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GARY EICHTEN: Good evening, and welcome to a conversation with Eugene McCarthy. I'm Gary Eichten, and along with Pat Smith, we talked with Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy this afternoon. Senator McCarthy has been relaxing here at Collegeville the last few days, far from a hectic campaign schedule, meeting with former professors, friends, and acquaintances he made during his stay at Saint John's, both as a student and later as a teacher.

It was a warm day, this day on the wooded shores of a lake. A day for tennis shoes and casual conversation. Senator McCarthy, looking relaxed and at ease, arrived, and Pat Smith asked the first question.

PAT SMITH: Senator, we have observed here as bystanders that actually, this probably wasn't really too much of a rest for you. Was it much of a break? We noticed that you were constantly surrounded by newsmen and inquisitors, et cetera. Is this really what you call a break during a campaign?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: It's been a somewhat different period from any I've had in the campaign. Whether one would call it a rest, at least it's been a change. And the newsmen have been, for the most part, local newsmen from Saint Cloud. They're somewhat different, somewhat more objective really I think in their approach to politics than the regular newsmen who have been following me for something like the last six months.

Newsmen who, in many cases, have rather a fixed position as to what American politics is, and how it's supposed to proceed, and who tend to write their stories somehow within the pattern of their own judgment as to how a campaign should go either in terms of how it should be organized or what the traditional process is.

It's a kind of relief really in talking to reporters from the Saint Cloud Times who don't look upon themselves as experts in national politics and to find that after you've talked to them, they report pretty much what you've said. These three days have been a break from, I don't quite say it was routine, but the way the campaign has been going for nearly six months since I first went into New Hampshire.

I think there's something to be said for a change by way of giving one arrest or a slightly new outlook on the campaign, and I anticipate that the three days I've spent here at Saint John's will kind of lighten the burden at least as I go back to the trail tomorrow to go to the West Coast, and then to work back East again, and continue the campaign during the approximately six weeks that remain before the Democratic Convention, which is currently scheduled for Chicago in late August.

It's been a rather strange campaign from the very beginning, and it's become somewhat stranger and more complicated as we've gone along. I had anticipated that by entering the primaries that I'd planned to enter when it appeared as though Senator Kennedy was not going to challenge the President, that I could probably win the primary in Wisconsin. I thought also in Oregon, and I anticipated by that time, we could also win in California.

In the course of those nearly six months of campaigning, that one would be able to exert a significant influence upon administration policy, perhaps to bring about a change in policy. And if not, to so change the politics of the country that we might have an open convention in Chicago in August.

The entrance of Senator Kennedy complicated things somewhat. And then of course, his assassination or murder in California at the end of that primary complicated things even more, so that we've had to move into this period after the end of the primaries. A period in which the principal competition is for votes at the convention with the need for us to revise really our, I'd say not our whole approach to the campaign because the basic approach has remained the same. But it's called for adjustments and some changes certainly from what my original plans and hopes were.

PAT SMITH: Senator, your supporters in the Twin City area are taking the issue of an open convention, at least here in Minnesota and the DFL party to the Supreme Court. At least that's what they have in mind. Now do you think this is necessary in all the states to get an open convention in Chicago?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I think that we're in the process this year of testing political procedures really as well as the substance of politics. I don't see this as quite necessary in all states. The fact is that the way in which we were treated here in Minnesota by the convention was somewhat harsher than we were treated in most other states.

There may be some action of this kind in the state of Indiana where Senator Kennedy and I, running on essentially the same platform, got approximately 70% of the vote in the primary. It appears now as though the position that he and I represented will probably not have at the convention more than a kind of 10% or 12% representation.

There may be a legal action in Indiana to try to require the Indiana delegation to represent in the convention the position that was supported in the Democratic primaries. And if they should hold it, they do not have to in any way reflect the vote for Senator Kennedy because of what happened, at least we would have a claim to something like 25% to 27% of the representation there on the basis of my own vote in the primary.

In the case of Indiana, the case of Minnesota, something like this in the state of Connecticut. The basic question that has been raised in Supreme Court decisions about one man one vote or at least having a proportionate representation at the point of decision is what is fundamental to the challenge that we are making?

And I expect there may be some other states in which a similar challenge will be raised. This is not very different from the precedent established in the '64 convention when the so-called Freedom Democrats from Mississippi appeared at the convention and asked for some representation. They said they were Democrats. They had a right to be represented at the convention. In this case, they were all Negroes.

But they had had no chance really or no opportunity to make their views felt through the normal procedures of the party because in Mississippi, as Negroes, they couldn't even attend the precinct caucuses. Therefore, they said they were denied a chance to participate, and they wanted their views and their position somehow represented at the National Democratic Convention.

