by the era's anti-war activists who believed that stopping the war was more urgent than the truth.
2
"If the well of our public discourse has been poisoned, that was done by the era's anti-war activists who believed that stopping the war was more urgent than the truth. "
The massive escalation in US participation in the war was started by an incident that we KNOW was concocted by the US. We don't have to argue about details. The Pentagon Papers - which the US govt. attempted to suppress, laid it out for us. We didn't have the Pentagon Papers in 1968 - instead we had our own brains telling us that there was something rotten about the entire enterprise ... what, after all, would the US have done if it found a US ship right off its coast?
The Tet offensive, which we know the anti-US forces "lost" completely undercut the narrative that the US military and government had been pushing that Vietnamese forces were demoralized and decimated and about to give up.
All this and more, told us that we were being lied to by our government in order to shore up support for a war that we had no business being part of, that we had no chance of "winning" (unless you count killing every Vietnamese as "winning"), and that drastically reduced the US' moral authority in the world.
4
This article demonstrates what I learned as a history major and Phi Beta Kappa recipient at UW-Madison in the late 1960s. Written history ( or oral history passed down through time) is almost always subjective not objective, that it is written by the victors in any given era not the vanquished. Although the article doesn't directly involve victors and the vanquished it nonetheless oozes with revisionist drivel that seems to show that the author chose to accept only a very one-sided and two dimensional analysis of a complicated time.
With most of his "facts" distorted or exaggerated it's not surprising that his analysis is so mistaken. Before anyone should write the "truth"about what happened in the past it's probably a good idea to wait until all the participants and eye witnesses are dead.
21
Exit polls here and private polls there aside, in my last undergraduate semester at Pitt, my vivid recollection of that NH primary was how electrified and empowered anti-war sides became. Additionally it was of no small consequence that the voting age at the time was 21, leaving millions of pre-voters my age unable to speak against the war with our votes. The outrage over Bobby K. stealing the Christmas presents had barely subsided when, seemingly days later (it was actually 3 months) he was killed. Mr. Zeitz may have assembled some of the salient facts here, but their sum is substantially less than all the parts that actually happened.
11
We, the youth of yesteryear, had a lot of faults. Who doesn't? We were far from perfect to be sure. But through it all, we managed to muddle our way forward.
The Sixties were amazing times. I believe we witnessed one of the most cataclysmic cultural changes of the century. From music and the arts to politics, indeed, the times they were a-changing. What may not be evident today is how haphazard many of the events which occurred were. We were charting new territory, not knowing what we would happen and the consequences of our actions. We did stupid things, yes, but overall we had a massive effect on the World. Most of it was positive.
Those who differ with that opinion are the lost ones, the ones who abandoned any sense of optimism about the greatness of this country. They became mired, angry, disgruntled. They became supporters of Trump, a demagogic know-nothing bully who hated what occurred during the Sixties.
Those of US who remained optimistic followed a path which eventually elected Barack Obama and voted for Hillary Clinton. A Black President and a Woman who should have been president are the outcomes of we who supported Clean Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. They are our legacy.
DD
Manhattan
14
Thank you. Exactly. I was clean for Gene.
7
It's clear why this kid has not kept his academic positions.
There are turning points and there are turning points. Anyone who was there recognized that 1968, year of murders and hate, was a turning point of some sort. The state murders of innocent students two years later made it clearer, yes, that we were finally on our own. Things move slowly; owing to recently uncovered flatout lies, it took many more years for the war to end. But this young uncomprehending historian (wonder whether he has veteran parents and grandparents), misses so much, and what he misses is the crucial stuff.
16
The 1968 election was the first time I was eligible to vote for a President of the United States. I sent my absentee ballot from Vietnam with Eugene McCarthy's name written in.
17
I was 26 years old, living in DC and working for a "Great Society" agency when McCarthy announced his candidacy. I always suspected his cool, aloof, and single-issue stance--the Vietnam War. Robert Kennedy's almost immediate candidacy was so transparently opportunistic that he, too, had little appeal. Hubert Humphrey, by contrast, had demonstrated a longterm commitment to social and economic justice. Unfortunately, he was saddled with his association with Johnson and the dregs of aging elements of the Democratic party that led and managed his campaign after more youthful components fled to McCarthy and Kennedy. Had he won in 1968, the next 8 years would have been quite different from the depressing morass we endured.
5
I met Curtis Gans, Al Lowenstein's partner in the "Dump Johnson Movement", in early 1968 and worked in the McCarthy campaign in Oregon that spring. Gene was an inspiring speaker, really much more polished than Bobby, and defeated both Kennedy and Humphrey decisively. I would guess that the author is not old enough to actually remember it, but in fact due to the draft and the continuous line of our high school and college friends returning home in boxes, the sentiment among both young men and their parents was overwhelmingly against the war by May of 1968. I graduated in June and was drafted in August. This was not an ideological issue to me or my generation, it was a survival issue.
17
The Korean war certainly was an example of overreach but think about the explosive growth of the South Korean economy and its reach into every nook of global trade. No South Korea would mean none of the technology that makes smart phones possible and affordable, flat screen tvs, efficiently manufactured vehicles, etc.
It sounds selfish to my own ears to say but the benefits to modern consumerism have been huge.
LBJ wasn't even on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary, because he hadn't declared his candidacy yet. There were relatively few primaries in those days, and New Hampshire was among the least important of them, in terms of delegates. Nominations were largely determined by party bosses, so candidates declared their candidacies much later than they do now.
So LBJ was a write-in candidate in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, and he didn't campaign. Yet he still won the primary.
But electoral politics is often about expectations, and the fact that McCarthy came so close to beating the mighty LBJ shattered expectations - simultaneously making LBJ's path to the nomination problematic and making McCarthy a credible candidate.
McCarthy won six primaries, more than any other candidate (there were only 15 primaries in 1968), and more primary votes than any other candidate. The eventual nominee, Hubert Humphrey, didn't even run in the primaries - but he won the nomination with more than two-thirds of the convention delegates' votes.
McCarthy's appeal in 1968 was not his personal popularity; his appeal was as a protest candidate. The proof is that McCarthy ran again four years later, but he won more than 3 percent of the vote in only one state. He ran in 1976 as an independent and in 1988 as a third-party candidate, neither time having any discernable effect on the outcome.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
4
It seems the true purpose of this article is to rehabilitate the reputation of LBJ and to sell the author's most recent book. In attempting to do so, the author conveniently ignores much of what was actually going on in the country in 1968. I actively campaigned for McCarthy in Milwaukee. Few, if any, of the voters and concerned citizens I spoke with "approved" the war. Milwaukee was largely a conservative, blue collar, town. It's residents were far more likely to "disapprove" of "dirty hippies" than to take any stronger political position. Of course, they supported our soldiers, many were, themselves, veterans of WWII or Korea or related to a veteran. It is intellectually dishonest to ignore the effect on the 1968 presidential election of the dirty tricks of the Nixon campaign and, even more so, the fact (and effect) of the nationally televised Chicago police riot that overshadowed the convention. Gene McCarthy was much more a victim of the democratic machine and Richard J. Daley's war on protesters than on any imagined "myth" regarding his dedication to the campaign. The truth he spoke, which many Americans concluded was more honest than the official "positions" of politicians in either party or the mainstream media coverage, was validated by the release three years later of the Pentagon Papers. We knew we were lied to. McCarthy voiced our belief. Machine politicians misled the populace and the truth was exposed only after the fact.
16
If "true purpose of this article is to sell the author's most recent book," he has certainly failed with this reader. I'll stick to historians with demonstrably more integrity.
