Lyndon Johnson is fond of comparing himself to the Harry Truman of 1948, who won an upset victory with a rip-roaring "give-'em-hell" campaign. Johnson's opponents prefer to compare him to the Truman of 1952, who decided not to run again in the midst of an unpopular war. Neither analogy quite fits. The fact is that the 1968 campaign is shaping up as a race like none before it.
Like the Truman of 1948, Johnson is doing badly in the popularity polls. Last week, while his Gallup rating rose for the first time in five months, he still drew approval from only 41% of the nation. And even though Johnson's prospects are likely to improve once the Republican Party fields a candidate who must then stake out positions on controversial, vote-losing issues, a new and intriguing factor entered the 1968 equation last week.
"No Limit." Standing in the rococo Senate Caucus Room, Minnesota's Eugene Joseph McCarthy, 51, a sardonic intellectual and an outspoken critic of Viet Nam policy, announced that he will enter at least four of next spring's primaries as a Democratic antiwar candidate opposing Lyndon Johnson.
"My decision," the Senator told reporters, "has been strengthened by recent announcements out of the Administration, the evident intention to escalate and to intensify the war in Viet Nam, and the absence of any positive indication or suggestion for a compromise or for a negotiated political settlement. I am concerned that the Administration seems to have set no limit to the price which it is willing to pay for a military victory."
In addition, McCarthy said, "there is growing evidence of a deepening moral crisis in America—discontent and frustration and a disposition to take extralegal if not illegal actions to manifest protest. I am hopeful that this challenge may alleviate at least in some degree this sense of political helplessness and restore to many people a belief in the processes of American politics and of American government."
Caterwaul & Caricature. The war has sundered the moral and political life of the U.S. as deeply as any crisis in this century. Within both major parties politicians have at least had a traditional forum from which to endorse or denounce the course of U.S. policy. Not so with the nation's private citizens who are critical of the war. Lacking an organized, effectual medium through which to voice their protests, dissenters ranging from Maoists to hippies, from middle-aged suburbanites in SANE to adolescent hotspurs in the Students for a Democratic Society have stormed Pentagon and draft board, marched and picketed and advertised. Already infected with malefic characters whose political education ended with 19th century nihilism as updated by Che Guevara, the peace movement has too often degenerated into caterwaul and caricature and, even worse, noncommunication. McCarthy's candidacy will at last give legitimate dissenters a civilized political voice.