Fifty years ago next week, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota scored a near-upset in New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary, setting in motion Lyndon Johnson's announcement, three weeks later, that he would “not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” It was a jaw-dropping series of events, one that gave McCarthy a near-mythic status in American political history.
Just weeks earlier, the longtime campaign reporter Theodore White observed, it had been “unthinkable that a sitting president of the United States could be unhorsed within his own party either by primaries, conventions or riot in the streets.” But McCarthy galvanized popular opposition to Johnson's foreign policy and, seemingly overnight, turned the election into a referendum on America's continued involvement in the Vietnam War. At least that's how it is popularly remembered.
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