Roger Kahn: Gene McCarthy ... The Quiet Man
ON Nov. 30, 1967, I traveled to Washington for The Saturday Evening Post to cover a speech by Senator Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy, who died this month at 89, was planning to announce that he was going to take on President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination for the presidency....
Where most campaigns open with trumpets, Eugene McCarthy's began with civility. He felt, he would tell me later, that the Kennedy style and what went with it, the troops of publicists, the hired cheering claques, the wheeling, the big-money dealing, demeaned the democratic process. He believed in the intelligence of the voters.
After the speech, the telephones in McCarthy's office rang all afternoon and supportive telegrams began to arrive. But no senator, not even so-called doves like Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright and Wayne Morse, moved to his side. There were 248 Democratic members of the House. Only one, Don Edwards of California, spoke up immediately in favor of McCarthy. In opposing Johnson, McCarthy, who'd been in Congress nearly 20 years, stood alone.
A few days later a Gallup poll reported that 58 percent of those sampled had never so much as heard of McCarthy. The senator refused to be discouraged. "Had they asked," he said, "they would have found that fewer still have heard of St. Benedict of Nursia, but that detracts not one whit from his importance." (Benedict is the patriarch of Western monks and founded the Roman Catholic order that bears his name.)
Like a lot of other reporters, I decided McCarthy was a story, and so I started to follow him, which is how I wound up in Chicago the first weekend in December. He was giving an address to the National Conference of Concerned Democrats - that is, anti-Johnson, anti-war Democrats.
Before the speech, I watched McCarthy take questions in the lobby of the Hilton. Was he going to drop out if Bobby Kennedy ran? "If Kennedy moves, we'll have to see," he answered. "I don't know what he'll do. There is no conspiracy between us, no collusion, no common plan."
What about the militants? The reference was to extremist antiwar groups, gathering, mostly on campuses. McCarthy said, referring to his hosts, "This group is militant enough for me."
How about black militants?
"I'm indifferent to color."...
Read entire article at NYT
Where most campaigns open with trumpets, Eugene McCarthy's began with civility. He felt, he would tell me later, that the Kennedy style and what went with it, the troops of publicists, the hired cheering claques, the wheeling, the big-money dealing, demeaned the democratic process. He believed in the intelligence of the voters.
After the speech, the telephones in McCarthy's office rang all afternoon and supportive telegrams began to arrive. But no senator, not even so-called doves like Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright and Wayne Morse, moved to his side. There were 248 Democratic members of the House. Only one, Don Edwards of California, spoke up immediately in favor of McCarthy. In opposing Johnson, McCarthy, who'd been in Congress nearly 20 years, stood alone.
A few days later a Gallup poll reported that 58 percent of those sampled had never so much as heard of McCarthy. The senator refused to be discouraged. "Had they asked," he said, "they would have found that fewer still have heard of St. Benedict of Nursia, but that detracts not one whit from his importance." (Benedict is the patriarch of Western monks and founded the Roman Catholic order that bears his name.)
Like a lot of other reporters, I decided McCarthy was a story, and so I started to follow him, which is how I wound up in Chicago the first weekend in December. He was giving an address to the National Conference of Concerned Democrats - that is, anti-Johnson, anti-war Democrats.
Before the speech, I watched McCarthy take questions in the lobby of the Hilton. Was he going to drop out if Bobby Kennedy ran? "If Kennedy moves, we'll have to see," he answered. "I don't know what he'll do. There is no conspiracy between us, no collusion, no common plan."
What about the militants? The reference was to extremist antiwar groups, gathering, mostly on campuses. McCarthy said, referring to his hosts, "This group is militant enough for me."
How about black militants?
"I'm indifferent to color."...