History: Eugene McCarthy Versus The Democratic Party, 1968

Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) made an unlikely insurgent. An alumnus of St. John's University, he was a devout Catholic who'd considered becoming a priest. He was an academic who'd taught economics, wrote poetry, quoted Sir Thomas More and Walt Whitman in his speeches. As Senator, he was a Cold War hawk who'd supported the Korean War, government registration of Communists and HUAC.
Such were the oddities of 1968 that this unassuming Minnesotan became the standard bearer for Democrats opposing the Vietnam War. Gene McCarthy's insurgent campaign was successful in its failure, derailing Lyndon Johnson's presidency and inviting debate on the war. It also revealed the limits of idealism within a party structure.
In August 1967, activists Allard Lowenstein and Curtis Gans formed the Dump Johnson movement, determined to deny the President's re-nomination. "When a President is both wrong and unpopular," Lowenstein said, "to refuse to oppose him is both a moral abdication and a political stupidity." While many leftists despaired of change through politics, Lowenstein and Gans thought fielding an antiwar candidate a worthy cause. The problem was finding someone.

Allard K. Lowenstein

Robert Kennedy, naturally, was Lowenstein's first choice. But Kennedy declined, finding it risky to challenge a sitting president. General James Gavin, WWII paratroop commander-turned-Vietnam critic, offered to run - as a Republican. South Dakota Senator George McGovern also declined, suggesting instead McCarthy. McCarthy had recently advocated increased Congressional oversight of the CIA; he also called Johnson's handling of Vietnam "a kind of dictatorship in foreign policy."
McCarthy initially resisted, but friends and colleagues wore him down. A monk at St. John's urged him to "act manfully." On October 20th, he met Lowenstein and his friend Gerry Hill for breakfast, mixing small talk with pointed political questions. Finally, the Senator addressed them directly: "You fellows have been talking about three or four names." He smiled and announced: "I guess you can cut it down to one."

Eugene McCarthy

On November 30th, McCarthy publicly announced his candidacy. Criticizing Johnson's Vietnam policy, he announced a need to tackle America's "deepening moral crisis." He hoped his campaign would "alleviate at least in some degree of this sense of political helplessness and restore to many people a belief in the processes of American politics and of American government."
Privately, McCarthy suggested a less-than-noble reason for challenging LBJ. He was Johnson's first choice for Vice President in 1964, only for fellow Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey to get the nod. "I vowed I would get that son of a bitch," McCarthy admitted. And principle with a soupcon of revenge made the sweetest motivation of all.
Initial reaction was skeptical. The St. Paul Pioneer Press foresaw a "costly exercise in futility"; Newsweek accused him of "mutiny" against Johnson. Time Magazine was more favorable, saying McCarthy gave "legitimate dissenters a civilized voice." McCarthy's fellow Congressmen scoffed at his candidacy; polls showed 58 percent of Americans never heard of him.
Nonetheless, young Democrats and disaffected liberals flocked to his campaign. Disenchanted with politics, despairing of change, they finally found a cause and a candidate to support. Richard Goodwin, a former Kennedy speechwriter, told Seymour Hersh, McCarthy's 30 year old secretary, that "with these two typewriters, we're going overthrow the government."
They were idealistic and college-educated, dubbed the "Children's Crusade" by cynics. Speechwriter Jeremy Larner labeled them "the most desirable boys and girls in America, full of pure hate for their government." They divided primary states into districts and demographics, plotting strategy over peanut butter and beer in hotel basements. Their energy, intelligence and spirit proved intoxicating.

McCarthy with supporters in Winnebago, Wisconsin

No matter that McCarthy was often vague and contradictory. For one, he vacillated on Johnson's Great Society: he complained that welfare programs "had no moral or intellectual constituents." Yet he also advocated "an income distribution system that would guarantee to every American a minimum livable income." McCarthy was so identified with Vietnam that other issues barely mattered.
But McCarthy's pious, aloof attitude irritated many. Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, complained that McCarthy "thinks he's Jesus Christ!" Blair Clark, McCarthy's campaign manager, felt he lacked the political acumen and people skills to succeed. "Even Caesar could kiss the ass of somebody who would be useful to his cause," he lamented, "but not Gene."
The Left didn't embrace McCarthy, either. Tom Hayden asked Jeremy Larner, "Why are you a whore for McCarthy?" Jack Newfield of the Village Voice called McCarthy "dull, vague and without either balls or poetry." Many saw him as a stalking horse for Johnson, redirecting antiwar energy into a fruitless campaign. Engagement with the System meant selling out, regardless of the cause or result.

McCarthy meets supporters in Nebraska

Nonetheless, McCarthy supporters flooded into New Hampshire in January 1968. They Democrats with mail and phone calls, going door-to-door, connecting with Granite State voters. They cut hair, shaved beards and wore well-tailored clothes, all "Neat and Clean for Gene!" Impressed by young McCarthyites, one woman said: "I was a rather tired liberal... But I'm not tired any more. You young people have given me new strength."
McCarthy arrived in New Hampshire on January 25th. Traveling the state, he denounced Johnson in fiery terms. "The Democratic Party in 1964 promised no wider war, yet the war is getting wider each month," he charged. He attacked CIA power and the military industrial complex, joking that "If elected, I would go to the Pentagon." It was unusually strident for a mainstream candidate.
Five days later, events vindicated McCarthy. Communists launched the Tet Offensive, striking American and South Vietnamese troops all over Vietnam. Ultimately, the attack was a debacle; American and ARVN troops held or recaptured all positions, the Vietcong suffered crippling casualties. But the psychological blow was incalculable; according to Johnson, the Communists weren't even capable of this.

