Letter From a Whig
Will, George F.
(WASHINGTON) -- Former Senator Eugene McCarthy again is running for President, and some people are comparing McCarthy with Harold Stassen. Such comparisons are unfair to Stassen. Obviously...
...I have left Act I, for involution and Act II...
...a household word was on the way to becoming a national joke...
...He lost the fight for the "dove plank" at the Chicago convention...
...What, in fact, was the achievement...
...One of them concluded with these lines: My metaphors grow cold and old, My enemies, both young and bold...
...At least Stassen's most unfortunate activities have been more embarrassing than anti-social...
...He tells his troops that only his election would constitute convincing proof that the "system" is responsive...
...Stassen beat Dewey, Taft and others in primaries in Nebraska and the Dakotas...
...It is a nice comment, not on the power of the Senate in the Federal Government, but on his own ineffectiveness in the Senate...
...In 1959 he failed miserably in an attempt to win the Philadelphia mayorality...
...In 1958 he ran in the Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial primary and lost...
...He could not have foreseen how far he would fall...
...But, then, he never even came close, and he never will...
...McCarthy is a man of no substantial achievement who risked nothing as he parlayed a nearly unbroken string of political losses into the role of Martyr manque, and all that by way of fat lecture fees...
...But on 6 April, just a week before his forty-first birthday, Stas.sen scored a stunning upset, winning nineteen delegates to MacArthur's eight...
...The first number will make him yell, but he will be waiting for the second, and the third will make a new man of him...
...Mccarthy did not want the seat enough to fight for it...
...He was the youngest governor in the Nation in an era when Pres~(lems came trom state nouses more often than from the Senate...
...That nomination looked very valuable in early 1948 and a gaggle of candidates emerged...
...He erred badly in 1956 when he tried to organize a Republican drive to dump Nixon from the ticket...
...He intended the joke as a deprecation of the Senate...
...Stassen's descent was more dramatic...
...The A l t e r n a t i v e ; March, 1972 23 Think of the dreadful stuff he has to read--scholarly journals, the New York Review of Books, notices from John Gardner, reports from faculty committees...
...Stassen must have known how close he came...
...Stassen's Waterloo came 17 May 1948, in a radio studio in Portland, Oregon, when he and Dewey sat down to debate "Should the Communist Party be Outlawed...
...To put the matter gently, McCarthy has done nothing to dampen the anti-democratic spirit of young Americans...
...He is running on resentment of the way he was treated at the 1968 Chicago convention...
...That state claimed General Douglas MacArthur as a native son, and the General was a heavy favorite to win, in spite of his refusal to leave Tokyo to campaign...
...Stassen is a Republican, McCarthy a Democrat, but both have reflected, at various times and in varying degrees, the influence of Great Plains progressivism...
...But Stassen, unlike McCarthy, descended from a position of accomplishment that made him a plausible Presidential candidate...
...A debacle without tragedy is just a farce...
...On 24 June the Republican Convention in Philadelphia east its first ballot...
...Both men have sought the Presidency long after they lost their constituencies...
...But three men dominated the race from the start...
...It doesn't really matter...
...From 1955 to 1958 be served as special assistant to the President to direct disarmament studies, a position with Cabinet rank...
...And, of course, he lost the nomination...
...Last year McCarthy published a slender volume of intriguing poems...
...Thus he descends from implausibility to frivolity...
...McCarthy did not risk losing a valued constituency...
...Stassen's pathetic pride transformed him from a distinguished public servant into a laughingstock...
...Btlt these are surface similarities...
...He will begin to forget the revolution...
...Arrogafice is the essence of his mission, which he describes as "giving the system a chance...
...But he was not a plausible candidate because few voters believe a one-idea man can cope with a complex world...
...He obviously holds the Senate in low esteem, and that is odd...
...His lectures will improve...
...He was expected to win it and coast to the nomination...
...Dewey won none and was badly wounded...
...His insistence that his name be placed before the Miami Convention in 1968 was excruciatingly embarrassing for everyone, in spite of the fact that the nominator - - Stassen's son - - brought simple dignity to his demonstration of filial piety...
...The "boy wonder" was getting long of tooth...
...But courage involves risk, and what did McCarthy risk...
...With 517 votes needed to win, the leaders were Dewey 434, Taft 224, Stassen 157...
...Address Correction Requested...
...His absentee record and general inattentiveness to Senate business was a minor legend long before he caught Presidential fever...
...He is a vigorous critic of Presidential power, and he says that he decided to run when he became convinced that Johnson would not respect the rights and dignity of the Senate, and especially of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which McCarthy was a member...
...McCarthy's descent has been more swift but less dramatic...
...He misjudged everything - - Nixon's strength, Eisenhower's refusal to be pushed, the temper of the GOP, and his own political impotence...
...His idea -that we should end the war -- was plausible...
...He lost every contested primary except Oregon's...
...Eisenhower named him director of the Foreign Operations Administration...
...Hubert Humphrey wanted his seat, and probably would have trounced him in a primary...
