JS and MW and EM

[David]

MW: "Politics--when questioned about his politics, said Simon, 'None--except when a man like Eugene McCarthy comes along, then all out for him.' Are you serious?"

JS: "Yes, as I saw it then, I was. I mean, I probably was slightly misguided, but then politics. . . I never purported to be any kind of expert in politics."

MW: "And in McCarthy, you saw what kind of messiah?"

JS: "Well, I didn't see any kind of messiah, but I saw something that I think was really there. He was a cultivated, civilized, educated person who placed some importance on cultural & intellectual values, which seemed to be a refreshing change from your average presidential timbre. Ah, the fact that he also had a terrible vanity, & that he was seduceable by people like Robert Lowell into becoming a poet rather than a presidential candidate--was something I could not predict."

MW: "So you now suggest that you were probably wrong about Eugene McCarthy. . . ?"

JS: "No. . . Well, I was wrong to one very serious extent: in that no one is any good who cannot get himself elected. And obviously McCarthy, though I think he had very real virtues, as well as failings, ah . . . did not have that supreme virtue of becoming president. However I think the public has to be blamed also, because I am more & more convinced that whenever someone comes along who can use the English language correctly, who can sound as if he had a little genuine education or background, he immediately, ipso facto, eliminates himself from the running."

--John Simon, interview with Mike Wallace (CBS News, March 9, 1978)