Joseph McCarthy: life of the week

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "Joseph McCarthy: Life of the Week" Summary

In the compelling episode titled "Joseph McCarthy: Life of the Week," hosted by Spencer Mizzen and featuring historian Nick Bunker, listeners are taken on an in-depth exploration of one of the most controversial figures in American political history. This detailed examination delves into McCarthy's motivations, tactics, personal struggles, and enduring legacy, providing a nuanced understanding of his influence on U.S. society and politics.

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Introduction to Joseph McCarthy

The episode opens with Spencer Mizzen setting the stage for the discussion, highlighting Joseph McCarthy's infamous role in the 1950s anti-Communist frenzy known as the Red Scare. McCarthy's aggressive campaign against alleged Communists within the U.S. government not only tarnished countless reputations but also left an indelible mark on American political discourse.

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Early Life and Background of McCarthy

[01:26] Nick Bunker:
“McCarthy died at the age of only 48 in 1957, and he died of alcoholism. He had been a chronic alcoholic for some years, was also using morphine.”
Bunker provides a poignant glimpse into McCarthy's personal life, revealing his struggles with addiction and his mantra: “If you don't live dangerously, you don't live at all” [02:03].

Raised in rural Wisconsin, McCarthy's humble beginnings shaped his political worldview. Bunker emphasizes McCarthy's roots in a predominantly Republican, industrial heartland, which influenced his later political strategies aimed at bridging rural and industrial constituencies [05:49]-[07:10].

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McCarthy's Rise and Anti-Communist Crusade

McCarthy's entry into the Senate in 1946 as the youngest senator marked the beginning of his unorthodox approach to politics. Unlike his more reserved Senate peers, McCarthy was a maverick who “went at it with guns blazing” [04:33], employing aggressive and sensational tactics to gain attention [02:30]-[03:19].

Bunker contextualizes McCarthy's rise within the broader landscape of existing anti-Communist sentiments that had been simmering since the Bolshevik Revolution. However, it was McCarthy's unique methods that made “McCarthyism and anti-communism” [02:52]-[03:07] almost synonymous [02:42]-[03:19].

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The Wheeling Speech and Its Impact

A pivotal moment in McCarthy's career was his February 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he claimed to possess a list of over 200 Communists working within the State Department [09:47]-[12:39]. Despite the lack of concrete evidence, McCarthy's persistence and the charged political climate of the time amplified the speech's impact [12:05]-[13:53].

[13:25] Nick Bunker:
“A chain reaction of press coverage that kind of snowballed over the ensuing weeks.”
This event ignited widespread fear and set the stage for McCarthy's subsequent actions [13:25]-[14:55].

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Confrontations with the Democratic Party and the Senate

McCarthy's aggressive stance initially faced resistance from the Democratic-controlled Senate. However, internal divisions within the Democratic Party and strategic alliances within the Republican ranks allowed McCarthy to sustain his crusade [14:50]-[16:17].

[16:17] Nick Bunker:
“There were really two halves to Joe McCarthy's anti communist crusade.”
Bunker outlines how McCarthy's efforts transitioned from political maneuvering during the 1950 election cycle to more systematic investigations post-1952 [14:50]-[16:17].

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The Army-McCarthy Hearings and Downfall

The turning point came with McCarthy's investigation into the U.S. Army, culminating in the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 [24:11]-[29:41]. McCarthy's personal attacks on figures like General Zwicker and his overreach into military affairs drew widespread criticism.

[26:50] Nick Bunker:
“He began personally insulting and abusing Zwicker during a committee hearing that began to cause a great big scandal, the army were furious about it.” [26:50]-[27:04]

President Eisenhower's subtle rebuke and the powerful televised documentary by Edward R. Murrow further eroded McCarthy's support [27:04]-[28:02].

[28:12] Nick Bunker:
“Ed Murrow... demonstrated McCarthy's tactics that he was bullying, that he was malicious, that he was telling lies.” [28:12]-[28:30]

These developments culminated in the Senate's censure of McCarthy for “bringing the organization to dishonor” [29:14]-[29:41].

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Legacy and Modern Comparisons

Despite his downfall, McCarthy's legacy endures as a cautionary tale of political extremism and the dangers of unchecked power. Bunker draws parallels between McCarthy and modern political figures like Donald Trump, highlighting similarities in rhetoric and the use of conspiracy theories [31:40]-[34:48].

[31:40] Nick Bunker:
“McCarthy remains a figure that people still discuss today.” [31:40]-[32:27]

Bunker acknowledges both the connections and the distinctions between McCarthy and contemporary leaders, emphasizing the importance of understanding McCarthy's methods and their impact on American politics [32:03]-[34:48].

