Eugene McCarthy and Allard Lowenstein

I reviewed the obituaries for Eugene McCarthy and all omitted reference to Allard Lowenstein. Lowenstein created the "Dump Johnson" movement that lead to McCarthy's presidential candidacy. An Internet search for Lowenstein provides some good pieces like John Nichols' article and some horrid articles like the Wikipedia's which dates the origin of the Dump Johnson Movement incorrectly.

McCarthy was of the Great Depression-World War II generation. Lowenstein was a tweener. Too young to fight in World War II, too old by over fifteen years to be a baby boomer.

Both McCarthy and Lowenstein were part of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that was fervently anti-communist. Lowenstein was as left as many of the authors of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Port Huron Statement but he was also one of the harshest  critics of SDS's failure to clearly denounce totalitarian regimes even though SDS was critical of most Communist governments of the time.

It meant that Lowenstein was to spend most of his political life isolated and with few close ideological companions; seen as too conservative by much of the New Left, and far too radical for the post-war New Deal Democrats of the 1950's.

just as the Vietnam anti-war movement was building, revelations of covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funding in the 1950's and 60's of the National Student Association (NSA) were published in the February, 1967 Ramparts magazine. Lowenstein had served as an NSA President in his student days.

The CIA had both overt and covert operations, and they included supporting student activities like the NSA.  There were numerous gatherings of international student groups. The hope was to create international  links to foreign left wing students who could provide an alternative to Communism in their homelands.

When the Ramparts article broke, I was finishing my first year as a University of Wisconsin representative to the NSA. The previous year there were many of us on the left who were critical of the International Desk of the NSA headed by Rick Stearns.  We kept accusing them of running a little or 'mini State Department', particularly because of their less than forthcoming support of our anti-war position that was growing within NSA. 

How wrong and yet how right we were. The NSA International desk was more like a mini CIA.

With this background, Lowenstein came to the NSA convention in College Park, Maryland during the summer of 1967. He had already laid the groundwork for a Dump Johnson Movement with his friend Curtis Gans. 

The 1967 convention was the first one that did not have a bevy of former NSA staffers and officers appear.  In fact, Lowenstein was the only one.  It gave some sort of signal that he was 'clean' and could be trusted.

Lowenstein met with us in small groups and delivered one significant speech.  The message was always the same: "Don't worry about a candidate; 'Dump Johnson' and a candidate will emerge."  In private discussions he repeatedly told us that McCarthy was a possibility, and that despite the denials by Bobby Kennedy, the New York Senator could be induced to run.

"Dump Johnson" was off the ground.  In early September, 1967, just as the semester was starting, Lowenstein came to Madison and stayed with me, sleeping on the couch in our Bassett Street apartment. In two days he helped launch the "Dump Johnson" efforts at the University of Wisconsin and met with Madison's Midge Miller, and began organizing  for the McCarthy candidacy.

Two months later in November, 1967 McCarthy announced his candidacy for President of the United States.

When Bobby Kennedy belatedly entered the race four days after McCarthy nearly won the New Hampshire primary, Lowenstein stayed with McCarthy but his heart was with Kennedy.

On March 31, Lyndon Johnson stunned the nation by announcing he would not seek re-election.  On April 2, 1968, McCarthy won the Wisconsin primary with over 56% of the vote. "Dump Johnson" had dumped Johnson.

Comments

[Tim Morrissey]

I found it interesting that yesterday (Sunday 12-11) the State Journal had a couple long articles about McCarthy; but on the front page of the Journal-Sentinel, bottom right, they had a box with the obits of McCarthy and Richard Pryor. McCarthy got about two column inches; Prior got about twelve.

[T.W. Day]

Thanks. I, too, had forgotten all about Allard Lowenstein and the NSA. I was a student member in Dallas, or the microscopic SMU NSA group which morphed into SDS, in 1967. I should have remembered my own history better.

[Maki Saito]

Hello.
I am a student in Japan and now researching for the primary in 1968.
Do you know why Allard Lowenstein wanted to drive down LBJ?
And how did you and other students think and feel about Lowenstein and 'Clean for Gene' at that time?

[Jim Nelson]

My friend, the late Frank Butler of South Dakota, also played a role in the early Dump Johnson movement. Butler was a radical farmer from western South Dakota who later headed the McCarthy campaign in SD. He was killed a few years later (1975?) when his plain crashed in the Yukon. Where are these guys now that we need them????

[Richard Cummings]

For those interested in Allard Lowenstein and Eugene McCarthy as well as Lowenstein and CIA, please read my biography of Lowenstein, "The Pied Piper-Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream,) originally published by Grove Press but out now in an updated paperback edition available from Amazon.com. It documents Lowenstein's relationship with CIA.

[Harold Rosenthal]

Gene McCarthy could have been the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

On the first morning of the Chicago Convention a meeting with McCarthy and the Illinois delegation was to take place. Allard, who I knew since 1947, had been involved in arranging the meeting with Mayor Daley.

Understand Daley liked to be a king maker. Supporting Humphrey gained him nothing. But if the Illinois delegation were to support McCarthy, it may have started a slide which would have been attributed to Daley.

Allard, I and McCarthy's advance man arrived at the meeting about an hour before McCarthy was to appear. The delegation was seated in one room and Daley was in an office where Allard and I met with him, listened to his ego spout and traded bad jokes.

The time for McCarthy's appearance came and went. We spoke to the advance man who had called the office. No one knew where McCarthy was. About an hour passed. The advance man came into our little meeting with the Mayor to apologize, thank him and cancel. Daley shouted "No! The delegation will sit and wait to when McCarthy gets here."

McCarthy eventually got there. Allard later learned McCarthy had been in his hotel room writing poetry.

We entered before the Illinois delegation who had been sitting the entire time. Mayor Daley introduced McCarthy as "the late Senator Gene McCarthy," and it was all over.

[C. Howell]

I think it is important to note in the chronology of the "dump Johnson" movement that Robert Kennedy was approached, asked to lead the movement, and refused. Gene McCarthy was subsequently approached and accepted the challenge, putting his own political career on the line and at great risk. Al Lowenstein made the right decision.