Joe McCarthy has been the villain in almost all depictions of him or the era named for him at least for most of my life. However, in recent years he seems to have come into a more positive revisionism. The fact that Ann Coulter claims he was a positive force who never hurt anyone who wasn’t guilty doesn’t exactly exonerate him as she’d say the same of Joe Mengele if it suited her purpose and sold books, but (McCarthy’s former acolyte) William F. Buckley’s apologia was a bit better researched, and since then other articles and books have appeared attempting to salvage a bit of McCarthy’s reputation (most notably or at least most recently and best reviewed, Blacklisted by History by Stanton Evans.
There seems no doubt that McCarthy was self serving, not above lying (even he admitted, according to several sources, that he never had a list with the 205 [later reduced to 57] Commies in the State Department mentioned in the legendary Wheeling speech), and most certainly became drunk with power. OTOH, many who automatically condemn McCarthy, even in academia and in appropriate fields [history, poli-sci, etc.] seem unwilling to concede that there really were Communist spy rings operating and they did pose a serious threat [and at least Julius Rosenberg if not Ethel was guilty as sin]. Some investigation did seem warranted.
And on the other other hand, I can’t claim to be a serious student of the Cold War era of U.S. history, so I’d like to have some good points in order to research the matter.
So what’s the real legacy of the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin? Was he total villain, or did he serve (however villainously) a sincere purpose? Was McCarthyism as evil as its reputation or was it in part justified? Who would be among its most innocent victims? (Philip Loeb of the early hit show The Goldbergs had his career destroyed and committed suicide due to his blacklisting, though both Buckley and Coulter when confronted with this in claiming “there were no innocent victims” basically responded “Yeah, but was a Communist, and therefore not innocent”.)
It is bizarre to watch tapes of McCarthy today-he actually terrorized people. Of course, in the end, most of the stuff he “uncovered” was just silly. particularly when he had his hatchetman (Roy Cohn) and Cpl. David Schein investigating Communist Infiltration of US Army bases!
Well, the blacklisting of Loeb didn’t have much to do with McCarthy. He was fired from the Goldbergs because of the HUAC report on Communists in film and TV. McCarthy’s committee was a senate committee, and dealt with Communists in the federal government.
One irony about the McCarthy hearings was that several people, as with those called before HUAC, appealed to the ACLU for assistance and were told, in so many words, “we don’t help dirty bloody Commies!” The ACLU leader Roger Baldwin detested Communism (not for uninformed reasons I should add- he’d been to Stalinist Russia and had been very much a fan himself, but also later admitted he was wrong and had been duped and denounced it as a totalitarian evil and all positive things shown to westerners were a facade and became a far more zealous anti-Communist than he was a Communist sympathizer). Baldwin had actually purged the ACLU of Communist loyalists and sympathizers before McCarthy came to prominence.
It was a Democratic congress that passed the McCarran Act. It was union leaders like Ronald Reagan and George Meany that purged Communists from the AFL-CIO and the Screen Actors Guild.
Communists weren’t popular at the time, even among liberals. Nor should they have been - their views were pretty much indefensible. The question is whether things went too far.
In the case of purging union leadership, probably not. These organizations had to maintain a reasonably strong position relative to management, and the presence of Communists could have hurt this. Other things, though, unquestionably went too far and ran afoul of free speech and association guarantees.
McCarthy wasn’t the only anti-Communist in the country, and it seems a shame to pin the whole thing on him. The hysteria predated his rise, and he was brought low by the Eisenhower Administration denouncing him - using Nixon to do so, no stranger to Red-baiting himself. Frankly, I think he ought to be seen as a symptom of the times, not as a proximate cause of anything.
And if you want to know the truth, this hysteria had been visited upon the country a couple of times before - against those same “Reds” during the Wilson administration and against “anarchists” shortly before that.
It should also be noted in the cause of fighting ignorance (not yours) that McCarthy was in the Senate. HUAC stands for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
Aside from the fact that McCarthy was right, he served in other ways. He was the youngest judge to serve in Wisconsin and, quite amazingly, gave up his judgeship to fight in WWII.