...He made a determined but very weak effort for the 1952 GOP nomination...
...But Dewey, a cunning lawyer who had won fame as proseeutor of New York gangsters, skated rhetorical rings around Stassen, who became bewildered and finally contrived to appear soft on Communism...
...In 1968 he was a one-issue candidate...
...Both .Stassen and McCarthy have descended to frivolity...
...A quarter of a century ago Stassen's vigor and thoughtful idealism drew a large number of talented young men into Republican politics, and conservatives can take special pleasure from the careers of the two former Stassenites who have risen highest - - Senator Gordon AUott of Colorado and Chief Justice Warren Burger...
...It was not to be...
...They were Governor Dewey of New York, Senator Taft of Ohio and Stassen...
...Dewey won after the second ballot...
...His dabblings in the 1960 and 1964 presidential races were sad...
...Losing to a write-in candidate is no mean achievement...
...But the lesson loses its force and value if we forget that he was a man of dignity and achievement...
...The differences are more telling...
...The Stassen campaign never recovered and, perhaps, Stassen himself never did either...
...But Stassen was still the frontrunner going into the crucial Oregon primary...
...In 1955 he represented the U.S...
...But everyone, McCarthyites included, knows that McCarthyites are a small minority ~f the population...
...He did not risk unendurable hostility when he opposed, simultaneously, the most unpopular war in American history and the most unpopular President of modern times...
...This caper was a harbinger of more extravagant capers to come...
...Stassen narrowly missed the brass ring, and the disappointment destroyed his equilibrium...
...In 1938, at age 31, he became boy wonder" Governor of Minnesota...
...There was an element of tragedy in Stassen's decline...
...McCarthy's career is less moving and, really, less interesting...
...But he had not yet lost the respect of his Party's leaders...
...After the first two acts the audience wandered off...
...Thus the logic of the doctrine is that the "system" should respond not to their superior numbers, but to their superior virtues...
...In fact, the joke was more accurate than McCarthy would care to admit...
...He won few delegates - - and the lasting enmity of all GOP regulars, whose candidate Taft was...
...There mired in complexity I cannot write Act III...
...And their unlovely displays of hubris have caused them to lose even the affection of the constituencies whose loyalties they once held...
...So much for the heroic dimension of McCarthy's 1968 achievement...
...Four days later Stassen lost to Dewey by less than 10,000 votes out of 225,000 votes cast...
...He did not value (or, for that matter, serve) the Minnesota constituency that gave him the Senate seat he disdained...
...Stassen endorsed the proposition...
...And he gained a national following by placing himself at the head of a pre-existing anti-war, anti-LBJ constituency...
...It is highly unlikely that Eugene McCarthy's career will have a similar invigorating effort on the political process...
...He needs a change...
...Obviously McCarthy and Stassen are similar in some ways...
...Probably either Stassen or Taft would have beat Truman...
...he never had or deserved such a reputation...
...McCarthy is in the process of falling as low as Stassen, but he cannot fall from as high...
...McCarthy continues to enjoy a good (continued on page 23) 4 The Alternative ; March, 1972 LEI"rER FROM A WHIG (continued from page 4) press and, because we know the political disposition of those who write history books, it is safe to predict that his 1968 campaign will be called "courageous...
...on the United Nations' Disarmament Commission...
...McCarthy did not risk losing a reputation as a diligent Senator...
...He served with distinction until 1945, when he became President of the University of Pennsylvania, and drew a bead on the 1948 GOP nomination...
...In spite of all the chatter about his idealism, his campaigns are fueled by a mixture of cynicism and arrogance...
...By now, of course, Stassen has become an object lesson in the way a good man can lose his dignity in politics...
...Happenstance denied hum preeminance...
...He lost the New Hampshire primary (he got 42 per cent of the vote) to a President whose name was not even on the ballot...
...Today the war is ending and McCarthy is a less than one-issue candidate...
...a fatal flaw denied him dignity in decline...
...Next came Wisconsin...
...McCarthy's pride cannot work a similar transformation...
...He enjoyed saying that he could accomplish as much in the Hotel as he could in the Senate...
...Both are products of the rich political loom of Minnesota...
...Why not send him The Alternative...
...Stassen lost to Dewey in the New Hampshire pruna~., but that was considered a New Yorker's backyard...
...He blundered by challenging Taft in Ohio's 4 May primary...
...Stassen was a harbinger of spring for Republicans in the dark winter of the New Deal...
...McCarthy decided not to seek reelection to the Senate in 1970...
...When McCarthy left the Senate, he moved his office into the Carroll Arms Hotel across the street from the New Senate Office Building...
...Had Stassen won the radio debate he probably would have won the nomination...
...After the New Hampshire loss it was all down hill...
...He needs a change that will shake him up and lift him out of his gloom...
...The cynicism is manifested in McCarthy's well-known delight in disparaging, in semi-private, the followers whose enthusiasm he toys with and whose money is spent...
Vol. 5 • March 1972 • No. 6
