December 14, 2005
Exit Gene McCarthy
By William
F. Buckley
The death of Eugene McCarthy marks the end of a cycle and almost
certainly the beginning of a new cycle with similar hallmarks. The
day McCarthy died, Virginia's popular Democratic governor, Mark
Warner, signaled his candidacy for the presidency in 2008, a claim
for the support of the Democratic center.
And a group
that calls itself "World Can't Wait" (www.worldcantwait.org)
announced a campaign to save the United States from George Bush.
Sen. Eugene
McCarthy had aspired to be president but, after a while, in a
formalistic way. He did run for president in 1968, and by scoring
42 percent in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, drove incumbent
President Lyndon Johnson out of the race, and out of town. But
he did not himself win the nomination, let alone the presidency.
McCarthy's
career was dotted by political disappointments. He had hoped,
in 1960, to be named if not presidential candidate, then vice
presidential. He delivered the most eloquent nominating address
in postwar history, asking the convention to name yet again Adlai
Stevenson. This was viewed as an oblique move against Sen. John
F. Kennedy.
The Kennedy
forces looked on, unamused. They weren't afraid of McCarthy, whose
oratorical cadenza was dazzling, but was not seriously challenging
to the prescribed outcome of the Los Angeles convention, which
was Kennedy bound. But there was some worry that McCarthy's oratory
might have the effect of suggesting that the nomination of John
Kennedy had nothing whatever to do with democratic idealism, quickly
confirmed by the choice of Lyndon Johnson as running mate. It
was widely felt that the truly qualified dauphin of democratic
idealism, Adlai Stevenson, lingered only in the memory of McCarthy's
nominating speech.
Eight years
later JFK was dead and the Vietnam War was raging. Eugene McCarthy
went up to New Hampshire to see what he could do to egg history
on. He did a great deal, precipitating the withdrawal of President
Johnson. But that's as far as it went.
The restless,
demanding tone of dissatisfaction expressed today by the radical
left with such candidacies as Mark Warner's was prefigured in
the Village Voice in 1968. There, Jack Newfield, an ardent
and exasperated ideological interventionist, wrote about McCarthy:
"Let the unhappy, brutal truth come out. Eugene McCarthy's
campaign is a disaster. It has been run as if King Constantine
was the manager. McCarthy's speeches are dull, vague, and without
either (life) or poetry. He is lazy and vain."
What to do?
"Start organizing now for disruption of the Democratic Convention
in Chicago next August."
That -- disruption
-- is the goal, almost 40 years later, of the World Can't Wait
people. In their full-page advertisement they announced a "State
of the Union Emergency," and are calling for demonstrations
after the State of the Union Address by President Bush in January.
They wish
to unseat President Bush for his "outrageous lies,"
for his "murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq,"
for "openly torturing people," for working for the establishment
of "a theocracy," and for enshrining "greed, bigotry,
intolerance and ignorance."
"People
look at all this and think of Hitler -- and they are right to
do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society
very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We
must act now; the future is in the balance."
Who endorses
such stuff? The homeless radicals, of course (Queers for Economic
Justice, ACT UP New York City, the National Lawyers Guild). But
also a few recognizable names: Jane Fonda, Ed Begley Jr., Jonathan
Kozol, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Grace Paley, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal,
Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker. Roughly speaking, the surviving cadre
of people who deplored McCarthyism. It is wrong to accuse fellow
Americans of being soft on communism, but OK to accuse them of
being soft on Hitler.
The Mark
Warners in the Democratic Party will probably prevail, as Hubert
Humphrey prevailed over the insurgencies of Eugene McCarthy and
George McGovern. But in 1968 the play was set with tight schedules.
New Hampshire to the national conventions to Election Day was
nine months. The comparable schedule this time around will take
almost two years -- from Bush's State of the Union Address to
Election Day 2008. Can the world wait?
Copyright
2005 Universal Press Syndicate