Marines in Dai Do during Tet, February 1968

Back in New Hampshire, Johnson's surrogates savaged McCarthy. Governor John King called him "a champion of appeasement and surrender." Pro-Johnson Democrats took out newspaper ads accusing him of Vietcong sympathies. Skeptical liberals organized a write-in campaign for Bobby Kennedy; only Ted Sorensen's intervention stopped it. No one thought McCarthy stood a chance.
On March 12th, New Hampshirites went to the polls. Johnson won by a razor-thin margin, with McCarthy netting 42 percent of the vote. It was a qualified achievement; many voters opposed Johnson for not being hawkish enough on Vietnam, leading wags to wonder if they'd confused Gene with Joe McCarthy. No matter. "The young people have brought the country back into the system," McCarthy enthused, promising success to come.
On March 31st, President Johnson announced he wasn't running for reelection, bursting the Democratic nomination wide open. McCarthy, speaking in Waukesha, Wisconsin, learned when reporters interrupted a speech with the news. The candidate was flabbergasted, his supporters wild with excitement. The "Children's Crusade" was no longer a joke; Gene McCarthy was the frontrunner.

McCarthy celebrates

But at the moment of victory, antiwar Democrats split in two. For Robert Kennedy, overcoming his reservations, had entered the race on March 16th, saying he'd reclaim America's "right to the moral leadership of this planet." To McCarthy supporters, it smacked of opportunism: Kennedy hadn't criticized the war until Tet, didn't declare his candidacy until Johnson was mortally wounded. The campaign of ideas became a personal clash.
McCarthy hated the Kennedys. He'd clashed with John in the Senate over labor legislation. He tried derailing JFK's nomination in 1960, by boosting two-time presidential loser Adlai Stevenson. He habitually insulted Bobby, boasting "I got an A in economics and Bobby got a C." McCarthy also resented the family's dynastic pretensions: "They are trying to turn the Presidency into the War of the Roses."
The bad blood extended beyond the candidates. Mary McCarthy, the Senator's 19 year old daughter, told supporters that Kennedy "[has] the jumpers and squealers - we have the thinkers and doers." Kennedy volunteers heckled Larner: "Don't you wish you had a candidate who could win?" Each camp viewed themselves as embodying liberal righteousness, their rivals as poseurs.

Bobby Kennedy: savior or usurper?

Kennedy amassed a huge following of youths and minorities. In April, he won black affection by eulogizing Martin Luther King; observers credited his soothing words with preventing riots in Indianapolis. In California, he met Hispanic labor leader Cesar Chavez; in Nebraska, he endorsed Native American rights. He mixed New Politics passion with Old Politics networking, engaging Democratic power brokers and labor leaders while recruiting loyalists like Arthur Schlesinger.
In contrast, McCarthy failed to engage minorities. When McCarthy visited a Milwaukee ghetto, his swarming, all-white supporters terrified three black teens playing basketball. McCarthy insisted "I will not make racial appeals," which fell flat. Seymour Hersh left McCarthy for ignoring civil rights. Gloria Steinem recorded a black cab driver saying "McCarthy's okay, but he doesn't know what it's all about."
Kennedy won Indiana, Nebraska and Wisconsin's primaries, overtaking McCarthy. But Kennedy's campaign hit a snag in Oregon. With few minorities and a conservative constituency, it was immune to Camelot idealism. Kennedy retooled his rhetoric into "law and order" phraseology not dissimilar to Richard Nixon; it backfired. McCarthy won Oregon, setting up California as the ultimate showdown.

McCarthy and Kennedy: showdown in California

The California campaign raged on through May. Addressing middle class Democrats, McCarthy claimed Kennedy was "running best among the less intelligent and less educated people in America." Kennedy struck back, asking farm workers: "You wouldn't vote for someone who didn't care, would you?" Both sides circulated ads and flyers attacking their opponents' record.
McCarthy counted on celebrity support: stars Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand joined volunteers campaigning for McCarthy. Peter, Paul and Mary cut a single, "If You Love Your Country," encouraging voters to support McCarthy. Kennedy had his own entourage: Kirk Douglas, Shirley MacLaine, Truman Capote and Tommy Smothers, among others. Celebrity glitz didn't alleviate the bare-knuckle ugliness.
The campaign climaxed on June 1st, when McCarthy and Kennedy held a televised debate. They sparred over Vietnam: McCarthy advocated a coalition government for South Vietnam, Kennedy favoring a non-Communist regime. They argued over public housing, riots and desegregation. But their most memorable exchange came over attack ads, testily charging each other with dishonesty and slander.
On June 4th, Kennedy won California by a hair's breadth. The next morning, in Los Angeles, he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian nationalist angered by Kennedy's support of Israel. McCarthy's initial, cold reaction was that "He brought it upon himself." While more generous publicly, McCarthy's fillip offered no rapprochement with Kennedy's supporters.
Meanwhile, Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice President, secured the nomination through Old Politics arm-twisting. As McCarthy and Kennedy feuded, he quietly wrangled delicates by tapping Party leaders like Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley. With Johnson's support, Humphrey accrued the necessary delegates without campaigning in a single state.
"When Bobby was killed in Los Angeles," McCarthy recalled, "it was the end for us." He fired staffers, cancelled meetings with Democratic bigwigs, alienating supporters. Larner complained that McCarthy traveled with "sobs, sycophants, stooges and clowns." Kennedy supporters flocked to George McGovern, or Teddy Kennedy, rather than McCarthy.

McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern, August 1968

McCarthy abandoned hope by the Chicago National Convention in August; he encouraged Maine Senator Edmund Muskie to take his place. He fought for a peace plank which Humphrey's backers repudiated. Stirring nominating speeches by Iowa Senator Harold Hughes and Julian Bond, Georgia assemblyman (and future NAACP president), failed to sway delegates; Humphrey won on a first ballot landslide.
The backroom chicanery was matched with violence. Antiwar demonstrators, including McCarthy supporters chanting "Dump the Hump!" clashed with police throughout the convention. The violence in Chicago, dubbed a "police riot," left hundreds injured or arrested. Captured on television, it starkly captured the disconnect between idealism and reality.

Chicago's police riot, August 1968

With Humphrey refusing to repudiate the Vietnam War, McCarthy withheld his endorsement. Finally, in October Humphrey made a limited break with President Johnson, pledging a gradual withdrawal from Vietnam. Liberals belatedly joined Humphrey, but McCarthy refused to endorse him until October 29th, just a week before the election. Despite this, Humphrey lost to Nixon by a razor-thin margin.
The campaign embittered McCarthy's supporters. Blair Clark called it "a gigantic failure" that "had a deleterious effect on America" by allowing Nixon's election. Allard Lowenstein, elected to Congress that year, commented "I remember him historically, but I've forgotten him as a contemporary." Jeremy Larner channeled his frustration into fiction; he penned a screenplay called The Candidate (1972), made into a film starring Robert Redford as a Senator who wins by selling out his principles.
Certainly, McCarthy wasn't an ideal candidate. For all his idealism, he was prickly and petty, unable to move beyond slights and overcome weaknesses. Kennedy might have made a better standard bearer, had he lived. Whatever his personal failures, McCarthy's achievement was real. He brought disenfranchised youth and liberal activists back into politics, giving the antiwar movement credibility.

The Moratorium March on Washington, November 1969

McCarthy's campaign legitimized dissent. With the Republican Nixon assuming the Presidency, liberal Democrats joined with the Left in opposing the war. The antiwar movement peaked in 1969-1970, mobilizing millions of supporters in October 1969's Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, 500,000 for a march on Washington the following month, and, in May 1970, after the invasion of Cambodia and Kent State shootings. For a brief moment, the movement went mainstream.
But Tricky Dick outfoxed them. Nixon and Spiro Agnew savaged them as seditious whiners, driving a wedge between activists and Middle America. He ended the military draft and began withdrawing troops from Vietnam (while continuing to bomb the North) to muffle dissent. This simultaneously undercut antiwar liberals while tarring them as radicals. When the Democrats ran George McGovern in 1972, he won only a single state. Nixon shattered the liberal-progressive alliance.

Exit McCarthy

McCarthy left the Senate in 1970, growing estranged from his party and followers (and his wife, Abigail, from whom he separated). He mounted quixotic campaigns in 1972 and 1976; backed Ronald Reagan in 1980; ran for the Consumer Party in 1988; managed 0.13 percent in 1992's New Hampshire primary. Like fellow Minnesotan Harold Stassen, his perennial candidacies became a joke. He died in December 2005, an eccentric survivor of the '60s.
McCarthy's '68 campaign showed both the potential, and limits of idealism. He tapped antiwar dissent struggling for expression; engaged youth and activists disillusioned with politics; forced the Democratic Party confront an issue it had sidestepped. But McCarthy's efforts faltered before Party machinery and backroom dealing, along with his personal failings. Sadly, idealists must often settle for moral victories.
Sources and Further Reading
This article draws upon: Jeremy Larner's Nobody Knows (1969), McCarthy's memoir The Year of the People (1969), George Rising's Clean for Gene (1995) and Dominic Sandbrook's Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (2001). For Bobby Kennedy's campaign, see Jules Witcover's 85 Days (1969).
As before, see Chester, Hodgson and Page's An American Melodrama (1969) and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland (2008) for general background on the 1968 campaign.
Previous articles:

• George Wallace Stands Up for America, 1968
• Nelson Rockefeller and the Demise of the Liberal Republican
• Spiro Agnew Grooves On
• William Scranton for President, 1964
• William Scranton for President, 1964, Part Two

For anyone still reading, we'll return to films shortly. Thanks for bearing with me over the past few weeks.