Eugene J. McCarthy
Former US Senator (D-Minnesota)
"No Fault Politics"
September 7, 2000 

Eugene McCarthy: I don’t really give speeches anymore. I just start talking, which I guess happens to you after a while. But I have this book out called "No Fault Politics" and I was sort of a disciple of Harry Truman, who said "The Buck Stops Here", and I’m always disturbed when Strobe Talbott politicians indicate that they don’t know what it means, but they say it. And if you don’t know what your metaphors mean, you’re in deep trouble. I heard Strobe recently say "The Rubble Stops Here". So obviously he thinks that the buck is a dollar where it isn’t at all. And I worry about people representing us who don’t understand their own language. It can lead to serious roundabout. Now you want to know what "the buck stops" means. It’s an old poker game whereby you mark the man who is to be the next dealer. And what they use, the best as my research shows, was a pocketknife with a buckhorn handle. And you lay the buck down, look at a fellow and say, "You’re the next dealer." But if you didn’t want to deal you’d pass the buck to the next guy. And Harry said the buck stops here and the showdown occurs. So "no fault politics" is…I’ll just kind of sketch it out. It developed first in foreign policy, particularly with reference to Vietnam. Harry said, "The Buck Stops Here." Eisenhower took responsibility for the U-2 and said I am responsible. He wasn’t but he said he was. Kennedy said he was responsible for Cuba. He was in a way – he never should have had the advisors he had. But when Johnson came on, he said he was only doing what three presidents before him had done. And Nixon said he was only doing what four presidents before him had done. So unless some stop or termination was fixed, this would have gone on forever as part of the inheritance of the presidency. We would be into about the sixth president I think. And we were saved by Gerald Ford, which is rather interesting. When Gerry was made president he did two things…well he did three. He did two of them. One, he ended the war. Two, he got amnesty. He also pardoned Richard Nixon, which had to happen. But the first two were in keeping with ending the war in Vietnam itself. We had a testimonial for him, anniversary to the ending of the war. I said, "Well you did what I said I would do if I got elected." He seemed rather puzzled and I said, "End the war and I was going to extend amnesty farther than you did. I was going to include Robert McNamara, do a thorough job, and go on from there." But the idea developed that they were so used to doing what they were doing because it had started. Harry Truman had aided the French. Eisenhower had sent in advisors. Kennedy had sent in the Green Berets, which was the first real military action. But quantitatively there is a difference between 700 advisors and 7000 Green Berets. And Johnson moved in and it was up to 550,000 before he finished. So it was a kind of a continuum which you could never break. It was either too soon, or too late. Johnson said you could negotiate on a neutral ship in a neutral sea, but they never found a neutral ship or a neutral sea. He went on to search for…needed a non-neutral place if you were going to negotiate.

In any case that was one of the (?), well there were several others, but the second one was the development of doctrines. We had the Monroe Doctrine around for a long time. The doctrines and slogans which conditioned people to act the way they didn’t want to act, but there is a rationale. The rash of doctrines usually occurred with John Foster tell us. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister. I said he was the greatest converter since John Calvin. He went around the world signing us up everywhere we went saying we had legal and moral obligations to get involved in war, and so he did the Middle East Resolution, a doctrine that was confirmed by a resolution. He did Klaboy and Matsu. Almost every time they lost a ship, we’d pass a resolution saying they could fire back if they wanted to. And the Middle East was the most significant one. But Kennedy, they said he had a doctrine for Cuba. You develop a doctrine after the act; you develop your tactic after you look at your weapons, and your doctrine after you’ve committed the weapon system.

