MCCARTHY FOR PRESIDENT: A CHALLENGE TO CONSCIENCE
PROGRESSIVE McCarthy for President: A Challenge to Conscience As we move through this joyless winter of disaster abroad and despair at home, it becomes increasingly manifest that only the most...
...Most of the articulate opposition in Congress to the President's Vietnam policy has come from Demo-qrats—and it came long before McCarthy entered the race...
...The prospects for such a reversal are not bright...
...The frustrations of the poor and the unpleasantness of our cities cannot be separated from the war in Vietnam...
...it is a spirit of joylessness and of fear...
...Eugene McCarthy articulates that challenge, and he provides us with the political leadership that is essential to transform the sometimes interesting but usually ineffective dialogues in our living rooms into meaningful political action where it counts -—at the polls...
...It is rubbish to argue that McCarthy's candidacy splits the Democratic Party...
...We should respond...
...McCarthy's candidacy represents what is finest in the American political tradition...
...In response to a question raised by a college student on much the same problem, Walter Lippmann replied: "You shouldn't ask me what's going to succeed in order to decide what you are for...
...This is true of some moderately liberal Democrats who have a greater loyalty to party than to principle...
...He knows little, and cares less, about the razzle-dazzle and whoop-de-do of the carnival approach to politics...
...And it was President Johnson who betrayed that pledge by escalating the war in Vietnam to perilous proportions and, in the process, torpedoed his concept of the Great Society...
...I have not abandoned the Democratic Party," said Senator McCarthy, "but the Democratic Party has abandoned the positions it took in 1964...
...It is true, too, of the growing group of young radicals and the diverse assortment of peaceniks who despair of the poltical process and find McCarthy an uncongenial companion whose rational leadership does not accommodate their mood of militant uprising against all of American society...
...It is patriotism at high tide...
...Kennedy has released his supporters by making it clear that he has no stomach for the kind of struggle McCarthy has undertaken...
...This lament comes largely from liberal and moderate Democrats who reject some or all of the President's Vietnam policy but fear that a McCarthy-created party split will lead to destruction of the gains of the Great Society as the result of Republican victory...
...It is possible that even if McCarthy loses, the country could "win" as the result of his candidacy...
...For all its eloquent commitment to the concept of government by the consent of the governed, our political process retains too many built-in barriers that prevent the governed from expressing their consent or dissent...
...The McCarthy candidacy is achieving significant strides, but it would be trifling with the truth to refuse to recognize that many Americans and most of their political leaders who reject all, most, or some of the Administration's policies continue to hang back or to oppose him...
...The Administration's order of priorities has become tragically distorted...
...Johnson's reelection...
...Here, then, are the arguments and our responses: Item: McCarthy can't win...
...From his rejection of the war as morally indefensible, through his recognition of the ultimate reality of Communist influence in the settlement, to his acceptance of phased withdrawal if negotiations fail—all these policies are in collision with the President's proclaimed position...
...McCarthy, more than any other candidate on any ticket, understands the need to reverse our priorities by diverting the men, money, energies, and skills demanded by the nation's obsessive emphasis on Vietnam to a bold and affirmative program of action de"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" signed to combat the social and economic ills that threaten to cripple our country...
...You should decide what you are for and work to make it succeed...
...But the spirit of America today is not one of greatness...
...We cannot wage the war in Vietnam and at the same time alleviate the hopelessness that leads to riots...
...There are possibilities of negotiations now...
...But for all its frailties, our system does provide a modest opportunity for opposition...
...Still in the realm of realism, it is instructive to recall that most of the social and economic gains of our (middle-aged) generation have been achieved because front-running forces like the LaFollette Progressives and the Norman Thomas Socialists were willing to risk political defeat decades ago while they exposed the corruption and inequalities of our system, and educated the electorate to demand major reforms...
...This is the most cynical argument among those who feel sick at heart over Administration policies but refuse to accept McCarthy...
...if the McCarthy candidacy fails this spring and summer, they can still be loyal to their party's nominee in November...
...But there are more compelling considerations...
...Consider these greatly telescoped excerpts from the Senator's recent statements : "We must, first of all, extricate ourselves as honorably and as quickly as possible from a war that is morally and diplomatically indefensible...
...We have heard, read, and pondered most of the arguments of those who refuse to enlist in McCarthy's gallant struggle to provide effective, progressive leadership in this year of decision...
...It was twenty years ago, at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, that Hubert Humphrey defied the leadership of his party to fight for—and get—a liberal plank on civil rights...
...For those whose commitment to the Democratic Party is total, we remind them that McCarthy's candidacy is within their party, that by supporting McCarthy in 1968 they can move to restore their party to the position that won unprecedented success in 1964...
...One can understand the clashes that make up his tortured soliloquies, but another way of putting it is to say that he has been struggling to keep alive his role as the darling of the dissenters even as he clings to his franchise as a party regular committed to Mr...
...This is still the position of a fairly numerous body of liberals, but their ranks are thinning fast...
...After a recent address by McCarthy in its city, the St...
...He says it clearly, at times eloquently, with a depth of moral conviction that glows through his words...
...The Senator, we believe, would be the first to acknowledge that he is not a spellbinding orator who can whip an audience into a frenzy...
...Because those who tender this reason regard themselves as realists, our first response is to realism: If all the leaders and their followers who share McCarthy's position on Vietnam and its consequences would enroll in his crusade, his campaign would quickly become a major threat to the White House Establishment...
...The Progressive warmly endorses his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President, We support him wholeheartedly because: H McCarthy, of all the present or prospective candidates on any ticket, holds out the most meaningful alternative to the Johnson Administration's self-defeating policies in the immoral war in Vietnam...
...It is time to give first claim on our nation's resources to the pressing social problems that confront us...