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Conclusion

Nick Bunker concludes by reflecting on McCarthy's complex character—his potential as a talented politician tarnished by his lack of genuine ideological convictions and his reliance on anti-Communism as a political strategy [30:35]-[31:40]. McCarthy's story serves as a critical reminder of the delicate balance between national security and individual liberties, a theme that remains relevant in today's political climate.

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Notable Quotes:

• Nick Bunker [02:03]:
  “If you don't live dangerously, you don't live at all.”

• Nick Bunker [13:25]:
  “A chain reaction of press coverage that kind of snowballed over the ensuing weeks.”

• Nick Bunker [28:12]:
  “Ed Murrow... demonstrated McCarthy's tactics that he was bullying, that he was malicious, that he was telling lies.”

• Nick Bunker [31:40]:
  “McCarthy remains a figure that people still discuss today.”

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This episode of the History Extra Podcast provides a thorough and engaging analysis of Joseph McCarthy's life and legacy. Through Nick Bunker's expert insights, listeners gain a deeper appreciation of the complexities surrounding McCarthyism and its lasting effects on American society and politics.

Transcript

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[Spencer Mizzen]

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures. From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies. In the 1950s, an infamous crusade led by Joseph McCarthy whipped up a frenzy of anti Communist sentiment across America and wrecked the reputations of scores of people accused of harbouring sympathies for the Soviet Union. So what motivated the Wisconsin Senator into promoting this Red Scare? And why did McCarthyism prove so alluring? Here in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Nick Bunker discusses one of the most controversial figures in U.S. political history.

[Nick Bunker]

Nick, we're here today to talk about the notorious American Senator Joseph McCarthy. I wonder if you could start by giving us a quick introduction to him. Who was McCarthy in a nutshell?

Well, I think a great place to.

Start, Spencer, is with an anecdote about McCarthy, an anecdote that comes from the closing months of his life.

Now, McCarthy died young. Senator McCarthy died at the age of only 48 in 1957, and he died of alcoholism. He had been a chronic alcoholic for some years, was also using morphine.

And during the terminal phase of his.

Addiction, a friend of his was trying to persuade McCarthy to stop drinking. And McCarthy turned around and said, if you don't live dangerously, you don't live at all. And I think that kind of sums up Joseph McCarthy.

He was a man who lived dangerously.

He lived hard, he lived fast, he lived with a kind of manic intensity. And eventually these characters of his conspired to kill him. Now, what he's famous for, of course, or notorious for, is his great anti.

Communist crusade that he began as a United states senator in February 1950.

And Reid ran for about another four.

Years before his career kind of blew up.

Now, McCarthy didn't invent anti Communism.

Anti Communism had been around in America since the very moment that the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in October 1917. There had been red scares immediately after World War I.

And from 1945 onwards, there was a.

Long period of acute concern in America about the threat of communist subversion abroad and at home. But what McCarthy did was he laid his stamp on the movement so that people have come to think of the two words McCarthyism and anti communism as.

Being kind of synonymous. And McCarthy did that really, not so.

Much by any saying anything really new.

But by the manner in which he.

Conducted his political campaigning.

And what he also did was he.

Formed part of a movement within the Republican Party that was trying to desperately, after 20 years in which the Democrats controlled the White House of the United.

States, a movement that was trying to.

Find a way to dislodge them from power and to bring the Republican Party.

Back from the dead, as it were.

When you say the manner of his political campaigning, what do you mean like that? Can you paint us a picture of what that looked like?

Well, McCarthy, in some ways, was quite an unusual American senator. Now, bear in mind, of course, in the United States, the Senate is the.

Upper house of Congress, the lower one.

Being the House of Representatives. Average age of senators in those days.

Was usually somewhere around 55 or 60.

It was quite a clubbish organization. It was an organization that prided itself.

On its rules and its decorum and the gentlemanly way in which people carried themselves.

McCarthy was completely different to that. For one thing, he was very young. I mean, he was elected to the Senate in November 1946, well before the age of 40. He was the youngest senator in Washington. And he behaved in a way that.

Completely flouted the rules.

Young senators were supposed to be quite deferential to their elders.

They weren't really supposed to say very.

Much, actually, in their first term in office until they'd actually built up a.

Track record as a diligent legislator and so on.

McCarthy was completely different to that. He went at it with guns blazing.

Almost from the moment he entered the.

Senate in early 1947.

And to begin with, for the first.

Three years or so, he was actually quite a failure, in fact, because his.

