AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Albert Eisele, who is the founder of the Hill newspaper, also covered Eugene McCarthy for decades. And we're joined on the phone by Tom Hayden, well known 1960s activist, also became a California state senator, has written a number of books. We're going to turn now to an interview that Eugene McCarthy did with Minnesota Public Radio on March 25, 2003, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

EUGENE McCARTHY: The Bush administration is sort of like an intruder. He doesn't care whether what he does is legal or traditional or not. He just goes ahead and does it. And there’s nothing you can do about it unless you call out the Air Force or the Army, and they're busy. And I don’t know, half a dozen of our institutions have been not destroyed, but undercut. The Supreme Court has been corrupted. The Army has been corrupted. The Vice Presidential office has been corrupted. And Bush almost said, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it? You know, what are you going to do to me? Put me in jail?’

AMY GOODMAN: Eugene McCarthy, speaking just after the U.S. invaded Iraq. Albert Eisele, you followed Eugene McCarthy. You wrote a book about Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. What happened to him after 1968, after his run for the presidency? What about his career?

ALBERT EISELE: That's a good question. He spent almost 35 years as a very public private citizen after he left office in 1970, after he left the Senate. He remained very much a public figure. He ran for president three or four more times, including twice as an independent. But I think, as his comments in the Minnesota Public Radio interview indicated, it was consistent with his feeling that Congress needed to put limits on presidential power. He opposed the personalization of the office of the presidency. He felt that there should be more congressional oversight in the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and so forth. And he spoke out, and he wrote almost 20 books. He spoke out on those issues and others throughout the rest of his career.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go now to another clip of Eugene McCarthy, talking about the corporate media.

EUGENE McCARTHY: And I think after 1992, when the control over what was really communicated was left in the hands of corporately controlled television --

INTERVIEWER: Are you saying that Saddam Hussein --

EUGENE McCARTHY: And the projection then becomes one of the corporate morality and corporate mentality. So you're backed up to where the kind of ultimate controlling at the beginning is whatever is in the corporate mind, and it feeds out through the whole society until we're sort of all coopted. And I don't know how you fight your way out of it.

AMY GOODMAN: Eugene McCarthy in the documentary made about him called I’m Sorry I Was Right. Tom Hayden, your response?

TOM HAYDEN: Well, I think it's well worth remembering that he was a forerunner on what became the issue of campaign reform, political reform. He represented a kind of an independent third force in politics that now and then surfaces in the Democratic Party in presidential primaries and third party candidates.

But his -- I think his chief contribution was this poetic notion -- he prided himself on being more interested in poetry than politics -- this poetic notion that the young people of this country, being drafted, resisting the draft, being dragged off to Vietnam, needed a voice, a voice in the wilderness. And one wonders what it takes to have that kind of character, that kind of whimsical approach to politics, in a sense. He made space for a whole movement that upset a presidency and was ultimately successful in challenging a war, and nobody can take that from him.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, Eugene McCarthy.

EUGENE McCARTHY: Eisenhower’s final warning was about the military-industrial complex. And what he didn't say, you know, is that it developed while he was president.

The first sign that something was happening was about 1947. It was after the war. It was before I went to Congress. But it was an appropriation bill with a new name. They didn't -- they called it the Department of Defense. The war had been fought under the direction of the War Department. But somewhere after the war, somebody -- and I tried find out from the Pentagon, I said, “Where did that – how did that word change come in?” They just said, ‘Oh, it just came up in that appropriation.’ I said, “Well, things don't happen that way. I've been on committees, and somebody had to say, ‘Let's change the name.’” And they would never admit who had done it and how it had happened.

So, since that time, we never conduct wars now. It's just national defense. And if you have a War Department , some person might say, ‘Where is the war?’ And they say, ‘Well, we don't have one.’ ‘Well, are you planning one?’ ‘No, we're not planning one.’ But if you have a defense department, you say, ‘Defense? There’s a threat. Or if it isn't real now, it will be.’ So it's a covering title for unlimited defense. There is no limit to -- it's kind of Kafka, like you can always here a scratching sound. And when they finally got us so defended on earth, in the Reagan administration they said, ‘It's out there.’ Space defense. So it goes to infinity. You can never have enough defense. You can always hear a scratching sound. It’s internal, external, inner space, outer space, on earth, wherever it comes from.

AMY GOODMAN: Eugene McCarthy. I want to thank our guests Albert Eisele, who covered Eugene McCarthy for decades. You're going out to Minnesota to deliver a eulogy?

ALBERT EISELE: I am, at Senator McCarthy's alma mater, St. John's University. And there will be another one the next day at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, where he taught.

AMY GOODMAN: And Tom Hayden, I want to thank you, as well, former California state senator at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention on the outside. And today, we'll end the segment on Eugene McCarthy with Eugene McCarthy's own words.

EUGENE McCARTHY: I wrote a book, a poem on “Courage After Sixty.” And I keep, you know, it carries on. It gets – you get more courage after 70, and so on.

And it says:
Now it’s certain.
There is no magic stone to be found.
No secrets.
One must go
With the mind's winnowed learning.
No more than a child's handhold
On a willow bending over the lake,
Or a sumac root at the edge of the cliff.
All ignorance is checked,
All betrayals scratched.
The coat has been hung on the peg,
The cigar laid on the beveled table’s edge,
The cue chosen and chalked,
The balls racked for the final break.
All cards have been drawn,
All bets called.
The dice, warm as blood in the hand,
Shaken for the final cast.
The glove has been thrown on the ground,
The last choice of weapons made.

A book for one poem.
A poem for one line.
A line for one word.
"Broken things are powerful."
But things about to break are stronger still.
The last shot from the brittle bow is the truest.

AMY GOODMAN: Eugene McCarthy, from the film I’m Sorry I Was Right.

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