Senate Dove Who Jolted ’68 Race Dies at 89: “Mr. McCarthy, a man of needling wit, triggered one of the most tumultuous years in American political history. With the war taking scores of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, he rallied throngs against this ‘costly exercise in futility’ and stoked a fiery national debate over the World War II model of an all-powerful presidency. He challenged Johnson in a primary, and the president, facing almost certain defeat, ended up withdrawing from the race. Mr. McCarthy was a disarming presence on the stump as he mixed a wry tone and a hard, existential edge in challenging the White House, the Pentagon and the superpower swagger of modern politicians.” (New York Times ) Of all the presidential candidates during my lifetime, McCarthy in 1968 was quite simply the one most worth an idealist’s working for (Howard Dean notwithstanding), although there were some puzzling aspects of his later stances, including the endorsement of Reagan over Carter in 1980 and supports for the former’s Star Wars strategic defense initiative. Unlike George Bush’s contemptible attempt to appropriate the legacy of Ronald Reagan after the latter’s death, however, the diametrically opposite Bush Co. are utterly incapable of even understanding McCarthy’s brand of politics — concerned with principle rather than outcome; thoughtful, poetic and intellectually honest — and I predict there will not even be an acknowledgement from the dysadministration of his passing.