Eugene McCarthy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Eugene J. "Gene" McCarthy | |
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| In office January 3, 1959– January 3, 1971 |
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| Preceded by | Edward John Thye |
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| Succeeded by | Hubert Humphrey |
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Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Minnesota's 4th district |
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| In office January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1959 |
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| Born | March 29, 1916 Watkins, Minnesota |
| Died | December 10, 2005 (aged 89) Washington, D.C. |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democratic-Farmer-Labor |
| Spouse | Abigail McCarthy (1945-2001) |
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy (March 29, 1916 – December 10, 2005) was an American politician and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.
In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president of the United States to succeed incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He would unsuccessfully seek the presidency five times altogether. In 1980, he endorsed Ronald Reagan for the presidency.[1]
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[edit] Biography
The son of a deeply religious mother of German descent and strong-willed father of Irish descent who was a postmaster and cattle buyer known for his earthy wit, McCarthy grew up in Watkins, Minnesota, as one of four children and attended St. Anthony's Catholic School in Watkins. A bright student who spent hours reading his aunt’s Harvard Classics, he was deeply influenced by the monks at nearby St. John’s Abbey and University. McCarthy spent nine months as a novice before deciding he didn’t have a religious calling and left the monastery, causing a fellow novice to say, “It was like losing a 20-game winner.”[2]
Senator McCarthy graduated from St. John's Preparatory School in 1931. He was a 1935 graduate of St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. McCarthy earned his master's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1939. He taught in various public schools in Minnesota and North Dakota from 1935 to 1940, when he became a professor of economics and education at St. John's, working there from 1940 to 1943.
He was a civilian technical assistant in the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department in 1944 and an instructor in sociology and economics at the College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota from 1946 to 1949.
McCarthy was a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Representing Minnesota's Fourth Congressional District, McCarthy served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 in the 81st, 82nd, 83rd, 84th, and 85th Congresses. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1958.
He was introduced to a larger audience in 1960 when he supported twice-defeated candidate former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson for the nomination. He claimed during his speech "Do not reject this man who made us all proud to be called Democrats!" He was later considered as Lyndon Johnson's running mate in 1964, only to have fellow Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey chosen.
He went on to serve in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971, in the 86th, 87th, 88th, 89th, 90th, and 91st Congresses, and was a member of (among other committees) the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A resident of the small community of Woodville, Virginia for about 20 years in later life.He also spent time over the years with his companion,CBS News reporter, Marya Mclaughlin. Eugene McCarthy died in a retirement home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. on December 10, 2005, where he had lived for the previous few years.
[edit] The 1968 campaign
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In 1968, McCarthy ran against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, with the intention of influencing the federal government — then controlled by Democrats — to curtail its involvement in the Vietnam War. A number of anti-war college students and other activists from around the country traveled to New Hampshire to support McCarthy's campaign. Some anti-war students who had the long-haired appearance of hippies chose to cut their long hair and shave off their beards, in order to campaign for McCarthy door-to-door, a phenomenon that led to the informal slogan "Get clean for Gene."[3]
McCarthy's decision to run was partly an outcome of opposition to the war by Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Morse gave speeches denouncing the war before it had entered the consciousness of most Americans. Following that, several politically active Oregon Democrats asked Robert Kennedy to run as an anti-war candidate. Initially Kennedy refused, so the group asked McCarthy to run, and he responded favorably.
McCarthy declared his candidacy on November 30, 1967 saying, "I am concerned that the Administration seems to have set no limit to the price it is willing to pay for a military victory." His candidacy was dismissed by political experts and the news media, and given little chance of making any impact against Johnson in the primaries. But public perception of him changed following the Tet Offensive (January 30 - September 23, 1968), the aftermath of which saw many Democrats grow disillusioned by the war, and quite a few interested in an alternative to LBJ. As his volunteers went door to door in New Hampshire, and as the media began paying more serious attention to the Senator, McCarthy began to rise in the opinion polls.
