Eugene McCarthy

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Eugene J. "Gene" McCarthy

U.S. Senator from Minnesota
Term of office: January, 1959–January, 1971
Political party:	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Preceded by:	Edward John Thye
Succeeded by:	Hubert H. Humphrey
Born:	March 29, 1916 Watkins, Minnesota
Died:	December 10, 2005 Washington, D.C.
Spouse:	Abigail McCarthy (deceased)

Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy (March 29, 1916 – December 10, 2005) was an American politician and a longtime member of the U.S. Congress. 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.

He is not to be confused with Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy who sought out Communist spies within the federal government.

1 Biography
2 The 1968 campaign
3 Subsequent campaigns and career
4 Books by Eugene McCarthy
5 External links
6 Sources

[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. 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. As part of the oldest religious order in the Western world, the St. John’s Benedictines have been among the most progressive forces in American Catholicism. 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.” <ref>"http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/121305/mccarthy.html]"</ref>

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. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1958.

He went on to serve in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971, 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, 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

Main article: U.S. presidential election, 1968

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 county 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."

When McCarthy scored 42% to Johnson's 49% 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 31, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

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. Other factors that contributed to the attrition of delegates for McCarthy included the entrance into the contest of Robert Kennedy as an (at least potentially) anti-war candidate a few days after McCarthy's strong showing in New Hampshire.

Kennedy was shot after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a speech he had delivered after midnight on June 5, after learning of his victory in the June 4 California Democratic primary; he died earlier on the morning of June 6. After the assassination, many delegates for Kennedy chose to support George McGovern rather than McCarthy. Moreover, although the eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, was not a clearly 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.

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.

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 most immediately visible effect of the reforms was the eventual nomination of national 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."

[edit] Subsequent campaigns and career

After leaving the Senate in 1971, McCarthy became a senior editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishing and a syndicated newspaper columnist.

McCarthy would return 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.

After the 1972 campaign, he left the Democratic Party, and ran as an Independent candidate for President in 1976. 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 who 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 grand 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]

In 1988, 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 a grand total of 24,561 votes.

In 1992, returning to the Democratic Party, he entered the New Hampshire primary and campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but was excluded from most debates by party officials. McCarthy, along with other candidates excluded from the 1992 Democratic debates (including 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. In 2000, McCarthy was active in the movement to include Green candidate Ralph Nader in the Presidential debates. In 2005, he was listed as a member of the board of advisors of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a largely honorary post. He remained a prolific writer, and authored several books on a variety of subjects. He was also a published poet.

McCarthy left his wife, Abigail, in 1969. 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 most likely the late CBS News correspondent Marya McLoughlin that McCarthy was actually involved with, in a long-term relationship that lasted until Ms. McLoughlin's death in 1998. McCarthy died at the age of 89 on December 10, 2005 at Georgetown Retirement Residence in Washington, DC of complications from Parkinson's disease. His eulogy was given by former President Bill Clinton.

[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] External links

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Eugene McCarthy

Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Eugene McCarthy, 1916-2005
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

[edit] Sources

This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
http://www.IMDb.com
Dominic Sandbrook, Eugene McCarthy and The Rise and Fall of American Liberalism (2005).

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