Chapter One - You Can't Always Get What You Want
Eugene McCarthy, known to most as Gene, was born in small town Watkins, Minnesota, in the early spring of 1916. His father, Michael McCarthy, was a Progressive Republican and the postmaster general of the state, before being forced out of office in 1913 by the nascent administration of the Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Gene's mother, Anna McCarthy, was a devout Catholic, who raised him and his siblings almost single-handedly, while their father worked as a travelling salesman in the cattle trade following the end of his political career. His father’s bitter, biting wit and his mother’s absolute faith in God and the Catholic Church would become defining features of McCarthy’s personality and future political career.
McCarthy was an exceptionally bright student and a star athlete, frequently finishing at the top of his class and teams. Receiving degrees from Saint John’s University and the University of Minnesota, McCarthy entered the teaching profession almost immediately, working at various high schools across the state, before meeting his future wife and fellow teacher, Abigail Quigley, in Mandan, North Dakota. After a long engagement that included a nine month stint where McCarthy became a monk, and a wartime career as a codebreaker for the Military Intelligence Division, the pair married in 1945. Working in academia for a few years in St. Paul, Minnesota, McCarthy was inspired by the call of Pope Pius XII for Catholics to become more politically involved. McCarthy was further concerned by the necessity of a strong, liberal, anti-communist presence in American politics with the advent of the Cold War. Joining Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a progressive liberal anti-communist activist group, McCarthy became an associate of one of the group’s founders, the Mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey. McCarthy also became involved with the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), and worked with Humphrey to expel communists from the DFL. Shortly after Humphrey’s famous call for a civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention and his following election to the Senate, McCarthy himself was elected to the House of Representatives. In the House, McCarthy distinguished himself as a leading young liberal, unafraid to buck the leadership, drafting a manifesto for a group of congressmen in support of President Truman’s Fair Deal agenda. The group, originally known as McCarthy’s Marauders (or, alternatively, McCarthy’s Mavericks) would become the basis of the influential Democratic Study Group (DSG). Despite this, McCarthy had a good relationship with many Southern Democrats, particularly from the state of Texas. By the time McCarthy entered the Senate in 1959, his St. Paul faction controlled about half of the DFL. Senator Humphrey, and Minnesota’s governor, Orville Freeman, served as
de facto co-leaders of the Minneapolis faction and the other half of the DFL. The three men got along well, but McCarthy was always somewhat distant from the other two.
Entering the Senate, McCarthy also drew the attention of the wily Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps cautious over McCarthy’s ability to rile up congressional liberals and looking to make a good impression, Johnson appointed him as the Chair of the Temporary Committee on Unemployment, as well as to a prestigious position on the Senate Finance Committee. This was met with the understanding that McCarthy would be cooperative, and the new Senator voted the party line, even if it was considered too moderate by the more liberal Democrats in Congress. This came up most frequently with McCarthy’s rigid support for the oil industry, and his consistent voting record in favour of continuing its tax exempt status
[1].
Despite these early accomplishments, McCarthy remained in the shadow of Humphrey, and worked as the co-manager for the senior senator’s presidential bid in 1960. In the primaries, Humphrey had to compete with the well-financed political machine of the handsome and popular Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy, coming from a nouveau riche family of Irish Catholics, had distinguished himself during the Second World War before joining Congress. While his time in the House and Senate was relatively unmemorable, he had begun to develop a large national following. Both Kennedy and Humphrey were looking to prove their viability to the party bosses by performing well in the primaries. Kennedy had the extra challenge to prove that his Catholicism would not hurt the party, as it had in 1928, when the Catholic Democrat Al Smith lost in a landslide, in large part because of anti-Catholic bigotry. Ultimately, Humphrey fared poorly in the primaries against the well-financed politicking and celebrity status of Kennedy. The Kennedy team smeared Humphrey with accusations of draft dodging during the Second World War (when in fact he had been ineligible due to poor health), and the relatively poor Humphrey could not compete with the huge budget that Kennedy had at his disposal. Humphrey lost to Kennedy in Wisconsin, despite it neighbouring his home state of Minnesota, and lost to him in West Virginia, despite fears that the Catholic Kennedy would not be appealing in the overwhelmingly Protestant state. The bruising primary battle planted the first seeds of distaste against the Kennedys in McCarthy’s mind, along with the fact that Kennedy’s meteoric rise endangered what McCarthy felt was his destiny to become the first Catholic President of the United States. By the time of the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Humphrey had eliminated himself as a contender, and released his delegates' obligation to vote for him. This left Minnesota a valuable up-for-grabs state, but one with divided loyalties.