We did at that convention make some exceptions and give them some delegates. The same principle is extended a step further. People who say, well, we did participate in primaries, or we did participate in precinct caucuses, and we won. But despite that fact, we're being denied any position or any voice at the convention that in a way, the denial of our participation after what we have done is in some ways a more serious interference with the process of political decision than in the case when you don't even allow people to participate.

In some ways, it's worse to say you can participate, and once you're position is known, we then just cast it aside then not to allow people to participate at all. So I'm hopeful that through legal action in some cases, through action within the political parties, and through a strong representation at the convention in Chicago in August, that we may make some real progress towards making political parties somewhat more representative and somewhat more Democratic than they have been in fact in the past, and of course, much more so than they are in terms of the formal procedures, which they're not very formal. They're rather loose. But in terms of the procedures which now exist.

PAT SMITH: In terms of the campaign again, you mentioned that you planned certain revisions and mentioned still that it was somewhat of a strange campaign, which admittedly so, it is in terms of looking at tradition. You aren't known for baby-kissing and autographs type of campaign. Well, do you plan a drastic change more in that line?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: No. I don't think so, no. We'll run the same kind of campaign. What we've done was to really to project it as a kind of educational campaign on the one hand to say to people what we thought needed to be said. But perhaps more important than that was our acceptance that people generally had made up their minds on three things.

One was the wars, secondly was the priorities for the country, and third was a kind of judgment with reference to political parties and party procedures. And that the important thing that I was to do was to give them a chance to manifest really in a kind of open and public way, in a legal and formal way, their judgment on the issue, their position as to priorities, and kind of provide also a chance to demonstrate that the political process could be made to work.

And we seem to have demonstrated this pretty well through the primaries. We're now involved in a much more serious test of proving that when you get beyond the primaries into the somewhat more intimate and central proceedings of politics in this country, that it's still possible to have the judgment and the will of the people made effective in the choice of candidates for the presidency particularly and also in the determination of what the platform of the major party should be.

PAT SMITH: Senator, your campaign has been said to draw a lot of people into the political process this year that have never participated before or at least, never really actively. What happens to them if the plans of an open convention fall through, if your candidacy falls through, what happens to these people who have joined your forces?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I don't know what they'll do. I'm hopeful that we can still run a test that's honest enough, so that they'll stay within the party structure. If it doesn't work out, well, I expect some of them will be disillusioned, may not participate in this campaign. But I do believe that we've set the stage for if not in '68, at least in '72, a rather significant change in the procedures of politics in this country.

PAT SMITH: During your break here at Saint John's, you issued a statement, a position paper on hunger. In it you made some statements concerning the Secretary of Agriculture Mr. Freeman, stating that he has not made full use of his powers to Institute food programs as they're needed throughout the nation. And from the context of this paper, the exact wording I think was denied, he denied having the power to Institute these programs. Do you think it's a matter of him denying having the power or not recognizing the problem really as it is?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: Well, I think he denied having it. I assume that it was he denied having it because he didn't think he had it rather than that he would deny having it when he believed that he did have it. The point I was making was it fits into something else I've been saying about how you should have cabinet members who have somewhat independent status.

I don't mean to blame the Secretary in this administration because the general thrust has been to pretty much subordinate all people to the President himself. The Secretary, who had somewhat independent standing and a kind of constituency of his own, if his judgment was that he could really spend the money that was said to be available, that he might very well have gone ahead and done it and been prepared really to confront a President, saying, all right, if you want you don't want to do what I'm doing, if you don't want me to do what the law says I can do, you can expect some kind of political challenge from me, or else you can fire me.

I think that that sort of relationship on some issues is much to be preferred to what seems to be the common one now that the cabinet is completely subordinate without any particular or personal position of independence, without any constituency, and therefore in any way prepared to stand against the presidency.

I think the action of John Gardner, for example, in resigning as Secretary of HEW was a commendable action in that. He pretty well accepted that he did it because he felt that he was a symbol of certain reforms and certain changes to be made in American society by government programs with reference to poverty and other things. And that in fact, he was not being provided with the money, or the tools, or the authority that he needed in order to accomplish what he supposedly had been chosen to accomplish.

Or action like that of John Daly, who used to be, as you know, the moderator of What's My Line? who then resigned to take a job with the Voice of America, who recently resigned saying that he was not going to subordinate really his reputation or his professional standing on matters of this kind to the director of the Voice of America.

