A Voice for Dissent

Lyndon Johnson is fond of comparing himself to the Harry Truman of 1948, who won an upset victory with a rip-roaring "give-'em-hell" campaign. Johnson's opponents prefer to compare him to the Truman of 1952, who decided not to run again in the midst of an unpopular war. Neither analogy quite fits. The fact is that the 1968 campaign is shaping up as a race like none before it.

Like the Truman of 1948, Johnson is doing badly in the popularity polls. Last week, while his Gallup rating rose for the first time in five months, he still drew approval from only 41% of the nation. And even though Johnson's prospects are likely to improve once the Republican Party fields a candidate who must then stake out positions on controversial, vote-losing issues, a new and intriguing factor entered the 1968 equation last week.

"No Limit." Standing in the rococo Senate Caucus Room, Minnesota's Eugene Joseph McCarthy, 51, a sardonic intellectual and an outspoken critic of Viet Nam policy, announced that he will enter at least four of next spring's primaries as a Democratic antiwar candidate opposing Lyndon Johnson.

"My decision," the Senator told reporters, "has been strengthened by recent announcements out of the Administration, the evident intention to escalate and to intensify the war in Viet Nam, and the absence of any positive indication or suggestion for a compromise or for a negotiated political settlement. I am concerned that the Administration seems to have set no limit to the price which it is willing to pay for a military victory."

In addition, McCarthy said, "there is growing evidence of a deepening moral crisis in America--discontent and frustration and a disposition to take extralegal if not illegal actions to manifest protest. I am hopeful that this challenge may alleviate at least in some degree this sense of political helplessness and restore to many people a belief in the processes of American politics and of American government."

Caterwaul & Caricature. The war has sundered the moral and political life of the U.S. as deeply as any crisis in this century. Within both major parties politicians have at least had a traditional forum from which to endorse or denounce the course of U.S. policy. Not so with the nation's private citizens who are critical of the war. Lacking an organized, effectual medium through which to voice their protests, dissenters ranging from Maoists to hippies, from middle-aged suburbanites in SANE to adolescent hotspurs in the Students for a Democratic Society have stormed Pentagon and draft board, marched and picketed and advertised. Already infected with malefic characters whose political education ended with 19th century nihilism as updated by Che Guevara, the peace movement has too often degenerated into caterwaul and caricature and, even worse, noncommunication. McCarthy's candidacy will at last give legitimate dissenters a civilized political voice.

Inevitably, some Administration forces thought that McCarthy's move to unhorse Johnson might, in fact, confirm everyone's faith in American political fourflushing. "It's obviously Bobby," said one White House aide. "McCarthy has no burning conviction. He's not leading a peace movement." The remark reflected a widely held conspiracy theory that McCarthy's aim is to unite dissident Democratic support in the primaries and then throw that support to Robert Kennedy some time before next summer's Democratic Convention. Texas Governor John Connally, a close friend of Lyndon Johnson's, called McCarthy "a stalking horse, a catalyst for dissidents."

McCarthy, in fact, admitted somewhat wryly that he wishes Bobby had undertaken the challenge himself. "It was nothing like St. Paul being knocked off his horse," he said at the press conference. "I waited a decent period for someone else to do it."

"Count Me Out." McCarthy's challenge is fairly unusaul in American history. Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moosers seceded from the Republican Party in 1912; in 1948, Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats and Henry Wallace's Progressives both split entirely from the Democrats to run their own minority-party tickets. McCarthy is challenging the incumbent President from within his own party.

Nor is McCarthy alone. No fewer than nine major groups of Democrats are determined to dispossess the President, to reverse his Viet Nam policies, or both. Dissenting Democrats, an outfit headed by Actor Robert (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) Vaughn, is placing ads in 25 newspapers to warn the President: "From this day on, our campaign funds, our energies and our votes go to those, and only those, who work for an end to the war in Viet Nam." In Chicago at week's end, the Conference of Concerned Democrats met to chart plans for slates opposed to Johnson in 15 states. Proclaimed California Congressman Don Edwards in a keynote speech: "We are not the dissenting minority. We are the voice of the American majority."

At least three Democratic Senators --Indiana's Vance Hartke, South Dakota's George McGovern and Ohio's Stephen Young--are thinking of entering primaries as favorite sons to show displeasure with the President's policies. In Michigan, Democratic State Chairman Zolton Ferency resigned, declaring: "If the convention is going to be wired for sound and the sound is 'Happy Birthday, L.B.J.,' then count me out."

Two Prospects. Eugene McCarthy stands to gain nothing personally from his almost quixotic venture. He has but two prospects: 1) to force the President to change his thinking and policies about the war some time between now and the Democratic Convention, or 2) to build an army of dissident Democrats for Bobby Kennedy to command eventually in a drive to deny Johnson a second full term.

In either case, McCarthy's only plausible personal expectation is to remain the senior Senator from Minnesota--and even that may be in question. Immediately after last week's announcement, party leaders in McCarthy's and Hubert Humphrey's home state declared themselves foursquare behind Lyndon Johnson. McCarthy himself is not exactly sure of what he is trying to accomplish--except to restore intelligent discussion to the dissenters' camp, to give them a voice and a vote.

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