Students and Presidential Politics

National politics at Harvard is usually a game played by the Young Democrats and Republicans with some high level aid from a few Law School professors. But for a time this year it was different.

It started quite ordinarily at September registration with a Young Democrats presidential preference poll showing that 77 per cent of Harvard and Radcliffe thought that Lyndon B. Johnson would be re-elected in 1968.

The frustrating thing was that only 13 per cent wanted him re-elected, and most of those were freshmen. Little-noted at the time were the six votes--less than one per cent--which Senator Eugene J. McCarthy received.

Rockfeller and Kennedy won the poll--both of them, you might remember, were considered completely out of the 1968 race at the time. Most students, it appeared, did not want to see political reality. The poll seemed to indicate the alienated view from which many politically active students students as well as others viewed the electoral process.

Behind the scenes a few Young Democrats were becoming active in a new group called the Conference of Concerned Democrats. One of them was quoted as saying in a CRIMSON story at the time, "The most effective way to put pressure on a political person like Johnson is through the ballot. By defeating President Johnson in a series of primaries next Spring we hope to demonstrate Johnson's unpopularity -- which is tremendous -- as forcefully as possible."

On October 31 the Crimson broke the news that Senator Eugene J. McCarthy might enter several primaries, including Massachusetts', in an antiwar bid. The story aroused some enthusiasm, but little hope among undergraduates.

On a cold, cloudy November night following a resounding Harvard football loss to Princeton, McCarthy spoke before thousands of cheering supporters outside the Hotel Continental.

The crowd of Harvard students and other anti-war types cheered for five minutes straight, but the mood of the campus and the nation didn't change.

It would take much more to change it. Within four days after McCarthy formally announced his candidacy for president on November 30, nearly 1500 Harvard and Radcliffe students signed petitions of support and pledges to work for him during the primaries.

But nothing happened. Christmas, exams, and a faltering candidate stopped the McCarthy movement in its tracks. McCarthy appeared to most "realistic" Harvard politicos as just another "dovish-fringe candidate without any political weight" as one "realist" put it.

February and the Tet Offensive brought a bit of Harvard's dovishfringe up to New Hampshire to campaign for "Gene." His prospects were dim and many students disliked his unemotional approach, but as Bruce Fireman '70, a follower of SDS, said, "I don't want any anti-war candidate to do badly; a Johnson victory would be interpreted as support for the war. . . . He [McCarthy] is the only candidate we've got, we ought to help him."

Johnson's draft decision in late January along with a new sense of futility with the war brought on by the Tet Offensive together seemed to bring a new sense of hopelessness to Harvard. There was another Dow demonstration and the Draft Union began to grow.

Maybe it was the excitement of the weekend in New Hampshire, or more probably a desire of many middle-class liberals to give their old middleclass philosophy a last chance for embracing radicalism. But in either case, they went to New Hampshire in droves during the final two weekends before the March 12 primary.

The crowd which gathered outside Elsie's in Freedom Square each morning to go up to New Hampshire was one mainly of middle-class moderates with a few SDS followers sprinkled among them. The real radicals, however, had only disdain for the campaign.

On the snowy afternoon of the New Hampshire primary, a McCarthy radio ad asked the listener, "How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow morning and found out that Eugene McCarthy had won?"

Harvard felt great the next morning.

Practically everyone, it seemed, wore a blue and white McCarthy button and talked in excited tones about "how we did it." National politics just didn't seem like the preserve of a few game-playing campus politicoes any more.

After the entrance of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson from the Presidential race, however, Harvard began to lapse back into its traditional view of politics.