By Max Holland
Nearly all the obituaries for Eugene McCarthy credit the
former Minnesota senator with forcing Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968
race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Without taking
anything away from McCarthy’s principled run against a sitting
president of his own party, this is simplistic history that ignores
everything we have since learned about that fateful year.
To
be sure, McCarthy added to Johnson’s sense of beleagurement when the
little-known senator made an unexpectedly strong showing in the New
Hampshire primary, garnering 42% of the vote. Johnson had talked plenty
about quitting months earlier. He was worn and exhausted by the burdens
of office, especially the war, and worried about his ability to survive
another term. The Tet offensive by communist forces in South Vietnam,
while a defeat for Hanoi, was particularly debilitating. It gave lie to
Johnson’s claims of steady progress in the war, and was undoubtedly a
decisive factor in McCarthy’s unexpectedly strong showing on March 12.
Before the offensive, reliable polls indicated that Johnson was going
to “annihilate” McCarthy. Johnson did not announce his withdrawal the
day after the primary.
Indeed, political soundings taken
soon afterward showed that he could still garner enough delegates to
win the nomination, and Johnson was convinced that if nominated he
would be reelected, assuming Nixon was his GOP opponent. To some
degree, Johnson relished the prospect of running against the liberal
intelligentsia in his party, an element he had assiduously courted but
one that had never truly accepted him. So what precipitated LBJ’s
withdrawal on March 31?
The only event of significance
between McCarthy’s unexpected showing and Johnson leaving the race was
Robert F. Kennedy’s entry. RFK announced his candidacy on March 16,
after refusing to challenge Johnson earlier because he reportedly
feared that it would be perceived as only personal. But after New
Hampshire, Kennedy could plausibly claim that the Democratic Party was
deeply split over the war, and that he was not the cause.
Much of the media treated Kennedy’s entrance as proof that Johnson was
unlikely to be renominated. But as any hard-boiled, vote-counting
politician would have realized on March 16 - and Johnson was among the
best - RFK’s entrance enhanced Johnson’s chances. The 1968 process
involved a different set of rules for nearly every state, meaning that
delegates were largely controlled by elected officeholders and party
bosses. And since McCarthy deeply detested Kennedy, and was not about
to withdraw or join forces with him, a three-way race meant the antiwar
faction of the Democratic Party was irrevocably split between two
Catholic, liberal senators. As The New York Times reported on March 24, LBJ seemed likely to get at least 65% of the delegates for the nomination.
Nonetheless, it was Kennedy’s entrance that was the precipitating
factor in Johnson’s withdrawal. Johnson believed, and with good reason,
that he had always kept faith with the 1960 political compact he had
formed with John Kennedy in Los Angeles, when LBJ stunned most
observers by giving up the Senate to run for vice president. In return
for subordinating himself to an undistinguished senator who was clearly
his political junior, Johnson was given the opportunity to be on a
national ticket and thereby transcend the onus of being a southerner,
perhaps the last political vestige of the Civil War. If he ran well,
LBJ could keep alive his burning desire for the presidency - in 1964,
if the JFK-LBJ ticket lost, and in 1968 if Kennedy served two terms.
Instead, of course, Johnson was abruptly catapulted to the White
House in 1963. He was then treated, first by RFK, as a usurper,
grabbing at the accoutrements of power, and then later by the country
as an unworthy successor, even though Johnson had done far more to
advance liberal causes than JFK.
The flaw in Johnson was
that he was not content to lead and be respected. Rather, he demanded
almost slavish support and public adoration. Such deep emotion is
reserved for very few presidents, and usually, they have to die in
office to achieve it. Johnson’s curse was that he inherited the
presidency from such a man. And now RFK was repudiating everything
Johnson represented or hoped to accomplish. As Johnson told his
biographer Doris Kearns after he left the White House: “I felt [in
1968] that I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming
at me from all directions. . . . And then the final straw. The thing I
feared from the first day of my presidency was actually coming true.
Robert Kennedy . . . openly announced his intention to reclaim the
throne in the memory of his brother. And the American people, swayed by
the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets. The whole situation
was unbearable for me.”
If McCarthy cannot be credited with
forcing Johnson from the race, the meaning of his challenge to LBJ is
hardly diminished. In fact, it reverberates to this day. It was
McCarthy’s candidacy that cracked open the Democrats’ consensus on
foreign policy. Nearly four decades later, the party is still
struggling with that divide.
© 2005 by Max Holland
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