NOT since the civil rights march on Mississippi in the summer of 1964 had so many young Americans committed themselves so fervently to a major national cause. Indeed, the volunteers who swarmed to Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire were far more deeply involved in the political mainstream than the civil rights marchers, and his youthful workers—some 5,000 strong—won results far more tangible and immediate than their predecessors in the South. In an era when many younger Americans are turning away from involvement in the democratic process, by dropping out either to psychedelia or to the nihilism of the New Left, the cool, crisply executed crusade of Gene McCarthy's "ballot children" provided heartening evidence that the generation gap is bridgeable—politically, at least.
McCarthy's student power came mostly from nearby Eastern Seaboard schools—Harvard, Radcliffe, Yale, Smith, Columbia, Barnard and such lesser-known institutions as Dunbarton, Belknap and Rivier—though some of his supporters arrived by Greyhound or jalopy from points as distant as Duke and the University of Michigan. All were soberly antiwar and anti-L.B.J. Many had demonstrated against the war at sit-ins or last October's Pentagon march, but even those happenings were, in the end, frustrating. "It looked more and more as if the physical types of protest—picketing and marching and all that—were having no effect except as an emotional outlet," said Jon Barbieri, 23, a Connecticut-educated Peace Corpsman who came back from India and soon entered McCarthy's campaign. Said Dan Dodd, 23, a tall, tweedy Oregonian who dropped out of Union Theological Seminary to join Gene: "I was thinking of turning in my draft card, but then the campaign began. We're not going to build grass-roots politics in time to end the war by November, but if we can end the present President's career, maybe we can do it by then."
"Clean for Gene"
At the outset, few of the volunteers were excited by McCarthy's prospects for success or ignited by his deliberately low-voltage campaign style. Yet his refusal to harangue crowds or play the demagogue ultimately generated a subtle student-professor relationship. At the same time, McCarthy demanded hard work and personal self-sacrifice from his young workers, many of whom had been supporters of Robert Kennedy. To escape the hippie image, miniskirted girls went midi, and bearded boys either shaved or stayed in the back rooms, licking envelopes or compiling address lists to the accompaniment of muted Beatle music.