1
One of the major ironies of 1968 was that Richard Nixon was elected in large part because he was seen by the general public as the antiwar candidate (as well as the anti-youth uprising candidate). He said he had a "secret plan" to end the war. But the reality was treason: Nixon had gone to the North Vietnamese and urged them to stall at the negotiating table in Paris and wait for a better deal from him. And Johnson knew it.
6
This is Carol's subscription but I'm writing because I was present and deeply engaged in the effort to unseat Lyndon Johnson well before the NH primary. A group of young Michigan State University professors began organizing resistance in league with Zoltan Ferenczy, the head of the Michigan Democratic Party, who had voiced the notion of finding an alternative to Johnson. We began meeting in the fall of 1967 and organizing throughout the campaign. Both Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy were contacted and invited to come to Michigan to express their views, and both came and spoke at different venues, McCarthy at a U. of Michigan gathering, and Kennedy at an event held in Detroit. We represented one of the many grass roots effort to oppose the war and support civil rights, and we had nothing to do with Al Lowenstein, who happened to come from my home town. The history of the anti-war movement has never been adequately documented, but this piece by Joshua Zeitz, though certainly accurate about Gene McCarthy's aloofness, is just one slant on what happened. Jim Rodgers
3
No-one ever seems to ask the question: If the anti-war movement was so strong, and the American electorate so 'hot' to get out of VN, why didn't Humphrey win in a landslide? Nixon was not antiwar in his messages any more than was Humphrey; so why did the Left abandon Humphrey and their cause? I thought it was all about the message, not the leader.
I hated Nixon as much as anyone, am very progressive-minded; but I also study the past to try to have an effect on our future. I don't understand this entire vacuous-seeming and ongoing dream that...if only, if only. There was still strong support for the war in the country by election time 1968, the votes show that. No-one knows that RFK would have bucked that political statement any more than JFK did...who, by the way, did not withdraw from VN even though he was in the best position to do so, right up to the time of his obviously untimely death.
"I don't want to be known as a war president," but he did so out of realism and fear. Fear that he would be seen as soft on war, soft on crime, soft on killing and destroying. It is a pity that this is a real fear in the US. It has led to more or less endless aggression by the US against other nations.
2
I was one of those who 'came clean for Gene'. I wasn't old enough to vote at the time and this was my baptism by fire. I found Gene McCarthy to be beyond inspiring as a speaker, thought him riveting. His passion opened my eyes to the reality of what was going on in SE Asia and the US' part in all of it.
It wasn't until long after the 1968 campaign that I began reading up on the history of the conflicts in SE Asia. Long after the marching, the demonstrating, the arrests, the fall of Saigon, to finally learn the truth of our long and disgraceful involvement in that part of the world.
LBJ was a liar, plain and simple. I thought of him as one until the day he died. I wanted to go to Austin and stick a mirror under his nose as he lay in his casket just to make certain he wasn't lying about that, too. Although, I expected lying from Nixon. It was his nature.
When I was door-to-door canvasing for McCarthy, quite often I would have conversations with people who confused Gene for Joe McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin. I spent some time, explaining that they were two different men. Finally gave up and said, 'Fine. You see McCarthy, pull the lever.'
All the way to today, I make it a point to vote in every single election. They're all important. As the current occupant of the WH has proved--no one can afford to sit idly by and allow themselves to be overtaken by events.
14
Talk about revisionist history! The only bit the author gets right is about Bobby stealing the anti-war banner
9
"As easy as it was then, or is now, to blame the war on one man, in reality, a large portion of the country demanded it, including most of the experts."
America is a violent and militaristic country and has been for a long time. I was opposed to the Vietnam War and also ended up going to Vietnam towards the end of the war while I was in the army. I thought that it would be the last time that America would ever make such an egregious mistake. Lo and behold, 30 years later Americans were screaming their heads off to attack Saddam Hussein, that guy who caused the tragedy of 9/11. I could not believe it. How could a whole nation be so darned arrogant and stupid?
Once again Americans found out with loss of blood and treasure how duplicitous American leaders can be. I have lived in this country all my life, but it is not a country I admire. Our latest president only demonstrates how gullible and stupid Americans can be.
12
Of all of Earth's advanced (or more technologically developed) nations, the United States is by far the most anti-intellectual. It is the over-riding cultural tradition and has directly led us to our present, grotesque predicament.
3
I'll just add my recollections to those who wrote here about campaigning for McCarthy in 1968. My husband and I, newly married, campaigned for him in the Connecticut primary as part of an energized Yale/New Haven group of Democratic activists. It was personal to me--my brother was on active duty in Vietnam--but it turned out to be our first--and last--efforts as political activists. We had our hearts in it, he surprised us all and won the Connecticut primary, and then went on a TV talk show and hemmed and hawed about whether he would actually run. I remember him saying he would accept the nomination if drafted. After all our hard work to have him show himself to be a primadonna and not a leader. In the end, because of the tragedy of Robert Kennedy's assassination, we got Nixon and Watergate and the end of honesty in government. Watergate was a direct precursor to Trumpism.
4
I'm sorry, but this is mostly nonsense. I don't know what Johnson's polls showed, but private polls are rarely free of bias. They are tools for campaigns to use and private reports on their results are almost always self-serving. Regardless of the polls, McCarthy was a one issue candidate who talked about nothing else. The idea people voting for him were unaware of that or didn't care is doubtful at best.
That McCarthy was a one-trick pony was also the reason its doubtful Johnson would have withdrawn if Bobby Kennedy hadn't entered the race. Johnson would have won a campaign against the anti-war movement. But his opposition to the war was just one small part of Bobby Kennedy's appeal.
" It was the story of every Democratic president in the 20th century, from Woodrow Wilson, who sidelined progressive economic and social reform after America entered the European conflict"
So Woodrow Wilson was a "progressive"? Not hardly. Roosevelt was the progressive, Wilson was a elitist bigot who segregated the federal government by aggressively purging it of African Americans. It tells us a lot that the author describe him in this way.
11
I lived during that period. Indeed, McCarthy was a bore! But the events surrounding him galvanized his constituency, which made him appear more dynamic than he was!!!
3
" As easy as it was then, or is now, to blame the war on one man, in reality, a large portion of the country demanded it, including most of the experts."
You seem to forget, Mr. Zeitz, that your hero campaigned & was elected partly because of declaring he wouldn't "expand" the US military presence in Vietnam. Instead, he launched a full scale invasion.
BTW, young people were looking for leaders exactly like Eugene McCarthy with calm, deliberate & dedicated opposition to that war. The firebrands were numerous within those in line to fight for the vainglorious & profiteers promoting that conflagration.
Of course, you, born in 1974, with your stack of cherry picked data supporting your revisionist claims, can't understand the temper of the times.
12
There it is again, that ol' McCarthyite 'opportunist' appellation against RFK. The author's opportunist slam reminds me of an incident of May 15th, 1968 in the wake of Kennedy's appearance at L A Valley College in Van Nuys. I was standing in the middle of Ethel Avenue as the white covertible carrying the candidate exited the campus following a jam packed rally in the Mens gymnasium.
Kennedy sat up on the rear seat. A man up front held a floodlight so that people could see the candidate in the dark. A group of McCarthy supporters had been allowed onto the overpass. An LAPD officer kept everyone else off. Just as the convertible turned left - out onto Ethel, one of the McCarthyites tossed an object. It hit Kennedy and he quickly bent forward with his hands over his head and settled into the rear seat. The vehicle did not slow or stop. I stood there wondering if what I'd seen was real while the perpetrators ran down the spiral ramp. The lights of the caravan faded away. Apparently, no reporters riding in the bus behind saw the incident and Kennedy's people kept quiet. I’ve never read of it in a newspaper, magazine or book. I've often wondered if Sirhan was in the crowd that night.
