Two weeks before the election, I was surprised by a small story in the back pages of the New York Times. “McCarthy Is Said to Back Reagan”—that was the headline. The brief but unambiguous dispatch told how McCarthy had met with Reagan, and offered to do “anything Reagan forces ask to aid the cam- paign.” To an extreme cynic, of course, this need not have come as a shock. It has been a long time since McCarthy worked seriously against a Republican candidate for president. In 1968 he deferred his endorsement of Humphrey to the last possible moment, when Nixon had already clinched the elec- tion; in 1972 he was on McGovern’s side, but aloof from the contest; in 1976 he ran as ...