When it came to choosing the Democratic nominee, Humphrey was inclined toward Adlai Stevenson, the former Governor of Illinois who had twice led the Democrats against – and twice failed to beat – the popular incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower. Unfortunately for Humphrey, Stevenson was not officially running, only stating that he would accept the candidacy if nominated. Meanwhile, Freeman had been enticed by the Kennedy camp with the possibility of being made vice president, but only in exchange for delivering the Minnesota delegation. As for McCarthy, to him, any candidate but Kennedy was acceptable. Therefore, the two most likely alternatives were Stevenson, and Johnson, who had not run in the primaries, and had entered the race with only a week left until the convention. As the convention began, it was unclear with whom McCarthy's loyalties lied: he had not challenged a public statement by Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma that he was backing Johnson, but, privately, he seemed to prefer Stevenson.
Kennedy aimed to overwhelm his opponents and win on the first ballot, while Johnson hoped to deny Kennedy a majority and force the convention to a second ballot, where he could stop Kennedy's momentum and snatch the nomination. Humphrey believed that Kennedy's lead was insurmountable, but pushed for McCarthy to be selected for the vice presidential slot if Johnson got the nomination.
On the night of the first ballot vote, the candidates received their nominating speeches. Freeman was chosen to nominate Kennedy, although he had failed to rally Minnesota to the cause. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn nominated Johnson, and Governor of Missouri James Blair Jr. nominated the minor candidate Stuart Symington. McCarthy then took to the stage to nominate Stevenson. Whipping the Stevensonians into a frenzy, he declared that Stevenson had already proven himself the favourite son of not one state, but the favourite son of all fifty states, and every country on Earth. Imploring the delegates with the biblical commandment to not leave Stevenson “a prophet without honor in his own party,” he called on the convention to go to a second ballot [2]. This way, he said, delegates would be able to vote their conscience, free of obligation to any candidate. Despite his spirited effort, McCarthy's plea fell on deaf ears, and Kennedy was nominated on the first ballot without the Minnesota delegation; Freeman was passed over for Johnson for the vice presidency, who was chosen to unite the party and keep the South in the Democratic column, in what was expected to be a tight election [3].
The three Minnesotans all left the convention disappointed for different reasons, but they had exerted an amazing amount of influence over the proceedings. As put by Senator John Stennis of Mississippi: “You can never count that old Hubert out. Here he is, a defeated presidential candidate without a bit of power and the first thing you know, one of his boys is nominating the winning candidate, another of his boys gives the best speech of the convention, and his delegation still votes for Hubert.”
The next time McCarthy saw Freeman was in 1961, when the latter had been sworn in as Secretary of Agriculture – a far cry from the vice presidency. The first thing McCarthy said to him was, “so you got your payoff.”
"I'm twice as liberal as Humphrey and twice as Catholic as Kennedy." McCarthy was disappointed by Jack Kennedy winning the Democratic presidential nomination, as he felt that he was more deserving to be the first Catholic president. Despite this, he campaigned for the Kennedy/Johnson ticket. He is seen here seated next to Hubert Humphrey, with Kennedy riding in the back, as they campaign in Moorhead, Minnesota.