So now I've finally taken the opportunity to tell my story about RFK being assaulted while riding in an open-top convertible on Ethel Avenue - three weeks before it was left to Jackie to have to tell the nurse to turn off life support at Good Samaritan Hospital. Neither Ted nor Ethel could manage to.
3
This reads more like the Myth of Lyndon Johnson. Lauding him for building the “Great Society” is like lauding Benito Mussolini for making the Italian trains run on time. The war in Vietnam was absurd, almost Trumpish in its underlying stupidity. Eugene McCarthy was the voice of responsibility, but in 1967 the moment for responsible adults had not quite come.
2
I volunteered for McCqrthy as the qntiwar candidate and remember how disengaged he seemed to be, giving us little to work with.
3
RIP RFK.
4
This is nothing new. The Democratic Party have a history of nominating "aloof, uninspiring candidates". Think Hubert Humphrey, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, John Kerry, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.
1
While the majority of Americans were indeed pro-war and deceived by our leaders (see the Pentagon Papers), Sen. McCarthy's importance was no myth. He gave us the opportunity to expose the war & war-mongers rather then flee to Canada or contribute our souls to the war machine.
The press called it the Children's Crusade, and indeed it was. Had RFK had taken up Lowenstein's bid, former LBJ speech-writer Goodwin & the students would have rushed to his banner (as Goodwin did later). But RFK hid in the rear until the way seemed clear.
So go deride McCarthy all you like. But the anti-war youth movement brought down LBJ. After New Hampshire, he knew he had a failed presidency, much as RFK now saw his chance.
RFK called McCarthy the morning after to "congratulate" him, He should have called Lowenstein as well, & we all who embraced his moral stance.
6
For some reason my comment wasn't published. I shared some first hand knowledge of why Senator Mccarthy decided to run in 1967. It wasn't about being recruited, it was about being moved by a medal of honor recipient's turing his medal over to the Senator as he was horrified by our actions in Viet Nam and could not in any good faith accept any honors for our nation's dishonorable behavior towards women and girls.
1
This piece is mistitled. It's really an advocacy piece for LBJ and an attack on McCarthy for scuttling LBJ's domestic agenda. But if you lived through that era, Vietnam trumped all other issues facing the country. It was a wrenching time. By allowing the venal anti-communist cabal to sucker him into expanding America's role in the war, LBJ allowed us to get sucked into a quagmire. McCarthy gave voice to what most Americans in the late '60s were coming to realize about the war as the truths about it and the perfidy of those behind our escalation of it emerged. It's lamentable that LBJ was unable to effect his aims for his Great Society. But fifty years later, it's impossible to deny that Vietnam was a dirty, brutal, dishonest, unwinnable war, which we entered into in earnest propped up by a false anti-communist narrative that advanced the interests of corrupt individuals and institutions. Our escalation of it was promoted on a bed of untruths undergirded by false rationales. This mess was served up to the public by LBJ and others doing his bidding. McCarthy's opposition to the war was, at the time, a very brave stand for a national leader to take publicly. He may not have been a great choice as the Democratic nominee – obviously, because he lost to another corrupt Republican whose campaign was based on lies and dirty tricks – but people voted for McCarthy because he had the guts to point out that the emperor had no clothes. If you had lived through that time, you'd understand.
4
As one who was among many plunged in the depths of depression that 1967 and 1968 saddled young Americans with I offer that many of us knew McCarthy's weaknesses, and the forces arrayed against us by our parents' generation.
We didn't care. McCarthy was at least offering to send a life boat from his alternative ship. Until him Johnson and Congress were as much as the commanders of Titanic, full speed ahead in an ice field.
I'm still not sorry I favored McCarthy, and if RFK hadn't gotten into the race I'd have stuck with him.
Fat lot of good it did me. I was drafted in October and spent the next two years in the U.S. Army, fourteen months an infantryman in Vietnam. prosecuting a war the nation would come to rue and the poisonous bite of which still sickens our society.
14
Good article. I was a "Clean for Gene-er" in 1968, although not in NH. You are right about the timing, certainly, with regard to opposition to the war. However, Sen. McCarthy was a leading indicator, and a partial cause, of a growing disenchantment with the war. He gave us a constructive outlet for political discussions that, increasingly over time, were overshadowed by demonstrations and other protest activities.
Given his personality, he also contributed in some degree to maintaining dignity, calm, civility, and peace in the anti-war movement. Those qualities were not always present, of course; but McCarthy's intellectualism and coolness actually provided equilibrium for what would have become more over-heated and violent than it otherwise was, at least for some period of time. He was always far more of a Robert LaFollette than a Big Bill Haywood.
6
In November 1967, while going to high school in Liverpool, NY, I signed up to work for the senator. I member going door to door throughout Syracuse area. While, we didn't win the primary, we did achieve a moral victory.
It was a cause worth fighting for then and the same today.
7
One detail Joshua Zeitz left out of his story: Eugene McCarthy also won the Oregon primary in the spring of 1968. I was a college student in the Bay Area at the time, and the soft-spoken, wry, poetic, and most importantly antiwar McCarthy seemed to me a perfect antidote to the ideology and style of conventional politicians of the day. So I shaved my wispy beard, threw a skinny tie and collared shirt in my backpack, and with a handful of buddies drove in my beat-up old station wagon from California north into Oregon to spend the weekend before the primary working neighborhoods as volunteers for McCarthy. We canvassed Democratic households in the blue-collar mill town of Grants Pass, Oregon, spent the night in the farmhouse of some McCarthy supporters, and ate spaghetti off of paper plates at the campaign headquarters with the scores of other volunteers from around the West Coast. I think McCarthy's questioning of the war, his willingness to challenge his own party's sitting president, and his apolitical persona all contributed to his attractiveness for me and many of those volunteers. And apparently to the Democratic primary voters in Oregon.
26
I just read this article and a few of the comments. People are going to argue about 1968 forever. People are still fighting the Civil War 153 years later and
the Vietnam war is running a close second.
5
A very interesting take on the events of the period. The American electorate has not changed much. It still believes that the US can bomb its way to victory in any scenario, but the war hawks prove continuously to be wrong, as do the Americans that vote for them.
18
I knew Senator McCarthy very well and remain friends with his family.
Over the years Eugene would talk about why he decided to run. It was after a military awards ceremony when a soldier approached the Senator and returned his medal of honor with words to the effect of "what we are doing to the women and children over there (Viet Nam) is unconscionable." Zeitz is entitled to his myths. I know the truth. In the future I suggest the author do a more comprehensive historical research before knitting together a sweater sized thesis with toothpicks.
40
A little post script to what I wrote earlier. When Bobby Kennedy was killed, I think Senator McCarthy was affected deeply, and seemed to become far less engaged in the campaign. That was June, there was still a great deal of hope but the debacle of the convention in August erased all of that, and with so many uncomfortable with the chaos of the Dems, Nixon's slimy Southern strategy and law and order rhetoric, Humphrey was doomed. As I said, many of us just didn't vote, as a form of protest. And by the way, there were McCarthy fans in the Mid-West, big time. An Omaha rally in early April for McCarthy featured a big sign which said "Keen For Gene."