I think it would be good if we had more demonstrations of independence of this kind on the part of cabinet members or other top ranking executive officials than to have what seems to be what has been the growing tendency for cabinet members to be looked upon simply as instruments or agents of the President, not having any independent position in terms of a point of view, and therefore really put into a preferred position in which if you challenge a cabinet member as I have, someone like Rusk, you can expect someone will get up and say he's made great sacrifices to be in the government, and therefore he ought not to be criticized. I think anyone who takes a position as a Secretary of State ought to be prepared to be criticized. And the cabinet members should be I think somewhat more expendable than they have been in recent years.

PAT SMITH: What would you think-- now you've been talking about the relationship it would seem to me at least of the cabinet members for example, to the people and perhaps even to their President. What about the President's relationship to his cabinet members and the people who work under him?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I think that the cabinet ought to be picked with some eye to the independence of the individual members, so they're not completely subordinate to a President. This was somewhat I think the practice in the Roosevelt administration. If people recall that cabinet members there were rather generally known as having some independence, some kind of personal identification.

People like Henry Wallace, for example, remembered I think somewhat more clearly as a Secretary of Agriculture probably than Orville Freeman would be remembered as an independent Secretary of Agriculture. People like Harold Ickes who was a Secretary of interior was popularly known and was called the Curmudgeon because of the way in which he defended himself or for his position, in contrast, for example, with the present Secretary of the Interior whom most people don't really know unless they have a special problem. Secretary Udall or Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, in comparison with the present Secretary of the Treasury.

Or if you move into something like the attorney general. I think that people knew that Francis Biddle was attorney general under Roosevelt. You might not remember here, students. But in comparison with the really lack of knowledge, for example, of the character and the position of someone like Ramsey Clark.

And I think the situation under Roosevelt was preferable that he had cabinet members who had independent status who were identified on issues who had a public following, in contrast with what is generally the present situation of cabinet members who were looked upon simply as agents or as instruments of the presidency.

PAT SMITH: Senator McCarthy, speaking about President Roosevelt and his successors and predecessors, Vice President Humphrey has said that any system that can elect individuals of such stature must be a good system. And as we were talking before about the current political setup, it would seem that that system is now at least allegedly closing the convention to you. What would you say about that?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I don't know that the system has really proved itself to be as good as the Vice President indicates. He thinks it is. I think the election of Roosevelt, that was a proper election. But as you come along from that, you had years in which I don't think the choices-- for example in '64, I don't think the choice offered was a particularly desirable one. For most people, the choice between Barry Goldwater and then President Johnson, this was not the kind of openness that many Republicans want. You had people like Rockefeller, for example, who refused to support Goldwater. Many other Republicans who said that their voice and their position hadn't been honored by their own party.

And I think that this is a question which you have to raise about 1968 too as to whether or not the people are going to have a significant choice that involves differences. If it's a question of Nixon or Humphrey, for example, pretty much the same position on foreign policy in a year in which foreign policy is the principal point. I think of upon which choice should be made. When that happens, you have to raise questions I think as to whether or not the system is operating so as to give the people the kind of choice that they want and the kind of choice which I think they have a right to.

PAT SMITH: Well, do you think then this nation is getting into a rut with a two-party system? You've mentioned that you won't have anything to do with a third party. What do you think can be done?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I thought this was a year in which we ought to try to test the two-party system. And that if one had said early that he was-- that if he really thought that the system couldn't work. I thought it could be made to work, and I still think so. That if one were convinced that it couldn't have, if I had been convinced of that early this year, I think I would have been an advocate of a third party.

I've not yet persuaded that the system can't work. I think that if it does falter or fail this year, if the domination of the party by really the more or less traditional politicians proves out, and the people aren't given a choice in the '68 campaign, that you will have a new political alignment beginning to take form of before the presidential elections of 1972.

I'm hopeful that we can make this the point clear within the Democratic Party, so that people have a choice between the two traditional parties. I think it's good if one can keep political choice pretty much narrowed down in a democracy to two political parties. But if this cannot be done in '68, I think that there will be a very strong movement towards a new political alignment by 1972.

PAT SMITH: Senator, you said that the foreign policy was the overriding issue in this campaign. There are many who say that Vietnam or foreign policy, which have become rather synonymous lately, is at best second to the racial situation in our country.

EUGENE MCCARTHY: I don't think that's right. So much of what we do about race and poverty depends on what we do in Vietnam. It may be some people are more concerned about the domestic problem. But in terms of primary importance, if we're going to think about this problem at home, we've got to do something about Vietnam itself. So you kind of double up I think. You have the problem of the war itself. It could be considered entirely separately from domestic problems. It would be most serious then.

