“The vortex of the late nineteen sixties swallowed up not only Eugene McCarthy. It consumed a whole generation of liberal politicians and radical thinkers and culture heroes, from John Lindsay and Marshall McLuhan to Tom Hayden and Buckminster Fuller — a long list of ‘an idea whose time has come’ types whose time abruptly ran out. The survivors wandered, as McCarthy did, through the decades that followed, caricatures of their former world-historical selves, like old heavyweight champions working as greeters in casinos. You could say that these people failed; but what would success have looked like?” A bit too glib as always, Louis Menand examines Eugene McCarthy (by way of the new biography by Dominic Sandbrook.) I’m not sure if McCarthy is really a very good exemplar of “postwar liberalism,” but this sounds like an interesting read nonetheless. (Via Follow Me Here)