Reply #140: Get clean for Gene! "We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country..." [View All]

[Hart2008]

McCarthy’s presidential campaign worked outside normal Democratic Party channels. Volunteers, many of whom were students opposed to the war, went from door to door trying to convince voters to support McCarthy. Their slogan was “Clean for Gene,” meaning that they cut their long hair and put on their best clothes to campaign for McCarthy.

http://ca.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761589343/McCarthy_Eugene.html

"There is only one thing to do - take it to the country!" Senator McCarthy angrily declared in a Capitol corridor 15 months before the 1968 election, after hearing the Johnson administration make its case for the legality of the war.

Mr. McCarthy, a man of needling wit, triggered one of the most tumultuous years in American political history. With the war taking scores of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, he rallied throngs against this "costly exercise in futility" and stoked a fiery national debate over the World War II model of an all-powerful presidency. He challenged Johnson in a primary, and the president, facing almost certain defeat, ended up withdrawing from the race.

Mr. McCarthy was a disarming presence on the stump as he mixed a wry tone and a hard, existential edge in challenging the White House, the Pentagon and the superpower swagger of modern politicians.

An acid-tongued campaigner, Mr. McCarthy was sometimes a puzzlement, veering from inspired speechifying to moody languishing. But he was the singular candidate of the Vietnam War protest, serving up politics and poetry, theology and baseball in a blend that entranced the "Clean for Gene" legions who flocked to his insurgent's call.

"We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it," he told them. His supporters were delighted by what they saw as his candor, yet some were troubled by the diffidence that marked his public persona.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11mccarthy.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1202926129-B8/UV11bPgaiu91VC0lzWA


What Senator in this race has really taken it to the people about the war, or impeachment?