Salon: Antiwar hero

Salon
December 10, 2005
John F. Callahan

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/07/mccarthy/index_np.html

At the end of November in 1967 when the Vietnam War seemed at the point of no return, with chaos on campuses and violence in the streets of American cities, Sen. Eugene McCarthy did what in those days was unthinkable: He challenged an incumbent president for the nomination of their party.

Running against Lyndon Johnson was not the first time Gene McCarthy had shown iconoclastic courage. In 1952, at the height of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's popularity, when not a single senator would step forward to debate the subversive-chasing demagogue, 32-year-old, second-term congressman Eugene McCarthy came forward to oppose Sen. McCarthy (no relation) on the Radio Forum of the Air.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Gene McCarthy sought to curb the influence of the CIA and the military-industrial complex on American foreign policy, and as a senator he led the fight to extend Social Security coverage to the mentally and physically disabled.