Eugene McCarthy will always be remembered as the man who
“toppled LBJ” in 1968. His campaign for the Democratic presidential
nomination that year seemed futile. Whatever his problems, Lyndon
Johnson had one advantage: he was the incumbent who enjoyed the
benefits of office.
But McCarthy’s upstart campaign managed to lose and to win the
New Hampshire primary. By getting 42 percent of the vote (and
holding LBJ under 50 percent), McCarthy paved the way for Johnson’s
withdrawal from the race. Incumbents are still expected to win
their re-election bids. Incumbents still have an advantage in
running for re-election. What is missing now are challengers coming
out of nowhere to challenge the status quo.
Eugene McCarthy’s campaign depended on two factors, shifting
public opinion and money. Public support for the Vietnam War
remained strong for a longer time than we now remember. Only in the
fall of 1968 were a majority of Americans willing to say that the
Vietnam effort had been a mistake.
McCarthy sensed that his campaign could represent an emerging
public sentiment against the war. But to enter the race for the
presidency, he needed more than a message, more even than the
volunteers that flocked to him that spring.
McCarthy needed money to finance his campaign. He got it.
McCarthy received several six-figure donations from affluent
individuals deeply opposed to the war in Vietnam. Herbert
Alexander, a leading campaign finance expert, estimates that about
one-third of McCarthy’s total fundraising in 1968 came from just 50
large donors. David Hoeh, the organizer of McCarthy’s New Hampshire
campaign, recalled later that a single “financial angel” saved
their media effort at a crucial point.
McCarthy spent the money effectively in spreading his anti-war
message. The McCarthy campaign devoted $110,000 to radio and
television in New Hampshire and over $150,000 on all communications
media in that primary. That does not seem like much today. In those
days such sums were large enough to get McCarthy into the
presidential game, large enough to all but defeat a sitting
president, and begin the winding down of the Vietnam War.
McCarthy’s campaign made a difference in that year of living
dangerously, 1968. It thus attracted attention, not all of it
welcome. Many love competition more in theory than in practice.
McCarthy had shown the electoral potential of television backed by
political contributions in service to a political message. McCarthy
had, in short, threatened the political status quo.
Congress moved quickly to deal with the threat. Early 1969,
legislation limiting campaign spending on television and other
broadcasting outlets appeared in Congress and was passed in 1970
(President Nixon vetoed it) and 1971.
The purpose of the law was clear. If the campaign finance law of
1971 had been in effect in 1968, McCarthy would have been required
to spend 80 percent less on the media in the New Hampshire primary.
Congress had, as one member put it, “tamed the television monster.”
More concretely, Congress had tried to make sure no more Eugene
McCarthys rose up to challenge the status quo.
After Watergate, Congress replaced the limits on broadcast
spending with more general spending limits, which the Supreme Court
voided in the case of Buckley v. Valeo (McCarthy was a
plaintiff against the limits). Contribution limits, a weaker way to
same end of suppressing competition, received judicial
blessing.
In our time the men who supported McCarthy’s 1968 effort would
be liable for the crime of contributing too much money to a
political campaign. Not surprisingly we have many fewer upstart
campaigns like McCarthy’s and 98 percent of incumbents win their
bids to be re-elected to Congress.
McCarthy himself believed that campaign finance restrictions
complicated the lives of candidates and their supporters, increased
the influence of special interests, and ultimately made lawbreakers
out of people seeking to exercise their right to political
association. Most of such laws, he said, violated the Constitution
while upholding the privileged status of the major parties. His
opposition to campaign finance law was, he explained near the end
of his life, a “free speech kind of thing.”
Indeed it was. Contrarian and principled. A Gene McCarthy kind
of thing.
John Samples is the director of the Center
for Representative Government at the Cato
Institute.
