It took an Irish-American rally for Vice-President Al Gore to bring Eugene McCarthy back to New Hampshire, where he stunned American politics back in 1968, dragged Robert Kennedy into the presidential race and helped drive President Lyndon Johnson into retirement.
At 84, the silver-haired former senator from Minnesota looks frail, but a crowded city hall in Manchester hung to every word as he lashed out at the New York Times, which he said had ignored his campaign until it was over.
He still feels anger at media treatment.
But McCarthy has a wicked sense of humour. He joked that he and his aides worked out that as New Hampshire had the "highest proportion of over 65s and the highest rate of alcoholism", they reckoned they would win the "trembling vote".
He demurred at Congressman Richie Neal's introduction of him as an example of how "one person can change the world". But most Americans over 50 probably remember how McCarthy electrified the 1968 campaign as he mobilised the youth against the US involvement in Vietnam and had the nerve to take on President Johnson for the Democratic nomination.
At an earlier Gore rally, at the Merrimack High School outside Concord on Saturday, the VicePresident paid tribute to McCarthy as "a legend in our country and history". Gore, as a Harvard student at the chaotic Chicago Democratic convention in 1968, had supported McCarthy. Now 32 years later, McCarthy is endorsing Gore.
The main reason McCarthy made the trip to the zero temperatures of New Hampshire from his farm in Virginia was in response to the appeal of his friend, Stella O'Leary, who organised Irish-Americans for Clinton-Gore in the 1996 campaign and is now working to help Gore win the Democratic nomination. Ms O'Leary, who was born in Mayo and once worked in UCD, has lived in Washington for many years. She brought a busload of Irish-American supporters from the capital.
It was a 10-hour journey of 520 miles. She encouraged the passengers by telling them they were making history because it was the first time an Irish-American group had travelled to support a candidate in a New Hampshire primary. Gore is seen as the best candidate for Irish-Americans because he "stood shoulder to shoulder with President Clinton to promote the Irish peace process and secure democracy and prosperity in Northern Ireland".
Gore also "promises an `open door' at the White House for Irish-American leaders to nurture the peace process", according to the campaign literature.
Last St Patrick's Day, Ms O'Leary's organisation endorsed Gore as Democratic candidate at a Washington breakfast which he attended and spoke of his Irish roots through the Dennys in Kerry, or possibly the Gores of Sligo. There was no sign of a serious rival to Gore back then for the nomination, but now he is struggling against former Senator Bill Bradley to win the New Hampshire primary on February 1st.
Gore acknowledged the lively Irish presence at his Concord rally, which included dancers, some AOH bagpipers and a traditional group belting out patriotic airs, though there was some disappointment that this did not inspire him to make any reference to the Northern Ireland peace process or give his views on the situation there.
There is not a significant Irish presence in New Hampshire, unlike neighbouring Massachusetts, so Gore probably saw no reason to introduce Northern Ireland as an issue to an audience whose support he is seeking through policies on education and healthcare, rather than on foreign policy.
Eugene McCarthy, at the later meeting in the city hall of Manchester, commended the role of President Clinton and Al Gore on Northern Ireland but said they "did not really deserve thanks because it was so long deserved on the part of Ireland and the Irish".
He recalled how frustrated he and fellow Irish-American members of Congress felt at how little they could do to help Ireland. "We once withdrew all economic aid from England, but that was only for 24 hours."
He concluded his address by reading a poem against injustice by a sixth-century Irish monk called Song of Hate.
It was short, to the relief of some of his friends in the audience who have listened to Senator McCarthy reciting, by heart and in full, Yeats's Wanderings of Oisin, late at night with the help of some Irish whiskey.