5
My brother was killed in 4/67 on hill 881 and I joined the USMC in 8/68 out of survivors remorse. We all knew by 1966 that the war was unwinnable and a crime if you will...LBJ,RFK, McCarthy, the anti war movement etc. History will be the final judge but we all have blood on our hands ...LBJ's lack of leadership, opportunism on the part of RFK, juvenile behavior of the anti war movement, and the silent majority's support of the Nixon/Wallace cabal. People my age who participated in the anti war movement may look back through rose colored glasses at the undermining of the FDR coalition that LBJ represented but they prolonged the war by helping Nixon get elected and leading to the Reagan/Trump disasters we have lived with and are living with today.
8
This article about the almost defeat of President Johnson in the Minnesota primary election in March 1968 is defective.
The withdrawal of Johnson from the presidential race happened after the strong defeat in the Wisconsin primary in April 2, 1968. McCarthy won 56% of the vote.
I was part of the many student supporters from the University of Wisconsin in Madison who were organized to win the primary for McCarthy in the town of Appleton, Wisconsin. We all had our hair cut and I shaved off my beard and dressed conservatively - no blue jeans, wearing sport jackets -, with others, in order not to sidetrack the conservative population of this northern town.
We felt that our weekend of canvassing and speaking to all residents in two long streets about the stupidity and immorality of the war in Vietnam had led to electorate success even in this town.
We felt ecstatic at McCarthy's victory and Johnson's withdrawal soon after.
Now I see that a one-sided report denies our great victory in Wisconsin.
Unfair! I protest!
Rolf Dumke
graduate student in economics
University of Wisconsin 1967-68
PhD Economics 1976, Wisconsin
19
"The withdrawal of Johnson from the presidential race happened after the strong defeat in the Wisconsin primary in April 2, 1968."
Hate to burst your bubble, R.H., but President Johnson announced his withdrawal on March 31, two days BEFORE the Wisconsin primary. His name still no doubt appeared on the Wisconsin ballot, as I'm sure his announcement came much too late to have his name withdrawn from the ballot, so in that technical sense he was defeated, but everyone who cast a ballot in Wisconsin knew that Johnson was no longer running.
In all fairness, Johnson knew, by the night of his announcement, that polls did show him trailing badly in Wisconsin, and many have speculated that this did play at least some role in his decision, as a harbinger of a nominating contest to come (esp. with RFK's candidacy) that at best would have been a Pyrrhic victory and could have easily turned into a humiliating and historic defeat.
As an independent voter, Eugene McCarthy represented the rare exception of a candidate I was 'for'. Most of our country's dismal leadership choices over my lifetime have been based on 'who do you dislike the least'
9
"Exit polls suggested that a majority of McCarthy's New Hampshire voters thought of themselves as hawks.....The president's private polling revealed that 55 percent of McCarthy's supporters favored the bombing campaign against North Viet-Nam;"
This is meager evidence that the majority of NH voters wanted the war to continue and thought we could win by escalating and bombing.
As Mr. Zeitz earlier states, the Tet offensive caused support for the war to plummet. That is a general proposition, which presumably included support for the war in New Hampshire.
The war divided the country, as it divided the Democratic Party. It is not clear that even Robert Kennedy could have overwhelmed Mayor Daley and the powerful national committeemen who had a big say in selecting the nominee. Hubert Humphrey came close to repairing the breach in the Party and to winning the election, except for the perfidy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Humphrey would have brought the war to an end much sooner, saving more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers' lives as well as more than 1,000,000 Viet-Namese.
2
Still waiting for Viet Nam war crimes indictment for Kissinger.
6
Humphery, long a good, humane man, failed against Nixon because he simply wouldn't disavow Johnson's strategy of pursuing the war. As i recall, his numbers at the polls were closing in on Nixon as Election Day neared. But HHH simply wouldn't "pull the trigger" on Johnson. Perhaps because of Johnson's elevation of HHH"s status as a Senator when Johnson was Majority Leader; or because of simple fear of LBJ and his ruthless personality, Hubert crashed his plane into the mountain. And so left us with Nixon.
1
But Nixon betrayed Johnson and violated American law by sending Kissinger to Paris before the election to scuttle the Peace Conference that was painstakingly set up by the U.S. and North Viet-Nam. If he hadn't and if a peace deal was announced, even if all the details weren't worked out, I believe enough votes would have shifted to Humphrey to make him the winner.
2
The majority of Americans then as perhaps now share a sense of our invincibility and consider the Korean debacle a misstep rather than an overreach. The same sense prevails among many, if not most of us with regard to Vietnam or any other conflict in which our politicians get us involved.
America First is an appealing slogan with the dangerous, self-serving implication that we alone practice righteous behavior and while I don't think this is a majority opinion it is the one our politicos find easiest to ladle out.
Who questions whether patriotism is an actual ingredient in the watery stew our politicians serve or simply the apron they wear while serving it?
McCarthy was dull and uninspiring, but he was also on the right track.
2
I canvassed for McCarthy in Western Pennsylvania and question the percentages on the so-called "president's private poll." 55 percent favored the bombing campaign against North Vietnam? Look at a the sign in the photograph that heads up the column: Immediate unconditional halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. The McCarthy campaign was not a majority of disaffected hawks. This is absurd claim.
4
Perhaps the majority 1968 McCarthy supporters were not disaffected hawks, but an awful lot of them were. Having lived through the era, I always believed that McCarthy benefited from the general upset of mainstream voters: this upset also involved plush back from nation wide urban rioting, and the perceived threat of the counterculture. Nixon and Reagan knew all too well how to exploit these social issues.
Should add that Gene McCarthy went on to support Ronald Reagan in 1980.
McCarthy was an important part of the growing realization of a growing numbers of Americans by 1968 that the Vietnam War was a disastrous blunder for the country; in terms of lives even worse than the even more stupid blunder of invading Iraq in 2003. Articles today denying the reality of that blunder, or sidestepping it, to make anti-straw man arguments about McCarthy never being more than a longshot candidate for the White House, miss the crucial essence of that historical epoch in US foreign policy.
11
I'm not sure I get the tone of this article. Lowenstein and McCarthy were two of a growing number of public figures who came to the realization that LBJ had lied to the American people about Vietnam. I would include among these public figures Wayne Morse, OR Senator (one of two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964), and Martin Luther King, who linked civil rights to human rights and the fight against racism to the fight against imperialism. The Tet Offensive drove home to anyone paying attention that the US military's promises about a weakened opponent were not to be trusted.
But many, it is true, were not paying attention. Not after Tet. Not after King was assassinated on Apr 4, 1968 or RFK was assassinated on June 5, 1968. The Democrats then drafted Humphrey, LBJ's compliant VP, to accept the nomination . . . which resulted in the election of Nixon, who extended the war for several more years.
Were the politicians who early opposed the Vietnam War flawless? Of course not. But they stood up, opposed those in power, bore the political and personal consequences without complaint, and have been vindicated by history in that the "loss" of Vietnam was not a victory for worldwide Communism, but was a victory for self-determination, as even McNamara admitted yrs later in his book In Retrospect.
Especially right now, it seems like we need to be reminded of their sacrifices and achievements, not their inevitable shortcomings and failings.
13
There are plenty of people that were alive during this period that could have written this article and have gotten the facts straight. Where did the author get his facts? The trump white house or fox news?
42
Well I was alive at the time and this article pretty much jibes with my perception of events at the time. By choosing to impugn the author's character rather than telling us what you think he actually got wrong you are the one who is emulating Fox and the Trump White House.
