Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism [Hardcover]

Dominic Sandbrook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2004

Eugene McCarthy was one of the most fascinating political figures of the postwar era: a committed liberal anti-Communist who broke with his party’s leadership over Vietnam and ultimately helped take down the political giant Lyndon B. Johnson. His presidential candidacy in 1968 seized the hearts and fired the imaginations of countless young liberals; it also presaged the declining fortunes of liberalism and the rise of conservatism over the past three decades.

Dominic Sandbrook traces Eugene McCarthy’s rise to prominence and his subsequent failures, and makes clear how his story embodies the larger history of American liberalism over the last half century. We see McCarthy elected from Minnesota to the House and then to the Senate, part of a new liberal movement that combined New Deal domestic policies and fierce Cold War hawkishness, a consensus that produced huge electoral victories until it was shattered by the war in Vietnam.

As the situation in Vietnam escalated, many liberals, like McCarthy, found themselves increasingly estranged from the anti-Communism that they had supported for nearly two decades. Sandbrook recounts McCarthy’s growing opposition to President Johnson and his policies, which culminated in McCarthy’s stunning near-victory in the New Hampshire presidential primary and Johnson’s subsequent withdrawal from the race. McCarthy went on to lose the nomination to Hubert Humphrey at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which secured his downfall and led to Richard Nixon’s election, but he had pulled off one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history, one that helped shape the political landscape for decades.

These were tumultuous times in American politics, and Sandbrook vividly captures the drama and historical significance of the period through his intimate portrait of a singularly interesting man at the center of it all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eugene McCarthy's place in history as a cynosure of the antiâ€"Vietnam War movement is universally acknowledged. Yet McCarthy remains an enigmatic figure to supporters and opponents alike. Sandbrook's biography attempts to take the measure of the 1968 Democratic presidential candidate as a man and as a politicianâ€"and McCarthy (b. 1916) fares badly in both categories. Sandbrook, a British scholar of American history, argues that as a politician McCarthy, who served for two decades in the House and the Senate, achieved far less than contemporaries such as John F. Kennedy, Johnson or Humphrey, despite his superior intelligence and natural charisma. Specifically, Sandbrook contends that McCarthy brought no new ideas into the political arena, never won his party's presidential nomination and gave his name to no major bills. Given the rarified sphere that McCarthy occupied, and the scope and depth of the accomplishments of those to whom he is compared, it is arguable that Sandbrook's view is too harsh. But the comments by contemporaries of McCarthy's personal qualities are often damning indeed. Sandbrook quotes from a variety of McCarthy's fellow politicians, friends, family and the press to present the picture of a man who, for all his gifts, was, in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "indolent, frivolous, cynical," or as described by Gilbert Harrison, a friend and former editor of the New Republic, "lazy," "unresponsive" and "insensitive." McCarthy's reported response to the assassination of his 1968 campaign opponent Robert Kennedy was a callous "[h]e brought it on himself." Sandbrook's biography will command attention and spark discussion about this controversial career and McCarthy's role in the end of the New Deal liberal consensus.--e brought it on himself." Sandbrook's biography will command attention and spark discussion about this controversial career and McCarthy's role in the end of the New Deal liberal consensus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

As the nation's current Democratic presidential candidates raced the icy roads of New Hampshire, journalists remembered another harsh New Hampshire winter, when the junior senator from Minnesota and his "Clean for Gene" troops lost a primary but did well enough (42.4 percent) to convince Lyndon Johnson not to run for reelection. For Sandbrook, a U.S. history lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Gene McCarthy's political career "reflected the rise and fall of the liberal consensus between the 1940s and the 1960s." McCarthy's liberalism grew from his deeply felt Catholicism, which led him to reject unrestrained modern capitalism's cruelties as well as Communism's godlessness. (McCarthy in fact got his political start driving "Reds" out of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.) In the U.S. House and then the Senate in the 1940s and 1950s, McCarthy was a man of his time: firmly anti-Communist, a pragmatic, ambitious "rising star popular with the southern party barons." His 1968 challenge to LBJ manifested the collapse of the faith that had held liberalism together for a generation. Enlightening political biography; includes notes and a detailed bibliography. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First edition (March 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041058
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041053
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, But Couldn't Quite Face the Hard Facts, August 28, 2008

By 

David M. Dougherty (Arkansas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (Paperback)

This book is more about McCarthy than liberalism, and the weakest presentations comes when the author attempts to describe Postwar (WWII) American liberalism and its supposed fall. Needless to say as of this writing (2008) American liberalism is alive and well -- quite the opposite of the author's supposition.

Sandbrook spends sufficient time on McCarty's upbringing and development, particularly as a student at St. John's, to place his subsequent actions and politics into context. Only in a few instances was this development wanting. For example, McCarthy was an excellent athlete in baseball and hockey (until 1938 in the book), even to the point of possibly being good enough for professional baseball, but then suddenly is given a 4-F classification in 1942. Unfortunately, his supposed infirmity (bursitis in his feet) fails to slow him down later. One is left wondering how this deferment came about.

McCarthy made his mark in 1948 in defeating and expelling the communists from their position of influence in the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. He built an awesome political machine in Ramsey County (St. Paul) and displayed enormous organizing talent. Until 1972, this machine of Irish and German Catholics supported McCarthy in whatever he wished to do, and gave him the opportunity to tweak the lion's tail without having to watch his back.

