The war was thoroughly unpopular: its
objectives confused, if not downright dishonest, its consequences
increasingly fraught. The times required someone to act as a rallying
point against a president the pundits assumed was invulnerable. An
improbable figure emerged to do precisely that.
Thirty-five years ago tomorrow, on March 12 1968, a date described by the
journalist Tom Wicker as an Agincourt in American politics, the earth
shook. The Vietnam war did not cease at once: the final act was another
seven years away. But from that moment the Americans' passage deeper and
deeper into that particular bog ceased, and they began to turn round.
>From that day on, the US stopped thinking about winning, and started
thinking about how the hell to get out.
March 12 was the date of the New Hampshire primary, and the improbable
figure was Eugene McCarthy, the senator from Minnesota: little known,
donnish, a writer and poet, decidedly different from the average
politician. McCarthy took 42% of the Democratic vote, only just behind
President Lyndon Johnson. A few days earlier it had been assumed he might
get 10% or so.
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