Well, McCarthy didn’t start out bad, you know. But I’ll not call him right all the way down the line.
However admirably he started (and he did start admirably) at the end he was a drunk who was losing his mind. And let’s not pretend that his wild charges were isolated from that.
Well, you might be correct. And it’s difficult to argue against when the charges are so unspecific. Other than him being a drunk. I just started Blacklisted by History though, so maybe you’re right. Or maybe you’re just parroting the kind of stuff that lead to the book being written. SO far, it seems that the consensus on McCarthy is wrong.
Well, right in what sense? There had been Soviet infiltration of the government in the 30s and 40s, but most of the Soviet spies had already been uncovered by things like the Bentley investigation. Most of the people that McCarthy accused were either innocent of any Communist connection, or had had past ties to the Communist Party or Communist front groups. As far as I know, none of the people McCarthy accused were actually Soviet agents or passing information.
Also, and I may be wrong about this, but there was a real Communist Menace. Real spy rings, real repression, real threats. Tailgunner Joe ensured anyone who was worried about all this was considered a crackpot.
I agree with this. Later developments, such as the release of Venona transcripts, showed that there was a communist threat, but even so, McCarthy did more harm to his own side than good, mostly because McCarthy was out for himself. He wasn’t bringing attention to communists to get rid of communism; he was trying to score political points, and it all came crashing down.
It’s no accident that one of his loudest supporters is Ann Coulter. They’re two peas in a pod. A couple of selfish ineloquent loudmouths whose few good arguments get lost in a sea of nuttiness. And thanks to their garbage, anyone who happens to agree with their general drift gets lumped in with the nuts. Joe split the anti-communist movement with his rants and tainted a legitimate cause with false accusations. He’s the best friend the American communists ever had.
It’s pretty inarguable that he was a drunk at the end. There is some debate about when this started to affect his job - some McCarthy supporters believe that he really only started hitting the bottle hard after the censure. There really isn’t much to support this, IMHO. I think it is pretty clear that he was hitting it a lot sooner - when Washington socializing and the pressures of being there hit him hard.
Thompson was right about McCarthy lying about his war record, as confirmed by his Wikipedia entry:
“It is well documented that McCarthy lied about his war record. Despite his automatic commission, he claimed to have enlisted as a ‘buck private.’ He flew 12 combat missions as a gunner-observer, earning the nickname of ‘Tail-Gunner Joe’ in the course of one of these missions. But he later claimed 32 missions in order to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross, which he received in 1952. McCarthy publicized a letter of commendation which he claimed had been signed by his commanding officer and countersigned by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, then Chief of Naval Operations. But it was revealed that McCarthy had written this letter himself, in his capacity as intelligence officer. A ‘war wound’ that McCarthy made the subject of varying stories involving airplane crashes or antiaircraft fire was in fact received aboard ship during an initiation ceremony for sailors who cross the equator for the first time.”
But no doubt he reformed and “started out admirably” in politics after this. Or maybe the guy was just scum.
EDIT: Going on in Wikipedia and taking a look at his early political career, I can’t find much that’s admirable at all.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me that most of his hunting was for communists, not necessarily communist spies. the black mark that his reign leaves on our history is the fact that in this country you’re supposed to be allowed to believe what you want to believe without being persecuted for it (at least by the government). The whole episode cuts away at what is to me the fundamental American value, freedom of thought.
And for all the venom that gets thrown around, certain facts get lost in the shuffle - like the fact that McCarthy stood as goddaughter to Kathleen Kennedy (Townsend), Robert Kennedy’s daughter and recent lieutenant governor of Maryland. McCarthy was close with the Kennedys, dated two of the Kennedy daughters, and helped get Robert Kennedy named assistant counsel of the Permanent Senate Subcommittee on Investigations - which launched his own political career. That is where he got national exposure grilling corrupt labor leaders like Jimmy Hoffa.
And why did this happen? Because Joe Kennedy hated Communists probably more than McCarthy did - and his Democratic bona fides were never in question. So let’s not wonder too much about McCarthy. There would have been some sort of crackdown with or without him.