The day after he was nominated, Kennedy met with McCarthy. Over breakfast, he asked McCarthy to campaign on his behalf in Connecticut and southern California, where Stevenson had some of his strongest support. McCarthy accepted, and by his own estimate gave sixty speeches in sixteen states on behalf of the Kennedy campaign. Between his national tours, McCarthy returned to Minnesota, where he stumped on behalf of Humphrey’s re-election campaign. While Kennedy narrowly won one of the closest elections in American history over Vice President Richard Nixon, Humphrey breezed to a landslide victory and second term.
Kennedy continued to pay special recognition to McCarthy following his election to the presidency; he visited the Senator after he had been hospitalized for pneumonia, invited him to deliver the administration’s 1961 speech at the annual journalists’ Gridiron Dinner, and asked him to travel to Rome to deliver a message to Pope John XXIII. McCarthy supposedly did more shadowy work for Kennedy as well, with it being alleged that McCarthy's trip to the 1961 Christian Democratic World Conference in Chile was a cover to deliver CIA funds to that country's Christian Democratic Party [4]. Regardless, the bonhomie was often one-sided: At Kennedy’s inauguration, McCarthy complained that he was a better Catholic than Kennedy and more qualified to be president in every way, with the only difference being he did not have rich father. Likewise, McCarthy was a frequent critic of Kennedy from the left on the Senate floor. In the privacy of his office, he criticized Kennedy’s speeches, and collectively referred to the Kennedy clan as ‘Big Brother.’ A final attempt at reconciliation on Kennedy's part succeeded in 1962, when the President personally visited McCarthy’s Minnesota office during a tour of the Midwest, and joined him for Mass. Afterwards, McCarthy began to talk much more favourably of Kennedy in private, and while he continued to criticize the administration, it dulled to being no more than the same criticisms of other Senate liberals, frustrated with the slow pace of reform.
Despite the special attention given to him, McCarthy’s career had reached a political dead end under the Kennedy Administration; prestigious positions were given to Senators who were more loyal and cooperative, while McCarthy remained a minor figure. But, his fortunes saw a dramatic reversal following the Kennedy Assassination: with Kennedy dead and Lyndon Johnson president, McCarthy could once again claim to be the foremost rising Catholic in the party, and a likely nominee for vice president. McCarthy became a welcome guest in the White House once Johnson had settled in. With the renewed possibility of the vice presidency now dangling in front of him, McCarthy became one of the staunchest defenders of the Johnson Administration, fully supporting the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Act, and especially the Vietnam War.
And through it all, McCarthy insisted that he and Jack Kennedy had always been the best of friends.
Senator Eugene McCarthy with President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson had been McCarthy's benefactor during their time together in the Senate. Once Johnson rose to the presidency following the Kennedy Assassination, McCarthy aspired for the vice presidency.
As the 1964 Democratic Convention approached, McCarthy became more and more excited about the prospect of becoming vice president. With the idea buzzing in his head, he eagerly voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President nearly unlimited executive power for overseeing military action in Vietnam. He also became a vociferous defender of the Vietnam War to his constituents, describing it as a necessity to defeat international communism. Meanwhile, Johnson continued to ask special favours of McCarthy, and frequently implied that he was going to be the vice presidential pick. Johnson had McCarthy rewrite his speech to the United Nations, and had him act as his unofficial whip on the Senate Finance Committee, among other responsibilities. The President also urged McCarthy to introduce himself to party bosses such as Jesse Unruh of California and Richard Daley of Illinois. On top of all that, Johnson made a surprise, unannounced visit to McCarthy's re-election fundraiser dinner, where he talked up the Senator to a delighted Washington crowd. Considering himself “everybody's second choice” and the least divisive option, McCarthy became absolutely convinced that he was going to be vice president, to the extent that he spent tens of thousands of dollars to start a nominating committee, open a secret campaign office, hire a small staff, and begin a whisper campaign against Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey had relented on his previous disinterest in the vice presidency, realizing that it was the only path to the presidency for a poor man from a small state. At the same time, McCarthy proxies suggested that Humphrey was too divisive on civil rights and too dovish on Vietnam to be a good vice presidential pick. But, what McCarthy felt was the X factor that would put him ahead of any other candidate, was the close relationship between his wife, Abigail, and the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson.