And if the doctrines weren’t enough, you had the slogans, all the new slogans. I was talking to Bill Awall at the Decatur slogan, "My country right or wrong," which was invoked against those of us who opposed the Vietnam War. Pigny’s "millions for defense but owe not a cent for tribute" is now "trillions for defense but only billions for tribute." And you ought to have your policy somewhat within a reasonable range of what commitments you want to honor. Then they got into the House of Representatives putting riders on bills saying you can do this if everything else happens that’s right. So you didn’t have to take responsibility. The President can say I couldn’t do it because of the rider. The members of Congress say we had to have the rider in order to protect ourselves, especially after they got the House of Representatives into foreign policy, which occurred pretty much under Johnson. Lyndon had a gift for creating chaos if he didn’t know what to do and then he’d try to put order out of chaos and say, "Look. I’ve done it." But when he was under pressure…So he changed the House of Representatives into a kind of a Senate with joint resolutions. And I always felt the Senate should say, "Look. If you House members want to pass a resolution and send it to us, we’ll honor it. But don’t ask us to sign the resolution with you because our responsibility under the constitution for foreign policy and military policy is much more clearly defined than your’s." But Johnson got the House involved so the House became a kind of Senate on foreign policy. It complicates it because a House member only thinks in terms of two years. Some of them think longer, but it’s a two year limitation. And the founding fathers said on foreign policy and international policy, the Senate gets at least six years to run out their ideas, whereas a House member has to be right every two years, and that’s not enough time to direct any kind of foreign policy.

On the other hand, Johnson turned the Senate into a kind of a House of Representatives, saying, "Let’s have a lot of roll call. Let’s not have debate. Let’s not have argument." And he’d say things like, "We passed more bills by February of this year than has ever been passed before by any Congress of the United States." No particular credit to pass more than anybody else had, but it reduced the House and Senate to a level in which either could blame the other or avoid responsibility. That’s the general picture on foreign policy. And if you want to get into Pat Buchanon while you have the obligations, we accepted under the United Nations, and the GAT and WTU and all the rest of it but those are not so serious. And even in the domestic field they moved away from responsibility in a number of ways. One was the extension of indexing for almost everything. When I first went to Congress, about the only thing that was indexed was farm prices. But progressively we indexed social security. Business and finance indexed the salaries and pensions of their own programs. They indexed against inflation with the indexing of bracket creep, which was the only built in protection against inflation. But the accepted theory was that if you made inflation universal, which you can’t do, while you had established order in the economic system. And it was accepted. And they talk about indexing almost everything now - indexing life and giving people rebates. I saw a sign in Michigan…Gerry Ford was from Lansing. When he being considered for the presidency, he said, "Remember I’m from Lansing, Michigan." And he never explained what that meant. Except I got to thinking about it and one of his first speeches was hailed as having significant metaphor. He said two things. He said, "One - Truth is the one thing that holds the republic together." And the other was that he wanted the "unvarnished facts." And if he’s from Lansing, which is the furniture capitol of America, "unvarnished facts" are a major part of the operation and there’s lots of glue. And the rebates thing, you could make things up by doing it after the act so no one had to take responsibility and the confusion of the House and the Senate and their roles.

When I first went to Congress there was constitution of distinction made. We had a chairman named Clarence Cannon, of appropriations. And he insisted that all appropriations be approved by the House before the Senate could touch them. Now that it’s a new budget procedure, anybody can offer amendments and provisions and Clarence was invited by the Senate to come over and confer about appropriations. He said, "What do you mean ‘come over.’ You come over here. If you want to talk appropriations come to the House side of the capitol." And he held out for two weeks and finally the Senate gave in. And I think as far as I know they never changed their position. But he said, "Our responsibility"…And the same is true about taxes. Harry Byrd, Sr. was chairman of the finance committee when I went on it and his policy was that we could amend a tax bill from the House but only in an area in which it had been already opened up by the House. So if you had an income tax bill, you could amend it. But you couldn’t change it with capital gains and state taxes and all the rest. Harry said, "The constitution says it’s the House’s responsibility and we are going to honor that responsibility and our function is simply residual." On the other hand, when Fulbright was tried without real success because the Presidents preferred to use the House of Representatives on foreign policy. We’d say, "look this is a foreign policy question, like the posing of war in Vietnam was primary responsibility of the United States Senate under the advising consent." The interpretation was that by cutting back of some of the administration people all the constitution meant was that you could advise and then consent, instead of advise and either consent or not consent, but it reduces the sense of responsibility.

