Yesterday's Other Notable Passing

Eugene McCarthy, former Democratic Senator from Minnesota. Best known as the earliest of voices against the Viet Nam war, McCarthy is generally credited as the man who brought down LBJ.

Senator McCarthy certainly influenced my political development. I was a liberal back in the day, and wholeheartedly bought into McCarthy's anti-war rhetoric. After all was said and done at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, Hubert Humphrey won the presidential nomination. Using thought processes remarkably similar to those I employed in casting my vote in the 2004 election, I wound up voting for Nixon that year. If McCarthy had won the nomination, I just might have voted differently. After all, I was an idealist at the time. But sometimes reality overcomes idealism.

I think the operative word in the Post's obituary headline is "gentle." McCarthy was of another time, a time when political rhetoric wasn't quite as divisive, quite as strident as it is today. Don't get me wrong, there were LOTS of bomb-throwers back then, too. And, unlike today (Thank God), too much actual violence. Google "1968 Chicago Convention" if you are too young to remember. McCarthy, like other reasonable people, abhored the violence.

RIP, Gene.