Besides the two senators from Minnesota, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, the brother of the martyred president, was also in the running for the second spot on the ticket.
Obsessed with winning in his own right, Johnson was paranoid that Bobby Kennedy would swoop down and try to steal the nomination, or at the very least would try to use public sympathy to be drafted as vice president at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Johnson, disdainful of the idea of being a placeholder between two Kennedys, resolved to only nominate Bobby if it was the only path to victory in November. However, as the Republican primaries continued, and it became more and more clear that the Republican nominee would be the ultraconservative Barry Goldwater, Johnson realized he did not need Kennedy. As a smokescreen tactic, Johnson announced that no member of his cabinet would be under consideration for the vice presidency, eliminating Kennedy, as well as Johnson's personal preference, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Freeman, who was still serving as Secretary of Agriculture and had still been holding out hope to be selected, was also eliminated.
As it turned out, Humphrey was everybody's second choice, not McCarthy. Freeman, having never fully made amends with McCarthy, supported their mutual friend instead. Kennedy also supported Humphrey, disapproving of McCarthy's attempts to make himself the premier party Catholic. McCarthy did not help his case when he criticized Bobby as a carpetbagger for resigning from the attorney generalship to run for Senate in New York. Polling was also in Humphrey's favour: with Kennedy eliminated, Humphrey was the nation's top choice for vice president, with McCarthy in dead last. Humphrey also had the overwhelming support of organized labour and the Minnesota delegation. McCarthy's only saving grace was that he was the chosen candidate of the South. While McCarthy had a strong civil rights record, his reputation was not tied to it like Humphrey, and he was perceived as a moderate for his willingness to associate with Southerners. McCarthy frequently sat at the Texas table in the congressional restaurant with his colleagues Homer Thornberry and Frank Ikard, and had worked with the likes of Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Russell Long of Louisiana, and Albert Gore of Tennessee on the Senate Finance Committee. McCarthy was even acquainted with arch-segregationists like James Eastland of Mississippi. Eastland, along with Governor of Texas John Connally, pleaded McCarthy's case to Johnson, but to no avail [5].
By the time of the convention in Atlantic City, McCarthy had become suspicious of his chances, despite the White House insisting he was still under consideration. Johnson toyed with Humphrey and McCarthy up to the very last minute, phoning both of them during their respective
Meet the Press interviews to vacillate over his pick. Johnson even went so far as to consider having them both stand behind him at the podium where he would announce his choice, and tell the loser to nominate the chosen candidate [6]. Fed up with Johnson's mind games, McCarthy withdrew his name from consideration, but was still forced to deliver the nominating speech for Humphrey, in a delivery described as “barely perfunctory.” At the same time as McCarthy was giving the speech, Johnson waded into the crowd to shake hands, intentionally distracting the delegates from the speech, as one final rebuke. McCarthy broke all ties with Johnson, and developed a bitter contempt for Humphrey in less then a day, delivering mean-spirited jokes at his expense during his celebration party. McCarthy withdrew to his motel room for the rest of the convention. There, he spent time with his friend and fellow senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, developing vague revenge fantasies of somehow defeating his erstwhile allies in 1968 [7].
"I'm Lady Bird's favorite." McCarthy believed he would be selected as Johnson's running mate in 1964 in large part because of the close friendship between Lady Bird Johnson and Abigail McCarthy. As it turned out, McCarthy was being strung along by Johnson, who never seriously considered choosing him for the vice presidency.