1
I got special permission from the Jesuits at my boarding school to campaign for Gene in Wisconsin when I was 15. It was fun going door to door- one woman told me she was glad Joe McCarthy was running again-and I even got to see Paul Newman at the local airport giving a stump speech while I was trying to see if he really wore a bottle opener on a neck chain, as was the legend. When Johnson decided to not seek reelection we were ecstatic. Then Bobby showed up to steal all the oxygen. Gene just sort of faded away and became a disappointment. A few years later I wrote a term paper as a poli sci major and compared him to the Pied Piper because he led an enthusiastic crowd to nowhere. My Prof really liked the paper.
5
Tim
That was a good comment and a great memory. Exactly what standing up and doing something productive leads to. Thanks,
1
I was a graduate student at UCLA in the Spring of '68 and Pauley Pavilion was filled with anti-war fervor when Senator McCarthy came to speak against the war and as a Presidential candidate. He spoke in a monotone from a series of note cards. And then he was done. No rallying of the troops. Just a passionless statement against the idiocy of the war. I was uninspired and worked for, and voted for, Bobby Kennedy in the June California primary. Our collective hearts were broken that night when he won, but was assassinated.
4
The author seems to posit that all victories will only come if known factors are laid out in favor of such a win (in this case, primarily a stellar candidate, thus invoking the "big man" theory of history.) But things change. Things ALWAYS change.
3
There are some startling under- and over-statements in this piece, particularly from the standpoint of someone old enough to have campaigned for Gene McCarthy.
First, to say Loewenstein "insinuated" himself into various groups does this fascinating (and, yes, flawed) man a major disservice. He was an extremely shrewd organizer with a passionate commitment to ending the war and implementing various liberal programs. His skills were usually welcomed--and made a real difference to the groups he joined.
I am also amazed at the dismissal of McCarthy's gifts. He had a quiet, offbeat charisma that attracted many supporters. I remember hundreds, then thousands of us laughing and cheering at the sly humor and well-deployed sarcasm that he combined with thoughtful and persuasive analysis that was well beyond what any other politicians, of any stripe, were offering.
Finally (although I could go on), I was very surprised to read, "As easy as it was then, or is now, to blame the war on one man, in reality, a large portion of the country demanded it." "Demanded" is an ahistoric, highly questionable description of the sentiments of the so-called Silent Majority. They strongly supported our soldiers, yes, and acquiesced in the war as a whole--but to say there was high general demand for the war simply isn't accurate.
62
Yes. A fire-breathing leader would not be taken seriously by mainstream Americans. A quiet and understated leader was just what the noisy anti-war movement needed at the time.
13
I, too, attended rallies for both Kennedy and McCarthy as part of my decision-making process. At the McCarthy rally, I observed the candidate as a rational, well-spoken man who had concrete ideas which he presented in a calm manner. The crowd was respectfully subdued when he spoke so that he could actually be heard. By contrast, the Kennedy rally was a slickly-produced show, loud with a lot of rah-rah responses from the crowd, so that the candidate, who barely spent any time speaking to us, was difficult to hear. Granted, to understand the platforms of each one needed to do much more than attend rallies. Nevertheless, I was turned off by the tone of the Kennedy rallies. Having done my homework as well, I ultimately supported McCarthy.
19
A gutsy, excellent, fresh opinion if not an exaggeration.
The author will not be celebrated for candidness, while unhappily I tend to not always reject a hard truth that hurts.
I am not a rah-rah joiner, despite my bumper sticker's implication.
When I did meet GM at a reception in early seventies, he impressed me as an introvert, no gungho politico.
I suppose he would have deferred to Bobby Kennedy.
You are to be commended because myth-making is human but
surely we all have learned about dishonesty from that very war.
Eugene came around for HHH as I did, but apparently too late
because RMN barely won.
What a scary year sixty-eight was--two political murders, and reality feels bad now too.
6
Sen McCarthy was such an appropriate hero for so many young students in the anti-war movement of the late 1960's. Nearly unknown outside of Minnesota and certainly not the public figure there that Vice President Humphrey was, he was the candidate whose character and attributes offered a blank slate which could be written on as wished by those seeking the acknowledgment of the political establishment (and our parents) that we were right about the Vietnam War and they were wrong. His "myth" and that of the NH "victory" was more useful than reality to many in the student anti-war movement.
Few of us appreciated the coarse vocabulary and image of LBJ. It was years before I could look at the accomplishments of his administration without seeing the deaths and injuries of Vietnam. And for many of us, our mistrust of the federal government began with LBJ, not Nixon.
I disagree with Zeitz's conclusion that Sen. McCarthy was "uninspiring"; for some of us the inspiration was unfortunately to seek out those candidates unlikely to win! The Nixon Watergate years reinforced the perils of "winning at all costs" and using the FBI and IRS to punish ones enemies.
Today's Democratic party might still be torn between using immoral means to achieve a moral end or "taking the high road" even if it leads to defeat but Pres. Obama could only have been elected as a Democrat. Trump is the result of years of perfecting and selling the Republican party agenda.
51
He wasn't "aloof"; he was intelligent. Intelligent politicians are seemingly oxymorons today, but they weren't always.
54
And wrote poetry!
6
I’m sorry, but this guy has no idea who Gene was, what happened, or why.
McCarthy’s character was assassinated by Bobby Kennedy’s campaign hatchet men. He told me he lived the rest of his life with the collateral damage.
People who might like to learn more about Mr. McCarthy might watch my documentary, I’m Sorry I Was Right. https://youtu.be/7p1LLJZe4jc
25
McCarthy endorsed Ronald Reagan for President in 1980.
He clearly was not the committed progressive many followers thought him to be.
Zeitz's hit piece on resistance fails to mention what AP acknowledged: the opposition to Johnson's war which gave rise to the Dissenting Democrats of Texas. By 1967, Johnson's limo was escorted from the campus of the University of Texas at Austin by outraged students chanting: "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!" No, Josh Zeitz, the the real myth you turn a blind eye to is the failure of the media to report the level of rejection of the industrial scale killing resulting from the U.S. invasion of S.E. Asia.
34
Excellent word re the sainted Bobby Kennedy: "Opportunistically."
7
Though I'll bet my comment is not published, this anti-McCarthy article (he "preferred...reading poetry" to politics: don't we wish Trump did too?) adds to the growing suspicion that the NYT is getting more conservative (whether to sell more papers and web subscriptions or due to an ideological change by management or some other reason). Most critically important articles printed today, as is true in general recently, do not allow for comments, most of which would likely be more liberal than conservative. Plus anti-war crowds found Eugene McCarthy's calm but firm stands incredibly exciting in person, though he was not telegenic -- nor would Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison...and especially Lincoln have improved any cable or broadcast channel's ratings.
23
"... the growing suspicion that the NYT is getting more conservative ..."
Well I don't know if "conservative" is the issue, but Bernie Sanders sure has rattled the Times's cage.
It seems that what all the former activists are struggling to accept in the comments here is that while McCarthy was inspiring to the student left, he wasn't inspiring to the Democratic party in general.
An objective historian, even if he never heard McCarthy in person, is better able to sift all the evidence than a former activist, who only knows the hazy nostalgia of '68.
Is there a lesson here for the left wing of the Democratic party?
3
This historian, who wasn't born when McCarthy ran, dismisses him for being aloof. It was the principles on which McCarthy stood and ran that inspired people like me who were young adults then and disgusted with the Vietnam war and our government's lies.
22
Let's see.
Tet was really a defeat for the Viet Cong.
