I was a child when Sen. Eugene McCarthy led the "children's crusade."

This does not insulate me from the long, hot blowback against McCarthy's 1968 presidential bid, which forced Lyndon Johnson from office and forced the American public to examine the Vietnam War in a way that it had not examined it before.

From time to time, a reader who disagrees with something I've written on a subject that has nothing whatever to do with Vietnam tells me that I "hate America." I am accused of having been one of the unkempt liberal kids who took to the streets during the tumult of those times, and so ruined the country.

Truth is, I was 12 when McCarthy stunned the political establishment by breaking with his party to oppose the war policy of an incumbent president. My hometown did not send its children safely off to college with deferments but saw its sons get their high school diplomas - followed quickly by their draft notices.

When I was 12 I was not out to transform the world but was engrossed in a transition that involved the abandonment of Barbie dolls in favor of Beatles records.

And so I read the obituaries of McCarthy, who died over the weekend at 89, not with the misty eye of nostalgia but with a deep curiosity about what it was that drove the man to do what he did - take on the Democratic Party, take on its incumbent president, take up the anti-war cause that had been mostly confined to college campuses, the "children's crusade."

For better and for worse, McCarthy's legacy has a sharp and painful edge.

His act of courage changed history, but not nearly fast enough. He would not become president; Richard Nixon would. The Vietnam War continued for another five years, expanding into Cambodia, spawning more domestic turmoil and the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State universities. About 30,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam as of January 1969, when Nixon took office. Another 28,000 would die before the American military involvement ended.

Is there anyone now who would call those years between 1968 and 1973 necessary - let alone, victorious? With tens of thousands dead and the country's reputation in tatters, why is it that the political backlash against those who opposed the Vietnam War has endured? It is a fault line deep and damaging, and defines our politics to this day.

The sense of grievance that began coursing through the body politic four decades ago still quickens conservative blood, and politicians on the right exploit it with expertise.

When Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam veteran and longtime defense hawk, called recently for a quick withdrawal from Iraq, the White House denounced him as adopting the policies of "Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

When Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, in a radio interview, said "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Republicans attacked - and fellow Democrats ran for political cover. In fact, Dean hadn't advocated withdrawal but a drawdown of U.S. troops over two years, with some re-deployed to Afghanistan.

Besides, what would victory in Iraq look like?

In April 2003, we were led to believe triumph could be seen in the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue. A month later, the president landed on an aircraft carrier festooned with a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished." Last February, congressional Republicans dipped their fingers in purple ink and held them aloft during President Bush's State of the Union speech, effectively proclaiming the U.S. had won because Iraqis had held their first election.

You do not have to have backed McCarthy in 1968 to see the parallels to Vietnam, with its shifting military goals and the empty promise of "peace with honor." But there will not now be another McCarthy.

Few Republicans question Bush's conduct of the Iraq War, and they quibble mostly over details. Democrats are split. They fear the inevitable label of being called "soft on Iraq."

In truth, the bitter legacy of Eugene McCarthy - a man who stood on principle for a cause larger than himself - is that he has been succeeded in politics by men who lack principle, and have as their cause themselves.

© 2005 Newsday, Inc.