Tom Harkin: “I thank the Chair. I commend my colleague from Minnesota for taking the time to speak about an old friend, a remarkable…”

“I thank the Chair. I commend my colleague from Minnesota for taking the time to speak about an old friend, a remarkable politician, a remarkable Senator, Gene McCarthy. In my younger days in Iowa, when they still had a bounty on Democrats in my State and Republicans ran everything, we always had the Democrats from Minnesota come down--McCarthy and Mondale and Humphrey, people such as that. But Gene McCarthy was a very rare, a unique individual. I was listening in the cloakroom to what the Senator from Minnesota was saying about Gene McCarthy. He had a way about him that was like Mark Twain. He had a great sense of humor. He could, like Mark Twain, say very succinctly what it might take others a paragraph to say. That was one of the qualities I always envied about McCarthy. I always thought, Gosh, why can't I say it like that? He had a great way with words. Like Mark Twain, Gene McCarthy had the ability, with very few words, to puncture the inflated egos of puffed-up politicians. If you were on the other end of it, you didn't feel good about it. He had a way of doing it without being mean, but when you heard him--and he never attacked anyone but he did it in terms of what they stood for, what they were saying--you heard it and you realized McCarthy was right. He had a refreshing and disarming way about him in his approach to politics. He made his point and he made it well.…”