Style, his manner was so extreme and.

Because he, as I say, bucked the.

Rules of this august body.

First of all, he was a very astute salesman. He had actually been a salesman in his youth. I mean, he grew up in a poor farm, mill poor, relatively poor farming.

Family in rural Wisconsin. He'd left high school at the age.

Of 14 to work on the family farm.

Then he ran his own poultry farm.

And then he worked in a country store.

He was a country store manager, and he did extremely well as a manager of a country store because he was such an affable, charming salesman. That was one aspect of McCarthy. But another aspect was that he was a man who liked to gamble. He liked to take risks, quite literally. He was a very keen poker player.

He's also very keen boxer, actually.

He was quite an intimidating figure.

5 foot 11, big burly chapter, very good boxer. And as I say, a man who liked to play poker, man who liked.

To take risks, he likes to gamble. And that, again, was part of his style.

So you mentioned his early life there. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, then? So, like you say, came from a quite a poor background. He came from the Midwestern state of Wisconsin. How did that shape his career? How was he the product of his youth?

Well, first of all, he was a Roman Catholic.

He was a very devout Roman Catholic. He was educated later on by Jesuits. When he went to college in Milwaukee.

In Wisconsin, always remained about Catholic.

Went to Mass, went to confession, so on.

Prayed the rosary, a form of Catholic devotion.

The nature of the area that he grew up in was that it was.

A largely Republican area because it was rural, it was very much a farming state. But the thing about Wisconsin was that it wasn't just rural.

Wisconsin was also part of the industrial heartland of America. Now, what we now call the Rust.

Belt, because of so much of that.

Heavy industry has disappeared.

But in those days, it wasn't the Rust Belt. It was a kind of a great big arc of prosperity Wisconsin was. Milwaukee, particularly the main city in Wisconsin.

Was linked up closely to Chicago. Chicago was linked up to other steel.

And manufacturing trials across Indiana and Ohio and into parts of New York and down into Pennsylvania. And that was really the key element of McCarthy.

He had to kind of bridge the.

Gap between being from rural America and also being in an industrial state. And that kind of shaped a lot of his politics.

And it meant, for example, that he.

Didn'T attack the labor unions very much.

But what he wanted to find was an ideology, a method of campaigning. I kind of set his issues on which to campaign, which would appeal to both sides, if you like, of his.

Constituency, both the rural America of Wisconsin.

And also kind of small businessmen and.

Manufacturers in industrial America.

You mentioned just then as well that he was a devout Roman Catholic, and that kind of affected his worldview. Could you just tell us a little bit more about that?

Well, the Catholic Church in America at.

The time was actually very prosperous. It was a growing, dynamic church.

And very obvious reason for that because, of course, the birth rate was so.

High in America after World War II.

And Catholic Church was expanding largely on.

The back of education because they operated and Ran so many schools, they were.

Building lots of schools. And they were in a dynamic phase.

Of growth also, because for so long they had been regarded as the church.

Of immigrants, basically of Irish Americans or Italian Americans. But as Irish Americans and Italian Americans.

Became more integrated into the mainstream of American life, so the Catholic Church became more and more influential. It had been seen as kind of.

Not quite respectable when it was linked.

Up to immigrants, but by the 1950s, it was locating itself right at the core of mainstream middle class American life.

Now, it was very influential, therefore, politically, though of course, it tended to be quite fluid.

It wasn't the case that all Catholics were conservative Republicans. They didn't all agree with Joe McCarthy.

Because they wanted to maintain a broad.

Appeal so that they could maintain their.

Influence, especially over things like education. But there was a crucial moment in.

1949, just before McCarthy began his crusade. And this was when Pope Pius XII issued a decree, a papal decree, in.

Which he excommunicated anybody, any Catholic who.

Either was a member of the Communist Party or simply held or advocated communist beliefs. Now, that was a really crucial moment because that put anti communism right on the Church's agenda.

And for a Catholic as Devout as.

Joe McCarthy, it would have been very hard to ignore that kind of wind that blew from Rome.

And there was very good reason why.

Pope Pius did that.

I mean, his own record, of course, is quite controversial, highly controversial, because of the way that Pope Pius compromised with Nazi Germany. But in 1949, the great issue was.

The very severe persecution of Catholics that was going on in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet bloc, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.

Catholic priests were being arrested, sent to prison, churches being closed down.

And that was the context of Pope Pisato's decree. And it was also the kind of.

Context of the nexus between McCarthy's Catholicism on the one hand and his anti Communism on the other.

