Glean for Gene

In today's Pioneer Press, Nick Coleman trots out the old warrior for peace, former US Senator from Minnesota Gene McCarthy, to get his opinion on the War with Iraq. And guess what? He's against it!

At least I think he is. Although the point of Coleman's article is another attempt to cast doubt on the prospects for long term US success in Iraq, this time by interviewing a wise old sage of the Left, he doesn't quote any specific comments from McCarthy regarding the war. Rather, he quotes some name calling directed toward the President and some vague historical allusions that are supposed to indicate the US is a declining power in the model of imperial Rome.

In Coleman's defense, McCarthy is not the easiest interview subject. I saw him a couple of years ago at Kieran's Bar in Minneapolis, promoting a documentary based on his life. Any question asked of him by the moderator was met with poetry excerpts (recited from memory), inside jokes, and clever word play and puns. It was strange but also amusing and rather charming coming from an 85-year-old man. But I can imagine Coleman's frustration, after repeatedly trying to get McCarthy to say "yes, Iraq is another Viet Nam," instead getting something like:

"When Rome was declining, a general could organize an army and get some financing and go over and invade Africa," McCarthy was saying. "If he won, he would get a new title and march through Rome and cut off a few heads and hang a few people."

The crowd at the Kieran's event received McCarthy with what I can best describe as adoration. Not only appreciation for what he accomplished in his life, but with the romantic sense that this was a man who was on the right side of history and who was tragically ignored by the mass of the American electorate. A woman from the audience spoke up at one point and speculated on what a wonderful world we would have if Gene McCarthy and Jimmy Carter would have each had 8 years in the presidency. At which point the crowd burst into applause and cheers. (And at which point I inhaled my double Jameson and promptly ordered another, in an attempt to chase these nightmarish visions from my mind).

The peace at any price crowd, and their historical obliviousness to the results of appeasing totalitarian regimes, dumbfounded me then and still does today. Maybe I can glean some insight on them at the Macalester protest march that's scheduled to wind its way perilously close to my house this afternoon. In yesterday's National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg does a good job of exposing the moral bankruptcy of this position, so I'll let him do the talking for me in this regard.

But as I mentioned, Gene McCarthy is an engaging personality. Despite his abysmally wrong-headed policy recommendations and philosophy, he is good humored, intelligent, and well-educated. And he has a talent for eloquently zinging those he disagrees with. The Coleman article includes a couple of shots worth quoting.

On US Senator Robert Byrd (who, by the way is only two years younger then McCarthy):

We used to have a saying in the Senate that if a guy quotes the Constitution, he's in trouble and if he quoted the Bible, he was in a lot of trouble. But if he was in real trouble, he quoted Senate rules. Bobby was always a man to quote the rules."

And on the Democratic party, toward whom McCarthy seems to have soured on since being denied the Presidential nomination in 1968:

When his 1968 presidential bid faltered in the aftermath of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the riots of the Chicago Democratic convention and the Machiavellian maneuvers of LBJ, he proposed a new emblem for the Democratic Party. Instead of a donkey, he suggested the party use five prehistoric pigs that had been found in a glacier, frozen in a circle, each pig's snout burrowed for warmth into the behind of the one ahead. "That's a better image for the Democrats," he says. "I've been using it ever since."