Despite trouncing his opponent in his re-election bid, McCarthy returned to the Senate a resentful man. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket had won one of the biggest landslides in American history, and was riding high on its popular mandate. Meanwhile, McCarthy had been banished from Johnson’s inner circle, and denied any room for advancement; he was passed over as Ambassador to the United Nations, with the job instead being given to Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg. Goldberg was in turn replaced on the court by Johnson ally Abe Fortas.
Friends noticed that McCarthy had gone from witty to cruel with his barbed remarks, and that he rarely fulfilled his committee obligations, often leaving in the middle of hearings to go read in his office or chat with journalists in the Senate restaurant. While McCarthy continued to vote for nearly every piece of progressive legislation put in front of him, it was vacant of any passion that might have been there previously. The only policies that McCarthy still seemed specifically interested in were immigration reform, tax reform, and continuing tax exemptions for the oil industry (the only issue where maintained a conservative voting record). His absences from Washington became longer and more noticeable as he went on extended lecture tours to sell his books.
McCarthy also carried his reignited vendetta against the Kennedys back into Congress, in part blaming Bobby for blocking his nomination. McCarthy considered Bobby to have all of the ruthless calculation of Jack, without any of his warmth or reconciliatory attitudes. Bobby considered McCarthy a vain, jealous loser who barely put in any work. Their distaste was mutual, to say the least, as was their ability to hold a grudge. One instance of McCarthy's resentfulness involved the youngest Kennedy brother, Ted. Accompanied by his friend Lester Hyman, Senator Ted Kennedy was desperately trying to rally votes for his amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to abolish the poll tax on
all levels of government. The poll tax had been designed with the intention of keeping poor (overwhelmingly black) voters from participating in the democratic process in the South. Under the original proposal, the poll tax would only be removed federally, while the Attorney General would challenge the constitutionality of it on other levels of government. While the vote was on the floor, McCarthy was eating lunch in the Senate restaurant, and refused to vote until he was finished. Eventually, he did saunter into the chamber with minutes to spare… and voted against the amendment. While McCarthy did support the abolition of the poll tax, he claimed that Bobby Kennedy’s replacement as Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, had told him to vote against it so it could be abolished by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, his conduct furthered the divide between him and the Kennedys [8].
McCarthy with his ideological mentor, Adlai Stevenson, shortly before the latter's death in 1965. Much like Stevenson, McCarthy's foreign policy was driven by a belief in anti-communist, liberal internationalism, and cooperation between the nations of the world.
As McCarthy’s career seemed to be in terminal decline, he changed his fate by joining the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a lark.
In his role as a member of the Senate Steering Committee, McCarthy had intended to appoint his friend Edmund Muskie to the vacancy on the Foreign Relations Committee. Muskie had declined, and suggested in passing that McCarthy should appoint himself to it instead, which he decided to do.
Once he had officially joined, McCarthy came under the wing of the committee's Chair: Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Fulbright had been one of the chief supporters of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, but only on assurances from Johnson that American involvement in Vietnam would be kept to a minimum. Many Americans had seen the Vietnam War as a backwater civil war between communist North and anti-communist South, with Johnson's tough talk on the subject just being to keep the Republicans from accusing him of being soft on the Reds. Many thought that US involvement would be kept to a minimum, with military advisors and bombing campaigns. However, with more American troops in Vietnam than ever, with few signs to indicate a quick end to the war, Fulbright grew increasingly skeptical of the chances of success, and rallied the rest of the Democrats on the committee to his dovish foreign policy positions [9]. The final break between Fulbright, his committee, and the President occurred over the Dominican Civil War of 1965: the democratically elected President of the Dominican Republic, Juan Bosch, had been toppled in a military coup in 1963. Supporters of Bosch launched a counter-coup in 1965 to reinstate the elected government, but tens of thousands of American marines were deployed by Johnson to support the military junta. Johnson had been erroneously told that the rebels were communists, and fearful of “another Cuba,” he had deployed the troops with only a partial picture of what was going on. Fulbright was not only furious that Johnson had crushed a democratic movement, but that he had deployed American troops without congressional approval. In the ensuing hearings, McCarthy clearly sided with Fulbright, and began to question the fundamental beliefs of America's Cold War policies [10].