The majority, even in New Hampshire, supported the war.
Indeed, a majority of even McCarthy's own New Hampshire voters supported the war.
Bobby Kennedy was an opportunist.
Main McCarthy organizer, Lowenstein, was a sneak, adept at "insinuating himself into various civil rights and antiwar campaigns."
The alienation of the population from the war was due to the US failure to set out to win it (see "Rambo"---Ya gonna let us win, this time?)
McCarthy was uninspiring.
But then, how could we, the opposition to the war, prevail?
Per the foregoing, we were wrong on every count. Our public face, McCarthy, was a dud. We had almost no supporters in Congress. At first, we had just two senators, Wayne Morse (OR) and Ernest Gruening (AK) . Years later, we picked up Fulbright and a few others.
The media ridiculed us for two or three years. Indeed, the author of the present piece, Zeitz, has recycled much of this half-century-old stuff.
Now, tell us:
With all these disadvantages, and apparently nothing going for us, how on earth did we drive from office the leader of "the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen"?
How did we force the Hawks to throw in the towel?
How did "Bring the Boys Home" win out over "Peace with Honor", the slogan of the partisans of unending stalemate?
That is, you've shown above that we couldn't possibly have succeeded.
How come we did?
44
How did the opposition win out over the partisans of unending stalemate?
Vietnam won the war.
3
Theodore White was wrong.
Grover Cleveland, the sitting President in his 2nd, stand-alone term, was upset in 1896 because he had made a mortal enemy out of John Peter Altgeld, Governor of Illinois. Cleveland had sent in Federal troops to Illinois to violently break up the Pullman strike over Gov. Altgeld's pleas not to do so and let him settle it peacefully. Instead 30 people died. Altgeld never forgave Cleveland and took his revenge at the 1896 Democratic convention, held, ironically, in Chicago. Altgeld used all his influence, successfully, to deny Cleveland re-nomination, throwing the Convention into chaos and resulting, ultimately, in the nomination of "Silver-Tongued" Wm. Jennings Bryan.
I turned 13 in the summer of 1968 and thought, yes, RFK, was an opportunist usurper of McCarthy's achievement. 50 years later I long ago came to realize that while RFK wasn't nearly as "pure" as McCarthy, he would have been an effective, charismatic, and formidable leader, able to manipulate the legislative process, yet still being a passionate advocate for the downtrodden against the privileged. McCarthy had none of those capabilities and would either have lost to Nixon, or been an ineffective President.
But I hadn't even passed my 13th birthday when Kennedy was murdered, so perhaps my childish passions can be forgiven...
5
The source of the author's animus towards Allard K. Lowenstein, who is described as spending "the better part of 15 years moving from one university teaching or administrative post to another, all the while insinuating himself into various civil rights and antiwar campaigns," is unclear. Lowenstein was an early and knowledgeable opponent of South African apartheid, contributed to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, and, of course, helped launch an unprecedented challenge to a powerful sitting president within his own party that, obviously, succeeded. I'd call him a remarkably effective behind-the-scenes organizer. Or is something else being "insinuated" here?
47
Establishing that a myth exists is an important first step, but determining why the need for a particular myth exists is far more interesting and revealing.
Here’s my theory on this particular myth; it helps insulate the left from just how deeply unpopular their statism is. In the late sixties, McCarthy’s zealots at least knew this much. Hence their attempt to “get clean for Gene.”
But today’s leftists need to sublimate this. They need to play down the vitriolic opposition to the McCarthyites in Chicago from within the DNC, just like they need to sublimate JFK’s hawkishness, and just like they need to retcon the memory of LBJ in recent biopics of MLK, and how they castigated Hillary Clinton when she accurately gave LBJ credit for a good share of the civil rights progress that we had made.
Why do they do this? Why isn’t LBJ’s commitment to the New Deal and Civil Rights enough for them? Why was Kennedy’s hawkishness too much? Why is acknowledging that most Americans wanted to beat the mass
murdering Communists too hard for them? Because today’s leftists want it all. Back then, many wanted the Viet Cong to win. They wanted total state control. And this is what they still want.
But they have trouble admitting this, and they have trouble acknowledging just how alien these aspirations are to most of their fellow Americans. So they invent myths like to this one, that American sentiment had turned against the war, that McCarthy fully represented such a turn.
4
@ Butch Zed Jr. I was not marching or going door to door talking with voters because I wanted the Viet Cong to win. That is one tired old attempt (generally made by tired old men then and now) at making me seem less patriotic than those who mindlessly supported sending troops to Vietnam knowing they would die in a war that was unwinnable. I was protesting for the US government to stop the lies about our actions in Vietnam and the nonsense about the "Domino" theory. In the case of Vietnam, the "correct" course of action was also the one which stopped the needless killing of people on every side.
We who marched in protest were the ones who got it right--not the experts, not the trained war-makers, not the politicians. We read the history books and our Bibles and listened to those who had fought before; then we concluded this Vietnam war was wrong and damaging to the US. No one threw any parades for the forces coming home and no one remembers the sacrifices of those who were exiled or jailed for being anti-war. Sen. McCarthy gave our protests a sense of legitimacy.
So don't accuse me and other protesters of working for the enemies of the US; that treason belongs to those who knowingly send US forces to their deaths in lands that matter only to the people who live there. All too many voters were willing to believe Nixon had a "secret" plan to end the war. That did not mean the majority opposed or supported the Vietnam war; it meant the voters wanted the war over.
3
There may be some truth in your essay, but the numbers were more in flux than they seemed. McCarthy was more than you give him credit for and less than some historians. He wasn't as political preacher, like many, he was a political teacher. That he asked about his chances anywhere is not a condemning moment. He had charm, and genuinely cared about us.
5
Senator McCarthy's political career shows that he was clearly not afraid to clash with the Democratic Party establishment, for better or for worse. His challenge to President Johnson's re-nomination in '68 is the most-remembered example of this, but other instances of this should not be forgotten. Specifically:
1. After Humphrey, a fellow Minnesotan, won the Democratic nomination in that notorious, tumultuous Chicago convention, McCarthy withheld his endorsement of Humphrey until right before Election Day in '68, and then endorsed him only tepidly at that. Many observers assign McCarthy at least some share of responsibility for Nixon's election that year because of that; the thought is that had McCarthy endorsed Humphrey earlier and more forcefully, it could have flipped enough closely decided states to enable Humphrey to win outright or at least to send the election to the House of Representatives, where Democrats had a majority (although many of their seats were in Southern states where George Wallace's third-party candidacy had a lot of appeal).
2. McCarthy ran for President as an independent candidate in '76 and likely cost Carter a few states that year (although Carter still won).
3. McCarthy endorsed Reagan over President Carter in '80.
2
An enlightening column, but its revelations are not quite as new as Mr. Zeitz suggests. Those of us old enough to have been politically aware in 1968 knew quite well that the election did not represent a repudiation of the war, itself, as opposed to frustration with the administration's failure to win it. Some reporters stressed this distinction, and Nixon's victory confirmed it.
Nixon, after all, hardly qualified as a dove, and his bogus claim to have a secret plan to end the conflict implied that he would succeed where Johnson had failed. America had never lost a war, and the older generation, whose votes determined the outcome of elections (you still had to be 21 to vote in 1968), did not want to sully that record with an embarrassing defeat at the hands of what they regarded as some peasant army in an obscure Asian country.
Whatever McCarthy's personal shortcomings as a candidate, he still demonstrated real political courage in defying this popular attitude. His willingness to challenge the leader of his own party, moreover, before the New Hampshire primary exposed Johnson's weakness, could have cost him his career.