When McCarthy scored 42% to Johnson's 49% in the popular vote (and 20 of the 24 N.H. delegates to the Democratic national nominating convention) in New Hampshire on March 12 it was clear that deep division existed among Democrats on the war issue. By this time, Johnson had become inextricably defined by Vietnam, and this demonstration of divided support within his party meant his reelection (only four years after winning the highest percentage of the popular vote in modern history) was unlikely. On March 16 Kennedy announced that he would run, and was seen by many Democrats as a stronger candidate than McCarthy.
On March 31, in a surprise move, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Following that McCarthy won in Wisconsin where the Kennedy campaign was still getting organized. Although it was largely forgotten following subsequent events, McCarthy also won in Oregon against a well-organized Kennedy effort.
Quite a few of the people who had joined McCarthy's effort early on were Kennedy loyalists. Now that RFK was in the race, many jumped ship to his campaign, and they urged McCarthy to drop out and support Kennedy for the nomination. However, McCarthy resented the fact that Bobby had let him do the "dirty work" of challenging Johnson, and then only entered the race once it was apparent that the President was vulnerable. As a result, while he initially entered the campaign with few illusions of winning, McCarthy now devoted himself to beating Kennedy (and Hubert Humphrey, who entered the race after LBJ removed himself) and gaining the nomination.
While Humphrey was avoiding the primaries and counting on party bosses to make him the candidate at the convention, McCarthy and Kennedy squared off in California, each knowing that the state would be the make or break for them. They both campaigned vigorously up and down the state, with many polls showing them neck-and-neck, and a few even predicting a McCarthy victory. But a televised debate between them, in which McCarthy came off as both remote on the issues and ill-tempered toward his opponent, began to tilt undecided voters away from the Minnesota Senator. Kennedy took the crucial California primary on June 4, and looked forward to beating back Humphrey at the convention in Chicago.
Robert Kennedy was shot after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a speech he had delivered after midnight on June 5, just after learning of his victory. He died early on the morning of June 6. In response McCarthy refrained from political action for several days, but did not remove himself from the race.
Despite strong showings in several primaries, McCarthy garnered only 23 percent of the delegates at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, largely due to the control of state party organizations over the delegate selection process. After the assassination, many delegates for Kennedy chose to support George McGovern rather than McCarthy. Moreover, although the eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was not clearly an anti-war candidate, there was hope among some anti-war Democrats that Humphrey as President might succeed where Johnson had failed — in extricating the United States from Vietnam. McCarthy eventually gave a lukewarm endorsement of Humphrey.
Although McCarthy did not win the Democratic nomination, the anti-war "New Party," which ran several candidates for President that year, listed him as their nominee on the ballot in Arizona, where he received 2,751 votes. He also received 20,721 votes as a write-in candidate in California. However, even in Oregon where McCarthy had shown his greatest strength, it was the Kennedy forces who had a lasting impact on state politics, contributing Portland Mayor Vera Katz and Governor Neil Goldschmidt.
In the aftermath of their chaotic 1968 convention in Chicago, Democrats convened the McGovern-Fraser Commission to reexamine the manner in which delegates were chosen. The commission made a number of recommendations to reform the process, prompting widespread changes in Democratic state organizations and continual democratization of the nominating process for more than a decade. In response, the Republicans also formed a similar commission. Because of these changes, the practical role of national party conventions diminished dramatically. The first nominee of the Democratic Party under the new system was Senator George McGovern in 1972. His crushing defeat by Richard Nixon caused the Democrats to establish a more "smoke filled room" oriented system, thus installing superdelegates to potentially override another possible "unelectable" candidate. Still, the system allowed for the nomination, and subsequent election, of the nearly universally unknown Jimmy Carter by the Democrats in 1976. Some have argued that the increased significance of primaries has resulted in candidates who are more nationally palatable than those that might have been chosen in a "smoke-filled room." Others see the changes as a mixed blessing because they may make initial name recognition and money more decisive factors in securing the nomination.