While the Dominican Civil War quickly concluded with American involvement, the same could not be said of the war in Vietnam. By 1966, Fulbright had completely turned against the Vietnam War. McCarthy – in part convinced by his time on the Foreign Relations Committee and in part convinced because of pressure from Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV) – had turned with him. In hearings investigating the coup against South Vietnam's presidential dictator, Nguyen Khanh, Johnson's cabinet team continued to dismiss the committee's concerns, and claimed that victory was assured. However, high profile testimonials before the committee by foreign policy and military specialists like George Kennan and James Gavin severely damaged the war's prestige: Kennan, the godfather of American Cold War policy, denounced the war as untenable, while former General Gavin suggested that American forces should only defend essential positions until a ceasefire could be negotiated. With the testimonials under his belt, Fulbright began criticizing what he called the “Myth of the Cold War,” that all communist nations were equally hostile to the United States, and equally beholden to Moscow; something that was considered the gospel truth by almost every politician in Washington [11].
As for McCarthy himself, he had completed his metamorphosis from liberal hawk to zealous dove. Beyond seeing Vietnam as a failing of the Johnson Administration and Cold War policy, he saw it as a divine battle of good and evil. To McCarthy, Johnson's fixation with Vietnam, and his obsession with not being the first president to lose a war, was emblematic of all of America's spiritual woes and the destruction of its moral fibre: America had become obsessed with death and killing, which in turn was causing the unravelling of society. McCarthy dove back into his work in the Senate, calling for orderly withdrawal from Vietnam along the lines of the Gavin Plan, a moratorium on arms sales to the developing world, and a motion to put the CIA under the control of a Senate committee, declaring that “Americans must abandon the notion that morality stops at the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency.” Meanwhile, the Democratic Party had lost significant ground in the House of Representatives in the 1966 Midterms, and was close to running out of money. Johnson slashed the party's budget and siphoned it into the White House's operating costs, ignoring warnings that state organizations were on the brink of collapse across the country. On Christmas Eve of 1966, McCarthy's staff secretly drew up plans titled Operation Casa Blanca, with the goal being to challenge Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries, with funding to be provided by a clique of Wall Street bankers who were old supporters of Adlai Stevenson.
However, McCarthy's enthusiasm was short-lived, and he soon returned to his old absenteeism. He began to plan his retirement from the Senate, and hoped to acquire some sort of academic position back in Minnesota. Despite these plans, McCarthy's opposition toward the war remained, occupying his thoughts more than any other issue.
In an appropriations hearing for the war in August of 1967, Fulbright and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach [12] were gripped in the same quarrel as ever, over exactly how much power the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave the President. Exasperated by the circuitous argument, and Katzenbach's assertion that Johnson had supreme executive power, McCarthy left the room, with the committee’s Chief of Staff, Carl Marcy, on his heels. With the only other person in the hall outside being
New York Times reporter Ned Kenworthy, McCarthy railed against Johnson and Katzenbach to his audience of two: “Someone's got to take them on. This is the wildest testimony I've ever heard. There is no limit to what he says the President can do! There is only one thing to do – take it to the country. And if I have to run for president to do it, I'm going to do it.”
And it was in that moment that McCarthy began to seriously consider – if not a run for president – then at least a stroll.
[1] McCarthy was first introduced to the oil industry by his Texan friends, Homer Thornberry and Frank Ikard. Through them, McCarthy met the oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. With McCarthy's help, Marshall was able to expedite the construction of the Pine Bend Refinery, and its various pipelines that ran through McCarthy's congressional district. McCarthy consistently supported the oil industry after that, and received noticeable financial backing from the oil lobby for the rest of his career.
