Clean for Gene

In the fall of 1968, I was a sophomore at the College (now University) of St. Thomas in St. Paul.  1968 was a year of great trauma in our country and in many ways, St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, was an excellent place to view the momentous events of the time.

Minnesota United States Senator Eugene McCarthy (no relation, though I did refer to him that year as “Uncle Gene”.) had been a professor at St. Thomas, and a friend of my history professor.  Shortly after Senator McCarthy announced that he would challenge the incumbent president of his own party, Lyndon Johnson, McCarthy spoke at St. Thomas and I was in attendance.

I went "Clean for Gene" (basically, we were asked to make sure our hair wasn't too long) to Wisconsin and to Nebraska to knock doors for the Senator before the primaries in those states.  By that time, Johnson had announced that he would not seek reelection, and his Vice-President, former Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey was the establishment choice for the nomination.

After a bitter campaign, which saw the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, who may very well have won the nomination, Humphrey gained the nomination but lost the election to Richard Nixon.  I spent part of that election night at the Humphrey election night headquarters at the old Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis.

Though McCarthy lost the election, I was then and still am, intrigued by his intellectual take on the political process.  Early in his political career, when he was a Congressman from Minnesota, he was one of the first national politicians to stand up to the most infamous of all American political demagogues, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.

Shortly after his confrontation with the Wisconsin Senator, McCarthy penned an article for Commonweal magazine on being a Christian in politics.  It is worth a read:

The Christian in politics should be judged by the standard of whether through his decisions and actions he has advanced the cause of justice.  The Christian in politics should be distinguished by his alertness to protect and defend the rights of individuals, or religious institutions and other institutions, from violation by the state or by other institutions or persons.  He has a very special obligation to keep the things of God separate from those of Caesar.   The Christian in politics should shun the devices of the demagogue at all times, but especially in a time when anxiety is great, when tension is high, when uncertainty prevails, and emotion tends to be in the ascendancy.[1]

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[1] For the full article, see “The Christian in Politics”, Commonweal, Oct., 1954, reprinted at https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/christian-politics