...It was President Johnson who led his party to victory with the greatest majority in history in 1964 by campaigning on a platform of restraint in Vietnam and a forward thrust for the Great Society at home...
...I believe the possibility is a reality...
...Item: McCarthy's position on Vietnam is unclear or, as the lament is sometimes expressed, his position is not decisively different from President Johnson's...
...Senator Eugene McCarthy...
...It is important to remember that it was President Johnson who split his party and that McCarthy's candidacy merely reflects that fact of life...
...The Administration can no longer have it both ways...
...Item : McCarthy's candidacy will divide the Democratic Party and thus enhance Republican prospects for victory in November...
...Together these McCarthy policies add up to the kind of affirmative approach to end our miserable role in Vietnam that just about all dissenters from Administration policy have proposed—all, that is, except the extremists who demand nothing less than total victory for the Vietcong and Hanoi...
...One may differ with one or another or all of the McCarthy positions we have quoted, but it seems to us mischievous nonsense to pretend that the Senator's position on Vietnam is unclear or not significantly different from the President's...
...The Challenge at Home "The unrest in our cities cannot be written off as a 'Negro problem.' It is an American problem—a challenge to all Americans to make the kind of moral commitment and the commitment of resources that are necessary to alleviate the causes of despair in this country...
...Those are the priorities of America today, the priorities of the Great Society: $35.4 billions more for war, $2.6 billions more for the citizens of America...
...Our moral values are suspect at home even among those who live by those values, and they are denounced abroad even among those who are our allies...
...Kennedy has been confronted with a harsh dilemma...
...Our country has lost its way...
...we cannot spend more than $26 billion a year in Vietnam and still have safe and beautiful cities, fully financed school aid programs, and adequate programs of health care for our citizens...
...All of the eloquent resistance in Congress to the President's jettisoning of the Great Society has come from Democrats—and it came long before McCarthy agreed to become the symbol and the spearhead of the long prevalent opposition to the President...
...We propose to list them and to appraise them from the position of those like us who deeply believe in the compelling character of McCarthy's candidacy...
...His latest decision, that he will not be a candidate in 1968 "under foreseeable circumstances," frees his followers to support the man who dares confront the President in his own party...
...The conscience of the country is being challenged as seldom before in our lives...
...Given the magnitude and intensity of dissent in the United States today, it would be little less than a mortal blow at our vaunted democratic process if a Hobson's choice at the polls robbed the people of an alternative on the issues that dominate their lives—the war in Vietnam and its destructive impact on our domestic society and on our foreign policy everywhere in the world...
...These quotations, drastically abbreviated, strike at the heart of our problem in Vietnam...
...The facts, often buried or ignored by major segments of the press, expose the specious character of this claim...
...Indeed, one of the shrewdest judges of political horse flesh put it this way: "Gene McCarthy is one of those uncommon men who puts his courage in the service of his country...
...We say this because his appeal to conscience is bound to reach countless concerned Americans and, as a result, is certain to have considerable impact on the win-minded politicians of both parties who have their ears glued to the ground and their fingers wet to the wind...
...It is confronted with a crisis of conscience...
...The Administration has told us we are heading toward a Great Society...
...Whether that comes about through a coalition, or some other type of government, is for the Vietnamese to determine...
...Our priorities have become distorted as the war in Vietnam has escalated...
...I favor an end to the bombing of North Vietnam without prior conditions...
...The United States must be willing to accept a regime in Saigon that is not particularly friendly to us and has Communist influence in it as part of the price of early settlement...
...He hopes, as we do, that Americans deeply concerned about what is happening to their country will care less about how he says what he does and more about what he says...
...PROGRESSIVE McCarthy for President: A Challenge to Conscience As we move through this joyless winter of disaster abroad and despair at home, it becomes increasingly manifest that only the most fundamental and far-ranging reordering of our values and priorities can reverse the country's downward plunge to the lowest level in our lifetime...
...Why waste time and energy and money on a loser...
...But assuming that negotiations don't work out, I believe we should move to a kind of phased withdrawal...
...McCarthy's candidacy provides a measure of meaning and substance to a Presidential campaign that would otherwise have little of either, and it provides a vehicle for responsible yet hardhitting debate and dissent on the issues that count...
...When President Johnson made that judgment several years ago, he had not yet created his credibility gap...
...A final word on the "McCarthy can't win" explanation for voting for somebody and something you don't want...
...In the last two sessions of Congress, appropriations increased by $38 billion—$35.4 billions for armaments and $2.6 billions for non-defense programs...
...In this quadrennial year of electoral decision, a year in which a free people are theoretically in command of their destiny, the American voter may be free only to choose between a Presidential candidate who is the author of their discontent and a Presidential candidate who aspires to be co-author of much the same policies of frustration...
...He is a bitter, and often effective, critic of the Administration's policies in Vietnam and at home...
...Item: The only hope of the liberals to beat President Johnson is not McCarthy but Bobby Kennedy...
...Item: McCarthy's campaign is so low-key that he can't be serious about his candidacy...
...It is this opportunity that Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota has seized so courageously...
...Those who agree with him ought to quit worrying about his style and pay attention to his content...
...But he is given to Hamlet-like brooding over whether to strike all-out against the king now or bide his time until he can ascend the throne and put his own policies into practice...
...It enables us to gather together into a fighting force under his leadership all the random, leaderless fragments of opposition to the Johnson Administration's sterile reliance on discredited policies...
...I think it is impossible to deny the National Liberation Front a significant role in the future of South Vietnam...
...Louis Post-Dispatch put it this way: "Here, quite plainly, is a man who has something to say...
...The party wheelhorses predicted that this "split" in the party would lead to disaster, but President Truman went on to confound the experts and the pollsters—and the party hacks—by winning the election...
Vol. 32 • March 1968 • No. 3
