Eugene McCarthy

Eugene J. "Gene" McCarthy
Eugene J. "Gene" McCarthy
Senior Senator, Minnesota
	In office; January, 1959–January, 1971
Preceded by	Edward John Thye
Succeeded by	Hubert H. Humphrey
Personal details
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Abigail McCarthy (deceased)

Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy (March 29, 1916–December 10, 2005) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Minnesota 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 against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He would unsuccessfully seek the Democratic presidential nomination five times altogether.

Biography

Born in Watkins, Minnesota, where he attended the public schools, 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 the public schools of 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 St. Thomas College, St. Paul, Minnesota from 1946 to 1949.

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 inside a retirement home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. on December 10, 2005, where he had lived for the past few years.

The 1968 campaign

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 antiwar college students and other activists from around the county traveled to New Hampshire to support McCarthy's campaign. Some antiwar 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, 1968, 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, 1968, Johnson announced 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) antiwar candidate a few days after McCarthy's strong showing in New Hampshire.

Kennedy was assassinated after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, the evening following his victory in the California Democratic primary. 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 antiwar candidate, there was hope among some antiwar Democrats that Humphrey as President might succeed where Johnson had failed—in extricating the United States from Vietnam.

Effects of the 1968 campaign

In the aftermath of the 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, which tend to be dominated by party activists, has resulted in candidates who are less nationally palatable than those that might have been chosen in a "smoke-filled room."

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. After the 1972 campaign, he left the Democratic party, and ran as an Independent candidate for President in 1976, placing third with 740,460 votes (less than 1%). He opposed post-Watergate 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. In 1980, he wrote the introduction to A New Beginning, the campaign book of Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark but eventually endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan. In 1982, McCarthy failed in an attempt to reclaim his seat in the Senate, losing the Democratic primary to Mark Dayton.

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 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 2004, 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 died at the age of 89 on December 10, 2005, at a retirement home in Washington, DC.

Books by Eugene McCarthy

A Liberal Answer to the Conservative Challenge (1964)
The Limits of Power: America's Role in the World (1968)
The Year of the People (1969)
A Political Bestiary, by Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick (1979) (ISBN 0380465086)
Gene McCarthy's Minnesota: Memories of a Native Son (1982) (ISBN 0866836810)
Complexities and Contrarities (1982) (ISBN 0151212023)
Up Til Now: A Memoir (1987)
Required Reading: A Decade of Political Wit and Wisdom (1988) (ISBN 0151768803)
Nonfictional Economics: The Case for Shorter Hours of Work, by Eugene McCarthy and William McGaughey (1989) (ISBN 0275925145)
A Colony of the World: The United States Today (1992) (ISBN 0781801028)
Eugene J. McCarthy: Selected Poems by Eugene J. McCarthy, Ray Howe (1997) (ISBN 1883477158)
No-Fault Politics (1998) (ISBN 0812930169)
1968: War and Democracy (2000) (ISBN 1883477379)
Hard Years: Antidotes to Authoritarians (2001) (ISBN 1883477387)
Parting Shots from My Brittle Brow: Reflections on American Politics and Life (2005) (ISBN 1555915280)

External links

Sources

This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Preceded by Edward John Thye	United States Senator from Minnesota 1959–1971	Succeeded by Hubert H. Humphrey