Senator McCarthy the new leader?

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The last snow of the old winter patches the gritty brick towns and rolling green countryside. The first spring rains are in the air. Today, the voters of New Hampshire go to the polls.

It has begun again — the nation’s search for a leader.

The nation is in crisis they say, uneasy about a war no one likes, unsure of purpose, swept by vague fears and alarms. How desperately, they say, the nation needs a leader.

Senator Eugene McCarthy steps to the flag-bedecked rostrum. The overflow crowd leaps to its feet and roars its approval. Thousands of young people from all over the country have flocked here to crusade under his banner. The press glowingly reports how his campaign has caught fire. Predictions of a stunning upset are everywhere.

Is this then the new leader?

In the McCarthy for President headquarters in a dingy one-story building on a side street in Concord, a hundred young people, most of them from Ivy League colleges, fold, stuff, dial, sort, argue, chart and plan with an enthusiasm few campaigns have seen. Thousands more are ringing doorbells throughout the state, sleeping each night on the floors of churches and gyms.

“It’s a real crusade,” says one of the few older professionals in the campaign admiringly. “The Senator’s really whipped them up.”

The candidate himself enters the headquarters.

A few of the young volunteers come up to shake his hand. But most go on with their work, smiling and nodding as he passes.

Their talk in their bull sessions is more about the war and the draft and President Johnson than about their candidate. And a hand-lettered sign on the wall says, “Remember, a vote for Johnson may be your last.”

Outside, in the warm sunshine, a headline shouts: “McCarthy campaign boom.”

“Let’s face it,” a reporter who has been here eight weeks says over a drink in a Manchester bar. “When Romney pulled out, what’d we have left to write about? McCarthy’s the only crap game in town.”

And strongest of all is the candidate, the man who, some now say, will set the country afire and lead an uneasy people out of the morass of uncertainty.

He is an immensely likable man, this Senator McCarthy, gently intelligent and wryly funny. His speeches are well reasoned and well written. And he moves through a crowd with an easy self-confidence.

Yet he still delivers his speeches in a monotone that is unhurried but without pause, as though challenging his listeners to interrupt him with applause. His voice is hard to hear without a microphone. Seeing him on television you think you have tuned to an educational station. And he moves slowly through the hullabaloo of the campaign with a constant little smile — almost as though he were secretly amused by it all.

“Sometimes,” said a reporter, shaking his head, “I get the idea he decided to run for president because he didn’t have anything better to do.”

So spring will come with its hopes and the long summer and the crackling autumn and the clean snows of a new winter will fall once again. And once again the nation, uneasy and unsure, will choose its leader.

But the search, you can’t help feeling, has never been more desperate.

“Sometimes,” said a reporter, shaking his head, “I get the idea he decided to run for president because he didn’t have anything better to do.”