Following the 1968 election, McCarthy returned to the Senate, but announced that he would not be running for reelection in 1970, to the disappointment of many Minnesotans. He disappointed many more people nationwide by declining to take a leadership role in Congress against the war. Indeed, he almost seemed to take a turn to the political Right during his final two years in the Senate, as witnessed by his opposition to President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, a form of "reverse income tax" to help the poor get off of welfare. What made McCarthy's opposition to FAP ironic was that it was almost identical to a plan he had proposed several years earlier.
[edit] Subsequent campaigns and career
[edit] 1972 campaign
After leaving the Senate in 1971, McCarthy became a senior editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishing and a syndicated newspaper columnist.
McCarthy returned to politics as a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972, but he fared poorly in New Hampshire and Wisconsin and soon dropped out.
[edit] 1976 Independent campaign
After the 1972 campaign, he left the Democratic Party, and ran as an Independent candidate for President in the 1976 election. During that campaign, he took a libertarian stance on civil liberties, promised to create full employment by shortening the work week, came out in favor of nuclear disarmament, and declared whom he would nominate to various Cabinet postings if elected. Mainly, however, he battled ballot access laws that he deemed too restrictive and encouraged voters to reject the two-party system.[1]
His numerous legal battles during the course of the election, along with a strong grassroots effort in friendly states, allowed him to appear on the ballot in 30 states and eased ballot access for later third party candidates. His party affiliation was listed on ballots, variously, as "Independent," "McCarthy '76," "Non-Partisan," "Nom. Petition," "Nomination," "Not Designated," and "Court Order". Although he was not listed on the ballot in California and Wyoming, he was recognized as a write-in candidate in those states. In many states, he did not run with a vice presidential nominee, but he came to have a total of 15 running mates in states where he was required to have one. At least eight of his running mates were women.[2]
He opposed Watergate-era campaign finance laws, becoming a plaintiff in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that certain provisions of federal campaign finance laws were unconstitutional.[3] McCarthy, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union, philanthropist Stewart Mott, the Conservative Party of the State of New York, the Mississippi Republican Party, and the Libertarian Party, were the plaintiffs in Buckley, becoming key players in killing campaign spending limits and public financing of political campaigns.
[edit] 1988 campaign
In the 1988 election, his name appeared on the ballot as the Presidential candidate of a handful of left-wing state parties, such as the Consumer Party in Pennsylvania and the Minnesota Progressive Party in Minnesota. In his campaign he supported trade protectionism, Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (or "Star Wars") and the abolition of the two-party system[4]. He received 24,561 votes.
[edit] 1992 campaign
In 1992, returning to the Democratic Party, he entered the New Hampshire primary and campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but was excluded from the first and therefore most important televised debate by its moderator Tom Brokaw of NBC. McCarthy, along with other candidates who had been excluded from the 1992 Democratic debates (including "Billy Jack" actor Tom Laughlin, two-time New Alliance Party Presidential candidate Lenora Fulani, former Irvine, California mayor Larry Agran, and others) staged protests and unsuccessfully took legal action in an attempt to be included in the debates. Unlike the other excluded candidates mentioned, McCarthy was a long term national candidate and unlike all those who were in the debates, including Bill Clinton, McCarthy had run for the office in previous elections.
[edit] Activism
In 2000, McCarthy was active in the movement to include Green candidate Ralph Nader in the Presidential debates.
McCarthy was a long time member of the Board of Advisors of the Federation for American Immigration Reform[4]. Along with Ted Kennedy, he was one of the original co-sponsors of the Immigration Act of 1965. He later regretted this, noting that "unrecognized by virtually all of the bill's supporters, were provisions which would eventually lead to unprecedented growth in numbers and the transfer of policy control from the elected representatives of the American people to individuals wishing to bring relatives to this country."[5]
[edit] Personal life
McCarthy left his wife, Abigail, in 1969 after 24 years of marriage. They never divorced. McCarthy was rumored to be having a longterm affair with prominent columnist and journalist Shana Alexander. However, according to Dominic Sandbrook's recent McCarthy biography, it was the late CBS News correspondent Marya McLaughlin[6] that McCarthy was actually involved with, in a long-term relationship that lasted until Ms. McLaughlin's death in 1998.[7] McCarthy died of complications from Parkinson's disease at the age of 89 on December 10, 2005 at Georgetown Retirement Residence in Washington, D.C. His eulogy was given by former President Bill Clinton. McCarthy's estranged wife Abigail died in 2001 shortly before turning 86.
