A man in the arena

Note: I was remiss in not commenting on this in December.

Eugene McCarthy passed away late last year, years after he passed out of the American imagination. A pity, because he was one of the great odd-ball politicians that this country produced in the centuries before we began electing talking heads with perfect hair.

It is almost hard to believe when you hear it; the 1968 Presidential campaign began without a single anti-war candidate. That is until Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the race. He ran a shoe-string operation funded by a half dozen millionaires. This operation made such an amazing showing against a sitting President in the New Hampshire Primary (which is what engraved first in the nation status on that Primary, by the way), that Johnson gave up the election three weeks later. McCarthy would lose the nomination, but he shattered the Democratic Establishment.

Aside from being a Giant Killer, McCarthy was a throwback to a different time. He was a product of a liberal arts education. A published poet, he had even spent time studying to become a monk. He was aloof, dispassionate, bold, and resilient. He could care less what you thought. This liberal Democrat voted for Reagan in 1980 because “nobody could be worse than Carter.” R.I.P.

# posted by D. W. Eifert @ 9:35 PM