[2] McCarthy’s support for Adlai Stevenson at the 1960 Democratic National Convention is stranger than one might think at face value. McCarthy had never actually met Stevenson before the convention, and was chosen to nominate him based off of the suggestion of Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma. Friends of Stevenson, such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and George Ball, suspected that McCarthy was an agent of Lyndon Johnson. Schlesinger speculated that by prompting a second liberal candidate to enter the field on the second ballot, it would split the vote between Kennedy and Stevenson, and make it easier for Johnson to secure the nomination, with McCarthy as his vice presidential candidate. McCarthy would later deny the rumours of this plan, and claimed that Kennedy would have been chosen as the vice presidential nominee if Johnson had won out at the convention. Despite these accusations, McCarthy had been an enthusiastic supporter of Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, and continued to praise him well into the 1980s.
[3] Despite Kennedy dangling it in front of him, it was highly unlikely that Freeman ever would have gotten the vice presidential nomination. While Kennedy admitted that he was weak with demographics where the Minnesota Democrats were notably strong (particularly labour unions), he was weaker in the South, where Republicans had won Johnson's home state of Texas for the last two elections in a row. In the entirety of American history up to that point, a Democrat had never won the election without also winning Texas, making Johnson the best choice, politically speaking.
[4] This is according to McCarthy's one-time press secretary Seymour Hersh. In his memoir, Hersh reported that McCarthy brought this incident up when they were discussing his working relationship with Kennedy. It does correlate with the CIA's long history of covertly backing the Christian Democrats in Chile, and McCarthy's close relationship with Chilean political figures such as Eduardo Frei and Radomiro Tomic. Additionally, McCarthy was friends with two CIA agents, Tom Finney and Thomas McCoy, who he met under unknown circumstances and who would later play a key part in his presidential campaign. However, it is contrary to McCarthy's longstanding animosity toward the CIA, which was already alive and well by the early 1960s.
[5] In a phone conversation between Johnson and Connally on July 23, 1964, they discussed the possible choices for vice president. Conally argued that McCarthy was a good choice for the position because he was not a notable political figure, and was “damn little harm, damn little good.” Johnson countered that McCarthy’s longstanding support for the oil industry would be a point of frequent criticism by the liberal press. Presciently, Johnson also said “He’s too willful. I got to be sure he won’t be running against me four years from now.”
[6] This was a particular sticking point for McCarthy, and he called Johnson a “sadistic son of a bitch” when he heard about it. McCarthy later denied saying it, claiming that he had only called two people "shits" in his entire life. This is contradicted by various accounts of people who worked with or for McCarthy.
[7] McCarthy would later claim he never had any interest in the vice presidency, which appears quite clearly false judging by his actions at the time.
[8] The poll tax was ultimately struck down on the state level in the Supreme Court cases Harman v. Forssenius and Harper v. Virginia State Board of Election. The Kennedy Amendment failed by a vote of forty-nine to forty-four.
[9] The Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee, led by Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, remained a hawkish lot.
[10] During the hearings about the intervention in the Dominican Republic, Johnson's Under Sectretary of State for Latin Affairs Thomas Mann earned the permanent ire of McCarthy. Mann dismissed Bosch as a “poet-professor type” and said that a pro-American dictatorship was better than a democratically elected socialist government. This particularly irked McCarthy, as he could be perfectly described as a “poet-professor type.” In general, Johnson's team was very condescending towards the Foreign Relations Committee, describing them as “cloakroom crusaders, brave in private, cautious in public, fitfully aroused and poorly informed.”
[11] While Fulbright was one of the most forward-thinking American foreign policy specialists of the Cold War, he was also an ardent segregationist who voted against every piece of civil rights legislation put in front of him in his decades-long career.
[12] Johnson moved Katzenbach from the position of Attorney General to the position of Under Secretary of State in October of 1966.
