December 21, 1970
Page 42901
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Minnesota for yielding.
I rise, Mr. President, primarily as a member of the class of 1958, to which Senator YOUNG made reference a few moments ago. We do consider that, as a class, we bear an unusual distinction, which Senator YOUNG, in his own inimitable way, has described.
Incidentally, at this point I should like to say how very much I have enjoyed serving in the Senate with STEVE YOUNG. He described himself as an old man. In the fall of 1958, when we were all first elected to the Senate, he said he intended to serve only one term in the Senate. That was not enough. It was not enough for him, and it was not enough for his constituents. So he served another term, and then gracefully decided to retire.
He had the energy and optimism of youth. He had the abrasiveness which only a man of his years is entitled to enjoy in the U.S. Senate. But he is a wonderful human being. So I take this occasion to pay my tribute to him.
With respect to GENE MCCARTHY, we have known for 2 years that this day was coming. Yet, it is difficult to absorb the knowledge that it is here.
Senator HART, GENE MCCARTHY, and I became something of a triumvirate in January of 1959. Perhaps it was because we were summer bachelors together in those early summers when the Senate labored while our families went home. But I have always felt that we had special ties of friendship and of value. The fact that the three of us have sat side by side in this back row, which supposedly is reserved for young and freshmen Senators, is testimony to our refusal to be separated even in the Senate Chamber.
The story of the GENE MCCARTHY of 1967 and 1968 has been written and will be rewritten many times. He made a lonely decision. He challenged an incumbent President of his own party.
He made history. I doubt that many, if any, of us expected him at the time to lay down that challenge. Yet, once we were fully aware of the depth of his concern about the war, it was no longer a surprise, because we knew the man.
I have regarded GENE as a friend, not as a political friend or a senatorial friend, but as a friend. I enjoyed his company. He was comfortable to be with. But he could also be uncomfortable. He was congenial, but he also could be withdrawn. He was a man of many moods, often preferred to be alone. He did not solicit friendship. But his friendship was the rewarding friendship of a man with great capacity for understanding and sympathy.
He is an unconventional politician. He is impatient with the conventional privileges, prerogatives, and pretensions of political place and power. He could never really be a "Senate man." He could only be his own man. For him, the political process and political power are only the means to an end, that end being the improvement of the human condition – and he sought even that end in unconventional ways.
One can seldom predict what GENE McCARTHY will do. He cannot always predict it himself. We cannot, because he will not move from cause to effect as the rest of us do. He may not, because he always seeks to identify the higher purpose which shapes the affairs of man, and that is so often hidden.
GENE is a remarkable man, who will continue to do remarkable things. We will all miss him, especially we of the class of 1958, who came to know him as a man who had the courage to make lonely decisions.
He once said to me that a Senator has not really proved himself until he has stood with a minority of not more than three in a Senate rollcall vote.
GENE McCARTHY has, proved himself in matters of conscience and consequence. He sets a standard for us all.
That is how we will remember him.