Eugene McCarthy: 1916-2005

The election that made him famous, he didn't win; Lyndon Johnson did, 49% to 42%, in New Hampshire's 1968 Democratic presidential primary. But EUGENE MCCARTHY, who died last week at 89 in Washington, had scared the sitting President by articulating a principled opposition to the Vietnam War and corralling enough idealists to turn vexation into votes. Thousands of the scruffy young went Clean for Gene, proselytizing in New Hampshire, then in Wisconsin, where the Minnesota Senator won, 57% to 35%. That humiliation persuaded Johnson to quit the race.

It was a sweet triumph for the former college professor, who had been the first Congressman to challenge the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. But the savor of March '68 didn't last long. Robert Kennedy defeated him in the June 5 California primary, then was shot dead that night. Hubert Humphrey, favorite of the party bosses, was nominated at a Chicago convention that was chaos inside, carnage on the streets. Richard Nixon won the general election, and the war raged another seven years.

McCarthy ran for President four more times, to little note. Some aides complained of his diffidence and cynicism. Yet in one lightning flash, he had diagnosed the national exhaustion that a dead-end war brings and proved that antiwar fervor could change voters' minds. This was not so much political strategy as the almost theological mission of the amateur philosopher and published poet McCarthy was. Lines from his poem "Vietnam Message" could be the words of Gandhi or Pablo Neruda: "We will take our napalm and flame throwers/ out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches .../ We will leave you your small joys/ and smaller troubles."