Talk:Eugene McCarthy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
	This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.

Eugene McCarthy is part of WikiProject U.S. Congress, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to the United States Congress. You can help by editing this article. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject U.S. Congress articles.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Minnesota, which aims to improve all articles related to Minnesota.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
High	This article is on a subject of High-importance within Minnesota articles.
This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

I'm not especially happy with the flow of the third paragraph, so if anyone sees a way to improve it, be my guest. Ground 13:46, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 RIP Clean Gene 2 1980 Endorsement 3 The other anticommunist McCarthy 4 Great quote

[edit] RIP Clean Gene

We'll miss you.

Hear Hear Thesocialistesq 18:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I worked for him in 68 when he was the only Democrat willing to run against incumbent Johnson. Like many of his supporters, I felt betrayed when Kennedy and then McGovern split the antiwar movement and guaranteed Nixon's election. Why does it seem like we need someone like him again? alteripse 04:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh gods, the the isolation of college takes it toll. As I was too busy sleeping in and studying for exams, dear Gene passed away without me even hearing a word of it until I came here. What a loss for the entire country. Fare thee well, Gene. --BDD 06:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 1980 Endorsement

I know this had probably already been gone over somewhere before but he didn't endorse Clark in 1980, he just wrote the intro to his book. He endorsed Reagan. Pimpalicious 17:46, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

To me, a Swedish Wikipedian, it seems rather odd thet Eugene McCarthy, who seems to have been a radical or at least a liberal democrat, endorsed Reagan in 1980. Reagan was a not-so-liberal republican. What is the reason for this slip? Anger with the party? --Astor Piazzolla 19:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It was mostly a protest against the Democrats. He was particularly mad at Jimmy Carter for boycotting the Moscow Olympics. He was origionally going to endorse either Barry Commoners, Ed Clark, or Congressman John Anderson, all of whom had no chance of winning. He decided to go with Reagan because, as much as he disagreed with Reagan, he thought Jimmy Carter was being unfair by portraying him as being as far right as he did. The Secretary of Funk 00:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

At the time. McCarthy said he supported Reagan because Reagan had a better conception of the presidency. McCarthy thought that Reagan would be less "imperial." Revenge against the democrats was certainly a motive for the embittered McCarthy, and he loathed Carter. Nicmart 15:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The other anticommunist McCarthy

I worked in McCarthy's 1976 campaign, and supported him in 1968. During the '76 campaign I came to realize that McCarthy was politically shallow, unrealistic, and incoherent. Most casual observers think of McCarthy as a McGovern-style liberal, so this comes as a surprise to them:

Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis, vowed to drive the Communists out of the DFL in 1948 — and Gene McCarthy was recruited as part of that effort. The campaign was ruthless; the Communists were denounced as subversives and appeasers. The liberals' success was total, and the group that drove the reds out of the party went on to dominate the DFL for a generation, producing two vice presidents and three presidential candidates — Humphrey, McCarthy and Walter Mondale.

Over the next decade, Republicans tried to challenge McCarthy as insufficiently anti-Communist but never succeeded. "I have supported the un-American activities committee and every basic piece of legislation directed to control subversive activities," he told the press during the 1952 campaign. He was right about that. (http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/12/1354248)

Prior to that McCarthy and his wife " founded a Catholic anticapitalist rural commune in Minnesota." (ibid) He was not one of the two senators who had the good sense to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that launched the U.S. into the Vietnam quagmire.

McCarthy had a shtick and worked it as long as he could. Aside from his brief moment of valor in 1968 his political career was a minor footnote. See "Eugene McCarthy and the Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," by Dominic Sandbrook.

This article is quite weak, missing entirely McCarthy's anticommunism and much of his early bio. Nicmart 15:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

McCarthy was bad because he was anti-Communist? Driving the Communists out of the DFL was bad? Anti-Communism was a core part of post-World War II American liberalism, including organized labor and democratic socialists. Are *you* a communist? Look, American liberalism succeeded because the communists were shown the door. They were disruptive fanatical true believers, automatons taking orders straight from the Kremlin, who would have destroyed the DFL Party, the CIO, and the legacy of the New Deal. Eugene McCarthy was right.n 70.108.135.136 15:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

You misconstrued my point, which I don't think was your fault. I think anticommunism was a good thing, although not all the nonsense of the U.S. Senate. My point was that McCarthy's reputation with liberals is based largely on their misconception of his political history. Nicmart 18:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

What makes you think there were misconceptions? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

---

I'd also like to see some evidence of him supporting Nader in 2000. I've seen several sources that say he supported Gore and he isn't talked about as being a support anywhere in Nader's book Crashing The Party, which is full of name dropping. Pimpalicious 17:46, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Nevermind, I should read more carefully. I feel dumb now. Anyway, I'll go ahead and add that he supported Gore. Pimpalicious 17:48, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

View of Politics

Sometime in the 70s I heard him on the radio saying that a successful politician has to fit Vince Lombardi's description of a successful football coach: "Smart enough to master and manipulate a complicated set of rules and variables, and stupid enough to think that it means anything."

Like most of McCarthy's quips, he repeated that one for decades, ad nauseum. Nicmart 15:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great quote

"Being in politics is like coaching football. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." 86.17.246.75 20:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)