Johnson, on the other hand, as Zeitz clearly shows, intervened in Vietnam's civil war in large part to deflect GOP charges of failure to contain communism. Had he and Kennedy not depicted the struggle in such global terms, however, withdrawal might have been easier. Johnson helped create his own dilemma.
5
Mr. Zeitz has it right, though I think he failed in his piece to capture the incredible energy and enthusiasm for McCarthy, which continued on well past the New Hampshire primary. There were ongoing peace rallies all over the country, and that summer was also the Poor People's Campaign, culminating in a huge event in DC. I was on the bus to DC from Long Island, with Lowenstein and dozens of others. The deaths of RFK and MLK also must be figured into the mix. The earliest cohort of the Baby Boom gang would be heading to the polls for their first presidential vote, and there were a lot of us. Yes, McCarthy himself was not the fire, but he ignited a passion in many of us, and when faced with a choice between Nixon and Humphrey, many didn't vote. Much to our enduring shame and regret years later.
5
Zeitz seems to have many facts right, but he does not understand what they mean.
YES, most Americans including most of those who voted for Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire were hawks who favored escalating the war. But Tet had driven home forcefully that politicians and generals had been utterly lying. Just before Tet, we were being told not that there was a light at the end of the tunnel so much as that we had already won and all that remained was mopping up. It didn't help when Westmoreland and others kept repeating their claims of victory after Tet. WORST of ALL, it was now clear to the American electorate that we were NOT intending to win in Vietnam. We were just going to keep the war going until we lost later.
And as someone who was there, I say Gene McCarthy was not disengaged nor uninspiring. Zeitz misinterprets McCarthy's wry understatements and modesty, backed by strong character and honor, as falling flat. They were banners we followed.
19
Nixon won, at least partially, because he falsely claimed that he had a plan to win the war. Another reason he won is that the voting age was still 21. Many college students like myself, who were at least 18 but not yet 21, would have voted for Humphrey, as I most definitely would have
1
All more or less true, but you had to be there. Also, of course, Lyndon Johnson had one of the finest tuned political senses in American history and he understood that there was a disorganized but real disapproval of the course of the war from both the too much and the not enough sides. And the presidency had turned to dust.
3
McCarthy wan't a myth; he and his candidacy were a harbinger of things to come. Whatever propelled it in the beginning, the anti-war movement grew until Nixon was forced to "declare victory" and leave Vietnam.
Credit Johnson for understanding that the groundswell of support for McCarthy was the beginning wave of a rising tide that would engulf his presidency and end the war.
If only that realization had come before he committed U.S. troops to the folly of a war built on a pretext that was a lie.
Yes, the Democratic Party's fear of Republican ridicule, the fear that has pervaded it since 9/11 and driven it to doubt its own better judgment for fear of being labelled "soft on defense" and compelled most Democrats to support or extend one Republican foreign policy misadventure after another ever since, is nothing new. It dates back to the Johnson Administration.
Yes, in 1967, there was support for the Vietnam War from experts and in the country. Yes, the Cold War was still being waged.
But- it was thawing. While there was much support for the war by experts, there were quite a few who opposed it, too. There was a good chance that had Kennedy lived, he would have not have expanded our involvement in the war further.
If ever fear stops driving our political parties (Republicans don't fear Democrats- they're just contemptuous of them; what they fear is "the other") the US might recapture its upward momentum. Until then, expect America to keep spiralling downward.
2
This is an excellent, realistic and very sad piece. It also is right on the mark that Eugene McCarthy in the final analysis was a dilettante who poorly served his cause.
Disinformation has been the binding of our Vietnam involvement since 1919 when HoChiMin attempted to gain acceptance of a nationalistic policy during the treaty ending WW1 and was ignored. We were then subjected to a 7 member generals junta, a past-emperor, and two 'elected' presidents, the former of whom was assassinated with the prior knowledge and support of America.
Woodrow Wilson indeed should be mentioned, however more with a thought to why this man directed American forces to Siberia, until 1922, confusing allies (including Russia) and interfering with the White vs Red politics of that moment.
To concentrate on McCarthy (or Robert Kennedy) as having an impact on the political leanings of our country, and LBJ disgust and dismay with Vietnam forcing him to refuse re-election, does little service to the persistent efforts of misleading the American public, from supporting 90% of French costs during their failed war to doubtful intelligence we used (or mis-used) to persuade our public that the war was being won.
It wasn't and we left.
2
It's a new one on me that New Hampshire primary voters for McCarthy were hawks on the Vietnam War. Not sure I believe it, either.
2
Actually McCarthy was inspiring. But more inspiring and ultimately the reason the war in Viet Nam ended were the students who were marching, protesting, going door to door and educating their parents as to the dangers to America by continuing the madness that was Viet Nam. The youth of the country is what got us out of the Viet Nam war.
12
I wouldn’t call Senator McCarthy uninspiring at all. My very first vote in a presidential election was a write-in vote for him. A useless gesture by a young idealist, of course, but I truly believed he was the only politician who could save us from the Vietnam disaster.
5
As I remember, Nixon had a "secret plan" to end the war. This ruse worked on my parents but when he was elected, his plan was to escalate. The Democratic party machine wasn't going to nominate anybody but Hubert Humphrey (who would've been a good President and probably would've ended to war). So, McCarthy was a footnote as was Robert Kennedy (unfortunately).
2
Yet the “Myth” and those who believe it are with us still! Electing Richard Nixon and Donald Trump as well as ending the draft remain the three “great accomplishments” of the anti Vietnam war generation. “Great” because of the way they unexpectedly changed how America sees and defines itself.
Of those three things ending the draft is likely the change that will be the most far reaching in its effect. Prior to the Civil War America had a small professional military with most of the better officers coming from the soon to be Confederate States.
The Civil War brought with it the draft which served us well in the following wars until the war in Vietnam. Since then America has reverted to a professional military with a majority of its numbers again drawn from “Red States”.
Those here who define themselves by their resistance to the draft and the war in Vietnam (in that exact order) would do well to reflect on how “well” our Republic was last served by a professional military who’s home States were disrespected and threatened by a majority of the rest of the country!
History can, at times repeat itself when similar conditions reoccur!
2
the main point is that McCarthy actually took the plunge to run in primaries against lbj who had lost moral authority.
he made the others, who didn't want to challenge a sitting potus, realize the nomination might be up for grabs.
walter Cronkite also had a hand in Johnson's decision not to run.
if McCarthy hadn't run, bobby kennedy wouldn't have been assassinated and might've been potus in 1972 or 1976.
8
I’m drawn to the phrase “not wanting to be a war president”- having lived with 3 since 2000. I was in high school when the Chicago Convention exposed the raw pain and power of the nascent anti war movement. I can not believe how far we have not come in these 50 years.
4
I, too, was in high school - dreaded turning 18 and becoming eligible for the draft. Since the all-volunteer military accepts many who can't get through college, we've become citizens with little skin in the game. We tout our "support for the troops" but like the Vietnam war era, rich cowards like Bush 43 and our current bone-spur potus don't even get called out for abandoning their generation when they could've shown some guts.
We're in forever wars which is why it is relevant to get the facts right about the last war that was successfully ended by popular demand.
2
I served in Vietnam as a crew member on a 105 howitzer ("Beatnik"). Vietnam was a staggering waste of money and lives. The Eisenhower Administration stood by while the Viet-Minh defeated the French and drove them out of the entirety of Vietnam. U.S. assistance, and the ugliness of communist oppression, allowed the formation of a breakaway, pro-western state. South Vietnam should have been allowed to stand or fall on its own (with substantial American aid).
