Johnson was badly spooked by his near-defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, which he won by only 300 votes against the anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy, a politician whom many people did not take seriously. Even worryingly for Johnson, inspired by this display of presidential weakness in New Hampshire, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a politician whom many people did take seriously, entered the Democratic primaries on an anti-war platform on 16 March 1968. For the Wisconsin Democratic primary scheduled for 2 April 1968, the polls in March 1968 showed Kennedy in the lead, McCarthy coming in second and Johnson humiliatingly coming in third. Faced with a situation where there was a real possibility of him losing the Democratic nomination to be his party's candidate in the 1968 election, Johnson decided to consider a political as opposed to a military solution to the Vietnam war. Clifford had despite expectations turned out to be more dovish in office, and pressed the president to find an "honorable way out" of Vietnam. Johnson sought the advice of the so-called "wise men", a group of elder statesmen who advised him to find a way to end the war. The leader of the "Wise Men", the former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, told Rostow "tell the president—and you tell him in precisely these words—that he can take Vietnam and stick it up his ass". On 25 March, when Johnson met the "Wise Men", he was informed that "we must take steps to disengage". Johnson's highest level of education had been at the Southwest Texas Teacher's College, and throughout his life, he had much respect for those with university degrees from the "Eastern Establishment". Of the 14 "Wise Men", only General Omar Bradly, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, the diplomat Robert Murphy and General Maxwell Taylor favored fighting on with the other ten favoring disengagement.