I Read The News Today, Oh Boy...

All right, I confess. If someone had put a gun to my head and asked me if Eugene McCarthy were still alive or not I would have had to guess. I would have guessed "No." Turns out today I would be correct.
Senator McCarthy (not that one, the nice one) was best known as a voice of conscience and peace during the turbulent years that our country found itself embroiled in a very unpopular war. Vietnam, remember? He's the guy who is generally considered the first politician in America to stir up the "youth vote." He also effectively ended Lyndon Johnson's run for re-election when he polled surprisingly well in the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Johnson won that contest, but showed himself vulnerable, causing Bobby Kennedy to change his decision not to run for president. Johnson dropped out, Kennedy came in. Kennedy's charisma picked up where McCarthy's momentum left off, and suddenly Bobby was the man to beat. McCarthy faded to the back of the pack. After Bobby was killed, it was Hubert Humphrey (who, like McCarthy, was from Minnesota) that ended up winning the Democratic nomination. Richard Nixon won the election that November.
How would things be different if McCarthy had been able to carry his success over to the national stage and win the nomination? Running an openly anti-war campaign against the decidedly hawkish Nixon would have given the voters a vivid contrast. Humphrey was stuck carrying the party banner and the stigma of Johnson's failure to create a focused plan for America's involvement in southeast Asia. McCarthy's bitterness showed through as the years passed. "Once Bobby came [into the race]," he said later, "we weren't able to run the kind of campaign we wanted to, which was to focus on the issue of the war."
There are already politicians lining up to stick their faces in the high speed fan that is the 2008 presidential election. Will there be a clear voice among the Democrats that offers a real choice from our current party line? As the "final throes" of the Iraqi insurgency enters its second year, I can only hope that there is someone with the courage and commitment to fill the void left by Eugene McCarthy.