Eugene Joseph McCarthy (born March 29, 1916) was a Congressman for Minnesota's Fourth District from 1949 to 1959 and a United States Senator for Minnesota from 1959 to 1971, where he served as a member of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 focused on ending the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Senate, McCarthy became a senior editor at Simon and Schuster publishing and a syndicated newspaper columnist. He is also a published poet