The author points out that McCarthy received the support of the oil companies, but fails to connect the dots concerning why and how that came about. Well, allow me to clear the air. Oilman J. Howard Marshall and his associates met several times with McCarthy in 1954 and 1955, acquiring his assistance (I am not privy to the quid pro quo) for building a pipeline through McCarthy's district and the construction of the Great Northern Refinery. McCarthy was most compliant and Marshall's project sailed through the Minnesota and federal bureaucracies at flank speed. Through Marshall's friendship with Lyndon Johnson, McCarthy was able to develop excellent relations with Rayburn and Johnson during the latter half of the 50s decade as chronicled by the author. As a result, he supported the oil depletion allowance and other issues favorable to "Big Oil", attracting some comments from his fellow liberals. Sandbrook seemed mystified by this development when it actually had a very simple causation.

Sandbrook is exactly on point with his characterization of McCarthy as sensitive, selfish, arrogant and lazy. He was physically a very attractive figure with great promise, yet consistently rated as an underachiever. His contributions in the House and Senate were practically non-existent, and his almost single-handed sinking of the Family Assistance Plan which would have a created a guaranteed annual income in 1970 offset what little good he did. His opposition to the FAP was sheer politics based on its being Nixon's plan (as written by Daniel Moynihan), even though it accomplished most of McCarthy's social legislative goals. No one was going to steal his issues, particularly not the Republicans.

The author eloquently discloses why McCarthy turned against Johnson following 1964. That was because Johnson chose Humphrey to be his Vice-President rather that McCarthy. In 1966 McCarthy campaigned against Johnson (almost out of sheer spite), rather than against the Vietnam War, and indeed, sometimes his rhetoric made it impossible for the listener to discern whether he was for or against the war. When Johnson withdrew in 1968 and Bobby Kennedy entered the fray, McCarthy was left without his main bogyman and being against the war became his central issue.

The political ins and outs are effectively described to the point where one wonders if there was anyone present in American government that McCarthy did not stab in the back. He envied and probably hated JFK for becoming the first Catholic president rather than himself, and he turned on Johnson, Humphrey, RFK, and his other fellow liberals one after another. Even in his private life his morals were questionable as his reputed affairs with Shana Alexander and his long-time mistress, Marya McLaughlin, attest.

This work utterly debunks the McCarthy myth although that was clearly not the author's intention. It is an important contribution to American political history from 1948 to 1972, and puts the feckless and naive beliefs of the baby-boomer generation into context. McCarthy served this generation poorly, and the people of Ramsey County even worse.

All that being said, the portrait of McCarthy by Sandbrook was not altogether unsympathetic. He attempts mightily to find reasons for McCarthy's capricious and unbecoming behavior, and clearly wishes that McCarthy had suppressed his demons and produced more of value for the nation. So will the reader upon digesting this book.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eugene McCarthy and Liberalism: Their Rise And Fall, March 23, 2004

By 

W. C HALL (Newport, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (Hardcover)

The Eugene McCarthy that emerges in the pages of Dominic Sandbrook's biography is a strange, unpleasant, embittered man. McCarthy's place in the liberal pantheon was forever secured by his challenge to Lyndon Johnson's renomination for the presidency in 1968. Yet Sandbrook argues persuasively that while McCarthy may have won the battle by forcing Johnson into retirement, he--and American liberalism--ultimately lost the war.

This book is primarily a political biography, but Sandbrook gives us the basics of McCarthy's childhood, education, and pre-political career. He emphasizes the great role European Catholic thought played in shaping his values--an influence that was deeply felt throughout his political career. The Eugene McCarthy who was elected to the U.S. House in 1948 and moved up to the Senate a decade later was a classic postwar liberal, working to fulfill and extend the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and like his colleagues, unquestioning in his acceptance of the dogmas of the Cold War.

In Sandbrook's view, 1964 was a pivotal year. It represented both the high tide of postwar liberalism and the apparent end of the political road for Eugene McCarthy. His hope to be the first Catholic on a successful presidential ticket had been dashed with John F. Kennedy's election. But 1964 seemed to pose a new opportunity, as Lyndon Johnson flirted for weeks with the possibility of choosing McCarthy as his running mate The eventual selection of McCarthy's Minnesota colleague, Hubert Humphrey, appeared to spell the end to his hopes for higher office.

Then came the escalation of the Vietnam war and the summers of racial unrest. By 1967, the anti-war movement was casting about for a candidate with enough stature to challenge Johnson, and McCarthy offered himself, apparently at first never hoping for the top prize, but instead expecting to yield to Robert Kennedy or a chastened Johnson.

Sandbrook chronicles that fateful campaign, along with McCarthy's many subsequent bids for office, all of which ended in failure. He credits McCarthy's 1976 independent presidential campaign as helping pave the way for John Anderson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader; but his bid to return to the Senate in 1982 and his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992 only come across as sad exercises in self-delusional nostalgia.

Those who wish to romanticize McCarthy's memory will be jarred by this book. But those who are willing to take a clear-eyed, unsentimental look at the man and his times will find much of value to consider regarding the postwar era of American politics.--William C. Hall

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Political Biography Lives, May 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (Hardcover)

With style and sophistication, Dominic Sandbrook's book traces the fortunes of liberalism through the career of former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. For anyone wanting to know why the Democrats have won the White House only three times since 1968: read this book. Along with liberalism's decline, Sandbrook also traces the rise of Reagan's conservatism and the rise of neo-conservatism, both of which have converged, with depressing results, in the current Bush administration. Moreover, McCarthy's eventful life itself makes for compelling reading. This is an outstanding example of political biography, a rare breed these days. Beuatifully written, tightly argued, and exhaustively researched, this is a must-read for anyone voting in November!