Eugene McCarthy: Carrying the Crusade To Harvard College

Clean Gene had spent a very busy and tiring day, the smartly-dressed Institute of Politics escorts told me. He had arisen very early in the morning and was in no shape after this 2-hour lecture to answer another barrage of questions. "Don't you dare press him," they threatened.

"Okay, okay," I said, "Just a couple of questions." There was this one question I had been itching to ask him all day.

There he stood, next to a lectern in the Science Center yesterday, surrounded by a wide-eyed group of unmistakable Government majors. Each one would politely ask a question, allow McCarthy two or three seconds to say two or three words, then proceed to explain to the former Senator why he, the Gov major, was right and McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy was patient. He continued to express himself in soft, subdued tones. I'm not sure anybody was listening.

For the third time in one night, McCarthy was responding to a question about the kind of job he thought Carter was doing. Then someone asked about Idi Amin; someone else about Carter's letter to Sakharov. The same kinds of questions it seems everybody asks politicians these days. I suppose these are the only kinds of questions people are concerned about these days.

It might have been my imagination, but I couldn't help feel that McCarthy was somehow disgusted; more like disillusioned--and frustrated. Harvard had changed a hell of a lot since the sixties.

Until yesterday, I didn't really know much about McCarthy. In 1976, I obligingly voted for a fellow Southerner who seemed to possess all those qualities Presidents are supposed to possess, and at least acknowledged the fact that there were some things wrong with our country. To me, McCarthy was some crazy clown who was to the liberals what Harold Stassen was to the conservatives. I figured that McCarthy was running because he enjoyed the attention and had nothing else better to do at the time. To me he was an egotistical spoiler.

But then follow him around for a day. Listen to him talk about the problems of income equalization and wealth accumulation. Listen to what he says about the inherent evils of the power of the Presidency, listen to what he says about the insanity of the arms race and the insanity behind the type of thinking that leads nations into Vietnams. Listen to his poems.

Listening, you get the feeling McCarthy would have done a whole lot more as President than merely shake up the two-party system.

I never got to participate in the 15 minutes that was supposed to be devoted to strictly University press, but I did catch his ear to ask that one pressing question while he waited in the rain for his car.

I asked him if he was disappointed, ten years after. I asked him why he did it. I wasn't taking notes, and he noticed that, amid the soggy papers and running ink. He smiled. The question was to suit my own curiosity.

At the moment, I can't exactly remember exactly what he answered. He mumbled something about apathy, something about self-satisfaction. But, yes, he was disappointed. He said that without support from members of the academic community, there could be no political and social change in this country. And now, in 1977, it looks to McCarthy like none of them care much. The change of mood in the country he can take; the apathy of the academics--that is pathetic. Pretty soon there will be nobody around willing to offer alternatives. No one will question the direction in which our country is heading. "Why bother?" I asked. Before he could answer, the prim Institute of Politics woman officiating the ceremonies was motioning to the waiting car. Another student shoved his way to the fore, to ask the departing McCarthy what he thought about the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've been deceived. But I don't think he's an egotistical fool. McCarthy is a modern-day Don Quixote.