The loss of South Vietnam did not weaken the U.S., but rather the Soviet Union. Vietnam, like other communist economies, was a basket case, requiring 40 billion rubles a year in Soviet aid to stay afloat. When oil prices sank in the late 80s, the USSR sank as well.
Lyndon Johnson was a total coward when it came to foreign affairs and showed no leadership whatsoever. He leaned desperately on Eisenhower for advice, and Ike always told him to send more troops. What really broke Johnson was the combination of Tet and Gen. Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. An attempt to fulfill that request would have destroyed Johnson immediately. He would have had to call up the National Guard, the draft dodgers haven for rich boys like George Bush. Westmoreland was kicked upstairs and Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. McCarthy was lazy and self-indulgent, but Johnson led us into disaster, costing 55,000 dead and several hundred thousand wounded.
1
As several other comments note, Mr. Zeitz attempts to rewrite history.
To begin with his statement that Al Lowenstein "insinuated" himself in the civil rights and anti-war movements suggests some Machievellian turn of mind. Lowenstein may have been a dreamer but he was a genuine believer in those two causes. Zeitz forgets to mention he was elected to Congress that fall and would have won re-election if Republicans along with conservative Democrats n the NY state legislature hadn't carved up his district.
As to Gene McCarthy not being a good campaigner, perhaps Zeitz could explain how he managed to win all those elections in Minnesota and beat Bobby Kennedy in the Oregon primary, the first election any Kennedy had lost.
As to the country's feelings about the war. Hubert Humphrey rapidly closed the gap with Nixon after he broke with LBJ on the war late in the campaign and there is a general feeling if he had done it even a week earlier, he would have won. And remember Nixon had his "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. Of course, his plan turned out to be to expand the war and continue it.
Oh and by the way Mr. Zeitz, it wasn't just New England college students who went to New Hampshire. I was too young to go but several older students in my school in Maryland went up there for McCarthy.
26
The author's thesis rests on a thin reed -- specifically, the polling that showed that a majority of McCarthy voters were anti-Johnson rather than antiwar. But that fact is not inconsistent with the fact that McCarthy's campaign -- which was entirely anti-war -- was the undoing of a President who seemed unable to end the war and who was prosecuting that war well beyond the time when he knew it was unwinnable. That many New Hampshire Democrats may have been for escalating the war is not entirely relevant. New Hampshire was the first primary, and the task was to show that LBJ was beatable, and McCarthy accomplished that. Mr. Zeitz, who writes for Politico and has recently written a book rightly praising LBJ's Great Society efforts, is straining too hard here to defend his hero's desire to end the war by diminishing the character and appeal of both McCarthy and Lowenstein. Those of us who were inspired by both of them recognized their imperfections but understood their important roles in affecting history.
30
It would be helpful if Zeitz cited one historian who has actually embraced this putative "McCarthy myth." The historians and memoirs I've seen virtually all acknowledge McCarthy's considerable flaws as a candidate and the ambiguous significance of the New Hampshire results. I feel like I've read the exact account Zeitz is giving here a dozen times or more. Who is Zeitz arguing against?
5
I vividly remember Gene McCarthy's dynamic speech nominating Adlai Stevenson for President at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Even though I was a staunch teenage Republican at the time, I was wowed by his rhetoric and presentation. So yes, McCarthy could be a highly inspiring politician when he wanted to be.
27
I am completely unconvinced by this author's thesis. If a majority of Americans still solidly supported the war, why would Nixon have bothered running on his "secret plan" to end the war? His natural bent was to escalate; if Americans wanted a greater military commitment to win the war, Nixon was their boy, without putting up the pretense of seeking to end it. And just anecdotally, I took my own father's turn against the war, during and after Tet, as a bellwether. A WWII veteran, he adored the US Army. When he joined me in opposing the war, I took it as a sign that most of the country had come to the same conclusion.
59
Mr. Zeitz, who Wikipedia reports was born in 1974, has deemed Gene McCarthy an uninspiring candidate.
Having been there -- both as a student in a university where the anti-Vietnam movement started and a delegate to my state Democratic convention at the time -- I can affirmatively report that candidate McCarthy was not just inspiring but awe inspiring.
71
Second that.
2
I agree, McCarthy, came out to say what everyone was thinking. He was a Senator, a serious candidate, who had a real, "Profile in Courage," to go against his own party.
The fact that he was a poor campaigner was not so evident at the time. He was really a single issue candidate.
As a seventeen year old, about to go to college, and approaching draft age, Eugene McCarthy will always be a hero.
He simply pushed open a door and historical events, unforeseen at the time, cascaded into a ruination and ascendancy for politicians, and defined the, "Sixties."
2
I,too, was "Clean for Gene" throughout his campaign. Contrary to Mr. Zeitz, McCarthy was quite inspiring, especially to those of us who were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Bless him for having come forward.
59
I agree re Sen. McCarthy. We even managed to win local precinct elections based on opposition to the war in San Antonio, Texas, site of the 5th Army, Randolph AFB, Kelly AFB, Lackland AFB, etc. contrary to the fairy tales of Ken Burns and the NYT's "Vietnam '67".
4
I was one of those who was "Clean for Gene" in 1968. My memories tell me that the "myth" which the author dismisses is far closer to the truth on the ground than are the conclusions of the article. Regardless of the shortcomings of McCarthy as a candidate, he was the first serious figure who had the guts to emerge and provide a center around which the "respectable" segment of the massive ant-war movement could coalesce. Johnson had seemed invincible.
Bobby Kennedy was the logical choice, but he had already done his cold-blooded calculations and decided that his ambitions should be put on hold until another day. Gene demonstrated that Johnson could be overturned, and of course, the Kennedy forces immediately rushed in to brush him aside.
We all could have lived with Bobby as a candidate; the cause was more important than the hero. Gene stepped aside, and Kennedy began his march. But then history intervened.
71
McCarthy never "stepped aside" for Kennedy. He continued to compete against him until Kennedy's death and beat him in the last primary before the California one.
16
As I remembered, even though it is likely that Kennedy would have surpassed McCarthy, I don't recall McCarthy stepping aside and the final primary that both men contested in California was both hard fought and acrimonious.
12
To be clear, no bearded students arrived from Smith or Mt Holyoke or at least I saw none while teaching at the latter. And there is this, that nearly a year before McCarthy was dragooned to run (or sit, to be apt) RFK staffers had formed scouting parties across the electorate so that a political base existed by spring of 1967. We worked high schools and community colleges to test support for a wholesale withdrawal from Vietnam, and to our surprise the urgency was overwhelming to get out as soon as possible. RFK knee from his earliest meetings with Richard Daley of Chicago that he could easily secure the nomination. In effect he stayed out of the fray that McCarthy supporters didn’t since they were perceived by media as fringe leftists desperate for even a milquetoast candidate. Kennedy was never not running once the darker reality that almost nobody wanted to fight the war.
6
A lot of truth here, but it leaves out what I recall as a crucial moment that led to McCarthy's decision to run. It was a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (of which McCarthy was a member) in which Nicholas Katzenbach, Under Secretary of State, told the committee that the administration considered the narrowly defined Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964 the "functional equivalent of a declaration of war." McCarthy left the meeting were agitated, claiming that if that were the case, Johnson could do whatever he wanted in Vietnam without congressional approval. If I recall correctly, that moment made him very receptive to Lowenstein.
26