But when you consider it as in terms of how it bears upon what we will be able to do or prepared to do about domestic problems, that kind of compounding of importance in my judgment rather clearly makes the war itself with its secondary implications really the primary issue of the campaign.

PAT SMITH: In relation to the Vietnam conflict and its resultant talks, you have made the statement that you are considering visiting Paris and also made the statement recently that you wouldn't go if you felt that it would hinder the talks. What exactly is your reasoning for going? Just to get a better insight?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: We important I think if I were-- I expect there are some people I can talk to us to find out whether or not what the North Vietnamese are saying to our negotiators, what's being reported publicly and also privately. There's some good I think if you're a presidential candidate in knowing the very personalities that you're going to have to deal with after you're elected.

As we like to think that government relations are conducted according to certain rules of treaties or of law, but the fact is that much does depend upon personality, especially when you get into the area of negotiating some kind of peace settlement.

PAT SMITH: Do you feel then that the same way about an ambassador to such talks as you do about cabinet members and that they should have some degree of independence?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: No, I don't think so. I think you send an ambassador, you quite directly send someone to carry out a policy you've already determined. A cabinet member, however, participates in the determination of policies, and I see his role as being quite different from that of an ambassador.

PAT SMITH: Senator, we used to hear quite a bit about the credibility gap. Has that disappeared or people just forgotten about that? Or did it ever exist?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: Well I never really used the term myself. I don't think I ever used it. If I did, it was one of those things you would do by habit sometimes because so many other people are doing it. But it was not a question on my part of believing that they were deliberately misrepresenting things but rather of their having made overly optimistic judgments about our position in Vietnam and reporting what they believe to be true or what they hoped would happen, rather than any kind of--

Of Course, you could say, well, it's unbelievable anyway. After a certain point, I think you do conclude that you can't believe them, not because they're deceiving you intentionally but because they don't know what they're talking about. And I think this was certainly a kind of growing thing throughout '66 and '67 and on into '68.

Although the statements of the administration with reference to progress in the war and the possibilities of success have been somewhat more restrained and somewhat more muted in the last three or four months than they were certainly in '66 or in '67 when they were quite ready to project victory sometimes within a few weeks. Ambassador Lodge at one point saying he didn't think there would be any formal surrender, but that the Viet Cong would just soon disappear into the jungles.

I heard the Secretary or the President in fact about a year and a half ago say that they didn't understand how the enemy could take the pounding we were giving them, that it might well be within a couple of weeks, they would just kind of disappear. The various reports of Secretary McNamara through the years coming back after visiting Vietnam, making optimistic reports about military progress, saying we've stopped losing the war. We have begun to win the war. Or we started losing it again, it was that sort of thing.

That these were not really intentional misrepresentations or deceptions but a kind of projection of the Defense Department and State Department belief that we just couldn't possibly fail to succeed on our own timetable. And it was hard for them to make the adjustment and come to the point of accepting that this was simply not the reality over there.

And the country I think is now somewhat ahead even of the State Department and the Pentagon in acknowledging the realities of the war in Vietnam and of being willing to adjust or to make the necessary changes. Whereas the Pentagon and the State Department are still trying to prove something about their own position in the past.

PAT SMITH: One final question, Senator. This particular thing has been bothering me and many people. I'm sure Gary will back me up on this. Beginning, oh, gee, when was it? Last winter I guess when you made one of your first or early speeches, and that was in Minneapolis. You hinted that you really weren't looking for the presidency as such but rather to start discussion on the Vietnam conflict. What made you change your mind?

EUGENE MCCARTHY: Well, I never really changed my mind. I said from the beginning that once you challenge the President on issues, you have to be, and especially in primaries, you have to anticipate that you may be the presidential candidate, may be the President. Usually the press runs two things together. One, the question of whether you personally want to be President, or the other, the political one of whether you're prepared to be President.

And it's part of the game of the press now. They play a kind of funny game around the edges. They don't have any real power they feel that if they can kind of hedge you in somehow and make you answer questions after they've set up four or five contingencies, they become an influence on American life. Something in that context I think that these so-called positions I've taken have been reported.

But I knew last November that when I made the first challenge, it was quite possible that if the challenge continued, that I would be the presidential candidate. And what I said was a kind of honest judgment in terms of what I thought then the possibilities of success were of saying, are you going to be the presidential candidate? One had to be if he was reasonably objective say he wasn't sure, but at least you could raise some issues. But at the same time, it was inherent in the process once it was begun, and I knew that, that I might very well become a presidential candidate, which I have.

GARY EICHTEN: And so our conversation with Senator Eugene McCarthy ended. This is Gary Eichten, for Pat Smith, good evening.