CLEAN GENE.(The Talk of the Town)(Eugene J. McCarthy)

Former Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, the paladin of the antiwar movement in the nineteen-sixties, is not encouraged by the current crop of Democratic candidates for President. Asked about them recently, in an informal conversation at his apartment at the Georgetown Retirement Residence, in Washington, D.C., he recalled that he once published an article listing the categories of people who should not be considered for the Presidency. Governors were at the top of the list. "We used to say in the Senate that if you elect a governor to the Senate it takes them six months to get over it, and if you elect them President they don't have enough time," he said. "Governors are the worst, because they're an entirely different kind of executive. Clinton tried to be the Governor of the United States. The second-worst category is Vice-Presidents, especially if they've been beaten running for the Presidency. They're compromised so badly they don't have any integrity left. My third category is ministers, or sons of ministers--Walter Mondale was the son of a Methodist minister. Generals are fourth. Alexander Haig actually complimented me on that article, but maybe he stopped reading after the first three categories. In fifth place, I put C.E.O.s, who come out of a corporate morality that is uncivil and artificial."

The Senator, who will be eighty-eight in March, looks and sounds very much the way he did in 1968, when his surprise campaign for the Presidency swept four early primaries and precipitated Lyndon Johnson's decision to withdraw from the race. He is tall and erect, with a high forehead, neatly combed white hair, and a winning smile. He had a serious operation three years ago, but he gets around on his own (with a cane), reads voraciously (Garry Wills's new book on Jefferson, "Negro President," was on the side table, along with several current magazines), and still writes articles on politics and foreign policy. "I can't stand rejection from the Times and the Washington Post anymore," he said, "so I send all my stuff to a little magazine in Minnesota called Law & Politics, which takes everything I write." These days, he writes mainly about two subjects: the evils of the two-party system and the corrupting influence of television. "The two parties both supported the Vietnam ...