But another factor, and we’ll have questions after this, was the development of the idea that America is politically a two party system. John Adams said the worst thing he could conceive of for a constitution like ours was to have the politics controlled by two strong political parties. And we legalized the two parties in the Federal Election Act of 1975 and 76. And what Adams predicted was that if you had a two-party system, so-called, they would start looking for differences, either significant differences or insignificant differences. And you have it manifested in the Gengrich Revolution which would require a constitution like the Articles of Confederation if it was to operate. And the two party system denounced, it was not even anticipated by people like George Washington, but denounced by Adams especially who said, "This is what you are going to get." And so it happens, and the effect of it is to paralyze government, or to make nobody really responsible. You can do anything in the name of partisanship and the press accepts that. And when you begin sorting out presidential candidates who’ve been in Congress, or even those who haven’t been, their defense for things they don’t want to answer for is that they were being partisan. And that partisanship was an excuse which was never anticipated under the constitution or the conception of government that was projected by the founding fathers. Well the same thing is true of the vice presidency. I proposed that the vice presidents shouldn’t be held responsible for anything they do or say while they’re vice presidents. It’s sort of like instructing the jury to ignore some evidence or some charges and letting go. And now there are poor vice presidential candidates who are called upon to answer for almost everything and anything. No coming to the end of the line, even prospectively. And so all of this feeds into the kind of irresponsible government, and no fault government, so that you can make either a technical, or formal, or even legal kind of a charge or defense without even looking at the issue of self, saying ‘the Monroe Doctrine won’t let me do it or makes me do it .’ ‘The Middle East Resolution says we have to go’. When we went into the Dominican Republic, the first request said there was a takeover going on and they asked the ambassadors to send another message saying it was a takeover by communists. Well it wasn’t but it was a takeover. And in Cuba the Monroe Doctrine was expanded to say that it was against intervention by foreign countries. In Cuba they said, "Well the intervention of a foreign ideology is just the same as an intervention by a country." So you can have any kind of excuse or justification for action almost that you want now for trade policy or foreign policy or military policy or political defense.

So there we are. And actually the country is running pretty well with nobody responsible. So we’ll leave it at that. Do you have any questions or comments for me?

Q: What do you say to people who say we have "no fault accident insurance?" There’s a UVA professor who developed this. We have no fault divorces. We have all kinds of no fault. Why not no fault politics?

McCarthy: Well, that’s what we got. We’re catching up. No fault tires. No fault automobiles. No fault LandRovers. Something they’re making the corporations responsible is, which is something new…but I’ve lived around until they had a medically induced disability. They said we ought to sue. I said ,"Well I know doctors don’t know much. So why do you sue them for having done to you what they didn’t know what they were doing." Which is a new concept of dispense of the medical profession. But what is something that they didn’t really know about? I have a son who’s a doctor and a brother who’s a doctor and they say, "they don’t know what they’re doing when they do that anyway." I said, "Well I knew that too." So it leaves you where you are. But the no fault idea is, you’re right.

Q: I take it you do not think the vice presidency is a very good preparation to be in a responsibility taking, chief executive…?

McCarthy: I honestly think it ought to be abolished. There was a vote to do that in 1803. They realized by 1803 they had made a mistake but they wouldn’t face up to it. But it puts people in a position to run for the presidency who shouldn’t be in a position to do it. I mean, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, and it puts people in a position to run who would be much better off if they weren’t vice presidents. It can destroy a good person and it clutters up a campaign. All this fuss about Cheney and Liberman. It’s just newspaper columnist and television talk. It doesn’t have any real bearing on the campaign. But I told Bill I’m waiting for the columnists to get straightened out on Liberman. They are all worried about whether he can get the vote because he’s Jewish or because he prays, but the real appeal he has is his name is Joe. We never got a vice president named Joe. Two hundred years, and you think just by accident…they got a lot of funny-name vice presidents - Albert and Alvin…and Joe but there are a lot of frustrated Joe’s in the country if they are reminded, if they consider the people who’ve been picked for the vice presidency and they say never a Joe. So we’ve got to prove that we don’t discriminate against, that you’re deserving. And I have a feeling that if I present this to the Gore people they will begin to talk more about Joe than about Liberman. But it’s a serious problem and it does clutter things up.

Q: Senator McCarthy, will you comment on what it is about the state of Minnesota that breeds negatives and Jesse Ventura?

