McCarthy’s Victory In Defeat

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31772, 31 August 1968, Page 13

McCarthy’s Victory In Defeat

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

CHICAGO, Aug. 30. Senator Eugene McCarthy bucked the Democratic Party’s establishment with legions of breathless youngsters and none of the time-honoured weapons and wiles of the successful politician, writes Joseph Mohbat, of the Associated Press.

He had no money, no political base, no organisation, no influential support. So he lost, in the conventional sense of the word, in that he failed to win his party’s Presidential nomination.

But Senator McCarthy also won his race, in the sense that American politics may never be the same after the romantic adventure that began so quietly in the New Hampshire snow last winter. His young supporters, although looking as if the world had just ended, are also taking heart from some of the battles he won on his way to losing the war.

He was the leading edge of the avalanche that ultimately forced President Johnson to announce he would not seek another term.

He spread throughout the land a new belief that housewives, clerks and college students—thousands and thousands of college students could find themselves a niche and play a role in shaping the nation’s future.

He gave a new image and likeness to the word “politician.”

There have been few, if any, like this former professor who rejected virtually every political orthodoxy and tradition, spoke quietly and avoided the carnival trappings of a political campaign whenever possible. Yet in these very victories lay his ultimate political defeat in the convention.

Senator McCarthy lost, too, because in his 20 years in politics he had never developed a political base to which he could return for major support when the time came for the big move. He is an efficient senator, well liked in Minnesota, but he had little patronage to give and fewer political debts to collect.

He lost because he remained far out of the Democratic club in a year when the convention was deeply entrenched within it. There was a yawning generation gap between the McCarthyites and the party regulars. Neither spoke the other’s language or ever really tried to. The regulars never could Understand why Senator McCarthy would not concede defeat when he lost to the late Senator Robert Kennedy in most of the primaries. Why he went it alone, almost boasting, in his quiet way, that he never asked for the support of major political figures, big business, big labour.

He lost because he had no lode of wealth to tap; his campaign may be a million dollars in the red now, in spite of occasional generosity from a few benefactors. And for all the coins and dollar bills his young supporters tossed in the buckets, he never did come up with the cash to put across as many national television spots as he would have liked. He lost because even after he had been in the race many months he was not a really well known name—never an easily-recognisable public figure to be stopped in the streets, like the Kennedys, and certainly lacking the socalled charm that turned so many thousands towards them. He lost because he could never generate—and knew he could not, so he never tried—the depth of what ever compassion he might have for the black, the Mexican American, the Indian and the poor. “I’m not that way, and I won’t try to be,” he said. “They’ll have to understand my record. I just don’t generate the kind of response Bob Kennedy did. We’ve two types of political styles, and this is mine.”

Thus, Senator McCarthy inevitably appeared uncomfortable in settings that are the staff of life for normal political candidates. He had “a pervasive hang-up,” as his

young supporters would call it, about doing anything that seemed the least bit phony or staged. It kept him from indulging in such simple gestures as paying respect to the late Senator Kennedy when he appeared before the California delegate (174 votes) that had been pledged to Kennedy. All of these factors kept the Presidential nomination from Senator McCarthy’s grasp. Yet even the political pros could not ignore the McCarthy campaign slogan: “The man the people found, and he stood up alone and something happened.”