Irving Howe, academic, critic and editor
No political leader

The McCarthy campaign provided me with my first chance for wholehearted electoral work since my undistinguished soapboxing for Norman Thomas. It was a pleasure to speak, write, even raise money. Once Gene McCarthy lost the nomination, however, he seemed permanently to lose his bearings. He went into a prolonged sulk, abandoning his seat in the Senate as well as the thousands who had rallied behind him and who, had he persisted, might have formed the basis for a renewed liberalism. Some disastrous streak of cultural snobbism or intellectual perversity overtook this very intelligent man. The several times I met McCarthy I was impressed by his charm and lively mind, but whatever it is that goes to make a political leader -- strength of will, self-assurance, sheer hard work -- he didn't have. Still, in 1968 his campaign led one to hope that we could bring the [Vietnam] war to an end through action within the democratic process. (New York, 1968)

From "A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography," by Irving Howe (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982)

Willie Morris, editor of Harper's magazine
Tough enough?

Into this [anti-Vietnam War political] vacuum in early '68 stepped Eugene McCarthy and his young "Clean for Gene" liberals. McCarthy, the wry and reluctant crusader, tapped a pervasive need. At a benefit "celebrity" softball game on Long Island later in that year, with McCarthy and me teammates, he collided head-on with the opponent's catcher at home plate to score a run; blood streaming from his nose, this rueful and ironic intellectual got up and, brushing off the dirt, remarked to me in the on-deck circle, "And they say I'm not tough enough." He was a very good ballplayer too. (1968)

From "New York Days," by Willie Morris (Little Brown, 1993)

Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP
Run-in

I respected Eugene McCarthy and his courage in bucking L.B.J. on the Vietnam War; he had been with us on many civil rights fights, and I liked him personally, but he was no [Hubert] Humphrey. We had a little run-in during the N.A.A.C.P. convention. He invited himself down to Atlantic City [N.J.] and stayed at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge about seven blocks from our convention hall. At the time, a group of N.A.A.C.P. dissidents calling themselves the "Young Turks" was putting me through the wringer on the N.A.A.C.P.'s program, and the last thing I needed was for the presidential campaign to spill over into the convention. The Young Turks were a lot older than their name suggested, and in the end I had little trouble dealing with them. When McCarthy sent in his operatives, I had to sit on them, too. It made for some hard feelings. (1968)

From "Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins," by Roy Wilkins with Tom Mathews (Viking, 1982)

Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine and neoconservative guru
Culturally sophisticated

The first time I met him, the day he showed up for our lunch appointment carrying a volume of Robert Lowell's poems, he indicated that he was thinking of challenging Lyndon Johnson for the presidency in the New Hampshire primary on the issue of Vietnam, and he wanted to know what I thought of the idea.

This obviously sophisticated interest in culture -- in religion and poetry and the world of ideas -- was what made McCarthy's intelligence so different from Lyndon Johnson's and George McGovern's. Highly intelligent as they both were, they both also had minds that were focused too narrowly on conventional electoral politics to sense what was happening in the culture and how it was already beginning to impinge on the sphere of politics itself. But McCarthy, uniquely attuned among politicians as he was to the culture and its relation to the electoral process -- why else had he sought out a person like me for advice? -- saw before anyone else that a new wave was sweeping through the liberal community that might even turn out to be powerful enough to wash Lyndon Johnson's administration away; and he decided to ride it. (New York, 1968)

From "Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir," by Norman Podhoretz (Harper & Row, 1979)

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