Following his death the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University dedicated their Public Policy Center the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy.[8]
[edit] Presidential election results
| McCarthy's presidential campaign results | |||
| Election | Party | votes | % |
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| 1968 | (various) | 25,634 | 0.04% |
| 1976 | independent | 740,460 | 0.91% |
| 1988 | Consumer | 30,905 | 0.03% |
[edit] Books by Eugene McCarthy
- Frontiers in American Democracy (1960)
- Dictionary of American Politics (1962)
- A Liberal Answer to the Conservative Challenge (1964)
- The Limits of Power: America's Role in the World (1967)
- The Year of the People (1969)
- A Political Bestiary, by Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick (1979) (ISBN 0-380-46508-6)
- Gene McCarthy's Minnesota: Memories of a Native Son (1982) (ISBN 0-86683-681-0)
- Complexities and Contrarities (1982) (ISBN 0-15-121202-3)
- Up Til Now: A Memoir (1987)
- Required Reading: A Decade of Political Wit and Wisdom (1988) (ISBN 0-15-176880-3)
- Nonfictional Economics: The Case for Shorter Hours of Work, by Eugene McCarthy and William McGaughey (1989) (ISBN 0-275-92514-5)
- A Colony of the World: The United States Today (1992) (ISBN 0-7818-0102-8)
- Eugene J. McCarthy: Selected Poems by Eugene J. McCarthy, Ray Howe (1997) (ISBN 1-883477-15-8)
- No-Fault Politics (1998) (ISBN 0-8129-3016-9)
- 1968: War and Democracy (2000) (ISBN 1-883477-37-9)
- Hard Years: Antidotes to Authoritarians (2001) (ISBN 1-883477-38-7)
- Parting Shots from My Brittle Brow: Reflections on American Politics and Life (2005) (ISBN 1-55591-528-0)
[edit] References
- ^ MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour (December 12, 2005). Online NewsHour: Remembering Sen. Eugene McCarthy — December 12, 2005. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
- ^ His time was then ' and now
- ^ Get Clean For Gene: Eugene McCarthy's 1968 Presidential Campaign - George Rising
- ^ A Personal Note on the Passing of Eugene McCarthy
- ^ A Colony of the World: The United States Today, p.57.
- ^ McLaughlin's CBS News obituary
- ^ James Kilpatrick recalls their relationship
- ^ The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement. College of Saint Benedict. Retrieved on 2007-09-06.
[edit] References
- Eugene McCarthy at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Dominic Sandbrook, Eugene McCarthy and The Rise and Fall of American Liberalism (2005).
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Eugene J McCarthy Lectureship at Saint John's University
- Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005): The Legacy of the Former Senator and Anti-War Presidential Candidate
- Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race, Dies at 89 — The New York Times
- Minnesota senator shook world in '68 — Star Tribune of Minneapolis
- Gentle Senator, Presidential Hopeful Empowered U.S. Antiwar Movement — The Washington Post
- Eugene Joseph McCarthy, a maverick presidential candidate, died on December 10th, aged 89 — The Economist
- Some poems by Eugene McCarthy
- "Eugene McCarthy: Candidacy inspired antiwar movement" Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2005
- “No Success Like Failure.” by Jon Wiener. The Nation, May 3, 2004, 50–53.
- Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Eugene McCarthy from 1916 to 2005
- Eugene McCarthy's 1968 announcement speech
- A 1968 McCarthy for President brochure
- "Gene McCarthy" Article by George McGovern in the The Nation, (December 15, 2005).
- Obituary from the National Catholic Reporter
| Preceded by Edward Devitt |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota's 4th congressional district 1949–1959 |
Succeeded by Joseph Karth |
| Preceded by Edward John Thye |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Minnesota 1959–1971 Served alongside: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale |
Succeeded by Hubert Humphrey |
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