Lately I've been getting the feeling that I'm being lulled into a sense of insecurity. It's the worst form of apathy: indifference in the face of danger. I miss those terror alerts we used to hear so much about. Level Orange and all that. Four years or so after 9/11, food service of sorts, has returned to the airlines. Now, you can take certain sharp objects onboard. I don't know what's more dangerous, the sharp objects or the airline food. Air marshals are now a regular feature on all all flights. I don't mind that, of course, but do they always have to take up the window seats? The authorities apparently think that a nail file or a knitting needle isn't such a formidable weapon against gun-toting, sharpshooting federal agents. That's reasonable. But have you ever seen an air marshal actually eat the airline food? Not likely. I hope the terrorists don't start noticing things like that. The government seems to think it's greatest weapon is to confuse the enemy. It's certainly working -- on the rest of us.
There are so many things to worry about these days, this "Age of Anxiety," as Haynes Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, calls his new book, it almost numbs the mind. But the most mind-numbing thing of all is the lack of leadership. This is all painfully recalled with the death last month of Senator Eugene McCarthy at the age of 89. McCarthy -- for those who don't recall -- was one of the first to oppose the Viet Nam War, another war justified by "faulty intelligence." McCarthy was different. He brought poetry into the polemics of politics. A man of many dimensions, McCarthy had guts -- he went up against the leader of his own party, the bellicose Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson. And McCarthy had wit and a facile command of the English language, which was one of the first casualties of the George W. Bush presidency. The other day, Bush denounced the critics of his war in Iraq, calling them "pestimists" -- which is funnier than he had intended. McCarthy described himself as "mired in complexity." That's one quagmire the incumbent needn't worry about. And McCarthy, the former high school teacher, the poet who once considered the Roman Catholic priesthood, was horrified by the religious doctrines that have become part of presidential politics.
"I've grown a little disturbed," he said portentously in 1968, "that almost everything the Church tried to give up at the Vatican Council has been picked up by the Defense Department - the idea of grace in office, a little hint of infallibility, a kind of revival of the ideas of heresy and of holy wars, the Inquisition, a kind of index on publications."
McCarthy managed to capture the imagination of young people. Some of my high school friends actually joined the "Clean for Gene" movement, eschewing the use of narcotics, psychedelics and booze to enhance the image of the so-called hippie peaceniks who opposed the Viet Nam War.
These were sober, abstemious dissenters. I was not part of that group. I wasn't committed politically. And I was a reluctant joiner of anything. I liked the idea of McCarthy being a poet, but his writing was a little staid for me. I liked the Beats and the Surrealists. I would likely support "Goyim for Ginsberg." Or "Rabble for Rabelais." Or "Whacked on Kerouac." But McCarthy's qualities of courage and calm deportment in a time of chaos were impressive and attractive.
For a politician, he seemed pretty authentic. He was of the very few who denounced the vicious Red Scary attacks by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. Even Eisenhower, the hero of the invasion of Normandy, would not stand up to Joe McCarthy. "As a young reporter," Haynes Johnson said at The Commonwealth Club," I thought Ike was a boob. He looks terrific to me now." Eisenhower despised Joe McCarthy. But when Ike's brother, Milton urged to take Joe McCarthy on, Ike declined, saying, "I won't get down in the gutter with him." Johnson says if Eisenhower made a speech to the country like Edward R, Murrow did (depicted in the George Clooney movie, "Good Night & Good Luck"), Ike could have ended Joe McCarthy then and here. But he didn't.
Johnson says the McCarthy Era never really ended. It's alive and well. "Kerry did not fight back when his record in Viet Nam was attacked, did not fight back when the press demonized him." He let Karl Rove, the new Joe McCarthy, defeat him.
Johnson says as long as there is no one with the courage to stand up and denounce abuses of power, a news media to hold leaders accountable, the Joe McCarthys will prevail. People who don't agree with the deamgogues are still being called traitors. As for Iraq, Haynes Johnson says, "I had a feeling that at the beginning of this war, it would be calamatous for this nation. We're not more secure -- we're less secure."
If there is anyone with the courage to speak out, it's Congressman Jack Murtha, a war hero that no one wants to impugn. Except for an empty-headed freshman congresswoman from Ohio, literally wrapped up in a flag on the floor of Congress.
But what we really need today is a touch of the poet.
Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He's still awaiting the day a political figure might re-emerge for whom it would be worth staying clean and sober. Bellingham's e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com.
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