McCarthy: Well I thought they were kind of strange when they voted for Perot (19%), but the vote for 38% for Jesse Ventura made me rethink my position. And I think it has a bearing on general attitudes in politics. My brother lives there and he’s a doctor. And I asked him, "Who voted for Jesse Ventura?" He said, "Two people in our house did." So I said, "Why?" He said, "Well we got tired to being told we’re the best governed people in the United States." He said, "It takes a lot of work to be the best governed and we had just about had it." Well seriously, when Jesse…I think the people…these people voted for Perot but they made a study of it, of where the votes came from. And there’s something called exurbia and all, which is beyond the suburbs. And we have a lot of exurbia areas around Minneapolis and St. Paul. And the farmers move in and the people in town move out. And Jesse was the bearer of one of these communities. And the studies found that the people who had their own well and their own septic tanks voted almost solidly for Jesse. It was the ultimate security. The people with their own septic tanks, they all voted for Jesse. And with your well you were somewhat dependent. All around the outside of Minneapolis (he got a lot of other votes) but these people were almost the person who voted for Jesse. And I think it reflects something that’s current in the general population. We just don’t want to have to be bothered any more than we have to be. And Jesse said, "I’m your man." And he did a couple of good things. There was a surplus in Minnesota and instead of fighting about it, whether you are going to use it to cure cancer or whatever else you do with it, as they are in Congress and as they do in most state legislatures, Jesse gave it all back to the people. He said how many taxpayers do we have? Divide the money by the amount we have and send everybody a check. My brother said he got a check for $750. But there was no argument. Jesse just did it. He says, "Okay, so we don’t have to fuss about that." He said, "If we need more money, we’re not going to use money that we got from you that we didn’t know we needed." It was a pretty good argument.

Q: [Woman asks question that can’t be heard and man beside McCarthy repeats it.] Will a third party ever break into the two party system?

McCarthy: Well it was very difficult to do it. Until the passage of the Federal Election Law, you had to do it under state law. With the Federal Election Law they legalized the two political parties. And unless you have a compelling issue, it seems to me a really compelling issue, it’s almost impossible to do a third party or to have someone like Perot spend $70 million of his own money. The advocation of the Federal Election Law of ’75 and ’76 were warranted. It legalized two political parties, and it did. And they now accept that that’s good. But I don’t see how you can get much going…I assume you could divide Constitutional government history into something called BCC, Before Common Cause, and ACC, After Common Cause. It’s a different kind of politics. John Gardner is…represents…whenever I always see an old cartoon drawing in a history book showed the roundhead and a cavalier. And the roundhead looked like John Gardner and he fulfills something that Chesterton said that "puritans always kill St. George but keep the dragon." And this is what you’ve got now is perpetual reform. Now matter how good things look, there’s corruption. You just don’t see it, but I do. And it’s got to be cleaned up. They’ve practically criminalized politics. And Congress is not corrupt. It may be stupid, but it’s not corrupt. And a special interest is a special interest. They say the only thing… everyone disagrees with common cause, they say it’s a special interest. The doctor’s are special interest. They aren’t. They are a professional group and they make some mistakes. They lawyers, the trial lawyers are not special interest, they are interest groups that have a stake in politics. But when minutes are called to identify a group with a position why they say it’s a special interest group. It’s like prisoner’s base. It’s whoever said you are a special interest and keeps on saying it, people begin to believe it. But we should repeal the Federal Election Law. It’s gradually being repealed by the Supreme Court, but it’s so unconstitutional, and especially as it bore upon freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, which De Toqueville said are fundamental to a democratic government. These are the two things that you don’t touch. And it’s interesting that the press, the New York Times and the Washington Post, are all for limiting expenditures by people. But if you say how about limiting your own publication of political news, they say freedom of speech. And it was either the Post or the Times that had…I think they were two editorials the same day. One deplored the fact that the Supreme Court had supported an Indiana law which required exotic dancers to wear minimal clothing. This was interfering with freedom of expression. They also had something deploring the fact that the court had not sustained everything in the Federal Election Law. Clear contradiction on the same day. And both done in the name of freedom of expression. I mean, both involving freedom of expression. They are full of contradictions like that.

Q: You were not allowed to take part in the presidential debates, I gather, or invited to take part?

McCarthy: In ’76 I was independent party. But I was excluded even as a democrat in ’92, a regular party. Well, the political process is controlled by television. And the television people are afraid of the republicans and the democrats because they depend on them for their licenses. So you’ve got a built in control over the political process. And if the Republicans and Democrats agreed, that they don’t want a third party candidate in it, or not even a third party candidate, the networks are afraid to stop it and they don’t.