Eugene McCarthy

I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.

Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy (29 March 1916 – 10 December 2005) American politician from the U.S. state of Minnesota, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives (1949–1959) and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971 and playing a major role in the 1968 presidential election, unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination on an anti-Vietnam War platform.

Sourced

• Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
  • "Washington Post" (12 November 1967)

• Have you ever tried to split sawdust?
  • Response to accusations that he had split the US Democratic Party by campaigning for president. NBC TV (23 October 1969)

• The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.
  • Chicago Tribune (10 September 1978)

• The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
  • Time magazine (12 February 1979)

• There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!
  • On opposing the war in Vietnam, as quoted in The New York Times (11 December 2005)

• We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.
  • The New York Times (11 December 2005)

• I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.
  • The New York Times (11 December 2005)

Poems

Selected poems online

• The maple tree that night
  Without a wind or rain
  Let go its leaves
  Because its time had come.
  • "The Maple Tree"

• Now it is certain.
  There is no magic stone.
  No secret to be found.
  One must go
  With the mind's winnowed learning.
  • "Courage After Sixty"

• The glove has been thrown to the ground,
  The last choice of weapons made.
  A book for one thought.
  A poem for one line.
  A line for one word.
  • "Courage After Sixty"

• "Broken things are powerful."
  Things about to break are stronger still.
  The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.
  • "Courage After Sixty"

• I have left Act I, for involution
  And Act II. There, mired in complexity
  I cannot write Act III.
• "Lament for an Aging Politician"

Unsourced

• As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

• In politics one may remain aloof and become irrelavent or get involved and get corrupted.

• I can still smell the tear gas in the Hilton Hotel.

• It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

• Nixon is the kind of guy who, if you were drowning twenty feet from shore, would throw you a fifteen-foot rope.

• No man could be equipped for the presidency if he has never been tempted by one of the seven cardinal sins.

• One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

• The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.

• This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country.

• The function of liberal Republicans is to shoot the wounded after the battle.

Attributed

• "a light rinse" would be sufficient. Said in response to wikipedia:George Romney's claim that he had been "brainwashed" by the US military leaders in Vietnam. It is not clear where or when exactly the quote was supposedly said. See this entry from MediaMythAlert.

External links

• Brief biography at The Center for International Education
  • I'm Sorry I Was Right
• Eugene McCarthy's 1968 Presidential Campaign
• "A Reticent Senator Who Inspired" ~ David Broder in The Washington Post
• McCarthy's rare mold" ~ USA Today
• "Vietnam opponent McCarthy is dead" (BBC)
• Obituary ~ The Telegraph
• "Remembering Eugene McCarthy"(NPR)