University of Virginia Library

McCarthy: A Fresh Breeze

By John D. Kwapisz

The recent New Hampshire primary
has left little doubt that
we are witnessing the emergence
of a significant political force
which, insofar as it has crystallized
around the person of Sen.
Eugene McCarthy, may be appropriately
termed McCarthyism.

However, even as the McCarthyism
of the '50's did not center
simply on the man, but rather on
the attitude (or perhaps obsession)

which that man embodied, so too
the McCarthyism of today is
focused primarily on the concepts
and attitudes represented and articulated
so well by the Senator from
Minnesota. The Senator has become
the bold standard bearer of
the Cause.

That which rallies the new faithful
to the cause of McCarthyism
is, of course, opposition to "Johnson's
dirty war," and almost
equally, opposition to the President
himself. LBJ has come to
epitomize all that is evil, cold,
and cruel in our world; he is the
very wellspring of the American
dilemma at home and abroad.
One is sometimes taken aback by
the vehemence with which comely
young girls condemn the President
and, conversely, praise
in tones of daughterly devotion the
wisdom and vision of Sen. McCarthy.

And then one sometimes pauses
and recalls how four short years
ago the older sister of this sweet
young thing in all likelihood reserved
such vehemence for the
Republican standard bearer, while
alluding to the wisdom, capability,
and calm Liberal vision of the
Democratic President.

Eugene McCarthy has come to
represent the sense of frustration,
the impotent anger, the vague feeling
of uneasiness over the future
which characterizes a growing segment
of the American population.
Things have not gone well for
America in the last few years:
the unending tragedy that is Vietnam,
our declining international
prestige, the breakdown of our
society and the specter of race
war. All these woes have coalesced
to bring a sharp emotional
reaction, full of anxiety and moral
indignation.

Such a reaction is especially
prevalent among youth, the idealistic
young, unlearned in the ways
and realities of the world, impatient
and anxious for change and for
their own power, and required to
fight the wars and inherit the chaos
passed on by their fathers. To
these, and many others, something
is wrong and something must be
done.

Alas, the world is not the fine
place they would have it, free from
care and conflict. They perhaps
long for an earlier age, wherein
such travails would not arise(the
womb?). Indeed, Sen. McCarthy
has bemoaned our departure from
tradition with this war, and has
alleged a resulting decline in the
American Spirit and values
(Strange words to be cheered by
students for whom such exhortations
have held little currency in
the past).

How comforting and secure it
must feel to be able to pinpoint
the source of our malaise in the
personality and policies of our
President and in the fact of a far-off
costly war, for the outcome
of which we don't really give a
damn, as long as it stops now.
How good it must be to possess
the simple solution to our entrenched
dilemmas, to know the
policy and the man that will restore
us to a kindlier age or deliver
us into the euphoria of a new
world of peace and light.

Far pleasanter, indeed, not to
have to agonize over each and
every decision, to weigh the historical,
socio-economic, political,
moral, psychological, and ideological
components and factors of
given and future situations; nor to
have to bother with the potentially
undesirable consequences of our
action or inaction. The long run
be damned, for, "in the long
run we are all dead." The path
of least resistance is so alluring
and so easy to rationalize.

And ironically, implicit in such
attitudes is the very idea that the
world still marches to the sound of
the American drum, and that if
only we change the tune, we shall
all march happily together again.
(That one went out with high
button shoes and Marx.) Too many
of the new McCarthyites are so
sure of their heroes and their
villains. The scapegoat LBJ (and
Uncle Sam) has been chosen; let
us drive him into the wilderness
and return to building the millennium.

In these postures the new McCarthyites
betray a strong resemblance
to the McCarthyites of old-and
obsession out of touch with
the forces of reality-and with the
vain hope in 1960 of a brave new
world to be inaugurated by John
F. Kennedy. Both visions, built
on illusions, failed. But they did
manage to obscure the air and
allow the real problems and conditions
to multiply and complicate
until we had the embryo of that
with which we are now faced.
One wonders to what the final
frustration of the new McCarthyites
(and perhaps the country)
will turn when their gossamer
dream is torn away by the mailed
fist of contemporary reality.