A New Cycle Begins

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?

A New Cycle Begins

A New Cycle Begins

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