St. Gene the Baptist

From its Washington headquarters, the newly formed Committee for a Constitutional Presidency will fan out across the country in the coming year, educating the nation about how Presidents are chosen and how the office of the presidency has lately been abused. Then in 1976, if the climate seems auspicious, the committee may nominate its own candidate for President and petition to get his name on state ballots. So goes the ambitious scenario, and there is no doubt about who that candidate would be: none other than the C.C.P.'s creator and honorary chairman, the former Senator, sometime editor, professor and poet, Eugene J. McCarthy, 58.

Youthful Veterans. Describing the committee to reporters last week, McCarthy avoided using the word party. There will be no conventions, primaries or full slate of candidates. The committee's key staffers are youthful veterans of McCarthy's 1968 presidential bid; they share his mistrust of the party system and hope to lure independent voters to their cause. Party or not, the organization will give the quixotic Mc Carthy a political platform--if it can raise enough money. So far the committee has a mere $30,000, half from Detroit Lions President (and 1968 McCarthy backer) William Clay Ford. If the committee nominates McCarthy, he will be a "deadly serious" candidate, he promised, though he has happily never been deadly serious in his discourse for more than a few sentences. Eugene J. promptly demonstrated that by comparing his role to that of John theBaptist preceding Jesus in the desert: "If no one else had shown up, he might have gone ahead with the movement."

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