Okay, so that brings us perfectly to February 1950 and the incident that really kicked off Joseph McCarthy's anti communist crusade. And that was a notorious speech he gave in the town of Wheeling, West Virginia. What did he say and why did that speech have such an impact on the United States?

Well, first of all, we need to back up a bit and just look at the significance of that date, February 1950. Now, this was really.

Well, it wasn't quite the first time that McCarthy had given a speech attacking.

A Communist diversion inside the United States.

It actually began the previous autumn, but.

He hadn't attracted very much attention. Now, February 1950 was very important because.

It was a very fraught moment in the History of the Cold War.

First thing that happened was that the Soviet Union had detonated their first atomic bomb, a test, in August 1949. Then in October 1949, Mao Zedong had.

Taken over complete control of China.

They proclaimed the People's Republic of China in October 1949. And there was a great deal of.

Soul searching in America as to how America kind of allowed this to happen.

And then there were these great causes celebre.

There was a trial in New York of all the leaders of the American Communist Party who were convicted of subversion.

And illegal conspiracy that ended Latter part of 1949.

And then there was the conviction of.

A man called Alger Hiss. Alger Hiss was a former State Department.

Official and prominent lawyer in Washington who.

Had been convicted of perjury.

It all arose from the fact that he had been found to have passed secret State Department documents to the Soviets in the 1930s.

And then just after that, there was.

Another sensation which was, was the arrest.

In London of a German Communist named Klaus Fuchs, who, having been a German.

Communist before World War II, had also.

Managed to get to be head of.

Theoretical physics at the British Atomic Research.

Establishment at Harwell near London, which was.

Busy building a first British atomic bomb.

So you had all these events which sort of come together to provide the.

Moment at which McCarthy kind of leapt into the arena and sort of took.

Over the anti communist movement in the United States. Now what happened was this.

McCarthy was very close to a number.

Of newspaper journalists, and he was particularly.

Close to a newspaper called the Chicago.

Tribune, which was one of the very.

Largest circulation newspapers in America at the time.

And it was run by A man.

Called Colonel Robert McCormick, who was a fierce Republican anti Communist.

He believed effectively that Franklin Roosevelt had more or less been in league with the Russians. And he'd always been a staunch opponent of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

And the Chicago Tribune's journalists supplied McCarthy with a lot of his material and they helped him to write the Wheeling speech. And what the Wheeling speech alleged was.

That there was a conspiracy of Communist.

Party members who were actually located inside the State Department in Washington, the State.

Department, of course, being the American equivalent of our foreign office. And McCarthy got up in Wheeling and he gave a speech. It's not entirely clear exactly what he.

Said because there was no reporter actually at the event. The reports that appeared were based on a handout of McCarthy's speech, but it's.

Not clear whether he actually said those words in Wheeling. But basically what he said was he claimed to have a list of more than 200 card carrying communists who were.

Working in the State Department in Washington.

And to whom the authorities, mainly Dean Addison, who was the Secretary of State at the time, had turned a blind eye. Now that was the core McCarthy charge. Now he messed about with the numbers, actually, and sometimes he said 205, somebody said 207. He actually ended up with 57 on his list. But that was the key element, that.

He claimed to have a list of Communists inside the State Department.

And of course, coming on top of.

All those events that I described a.

Moment ago, the trial of Al Jahirs and the arrest of Klaus Fuchs and Chinese takeover by Mao Zedong, you can see this is quite an inflammatory thing to say.

Now, it didn't immediately make a huge amount of impact.

What made the impact, of course, was the fact that the State Department and.

Harry Truman's officials, Truman being the Democratic president at the time, issued firm rebuttals which McCarthy then rebutted himself.

And so there was a kind of.

A chain reaction of press coverage that kind of snowballed over the ensuing weeks.

And so what had been just one speech in Wheeling became a great big cause celebrity.

But it's one thing to get up and give that speech, is another thing for it to kind of catch fire in the way it did. I mean, what was it about McCarthy, the man and the way he delivered the speech that kind of made it so persuasive that resulted in chiming with so many Americans?

Well, he was very persistent.

I mean, he learned a lesson that.

A lot of politicians take a long time to learn, which is that you've.

Got to have a simple measure, you've got to keep on repeating it, keep.

Hammering it away until everybody's heard of it. And that's what he did.

He's also very bold and as I.

Said earlier, I mean, he was a taker of risks. And what he did was he managed.

To secure a debate on the floor.

Of the US Senate a couple of weeks later. Now, the Democrats believed, because they had.

The majority of the Senate, they believed they could kind of squash McCarthy because.

Their argument was, well, you know, this.

List is fictitious and it is indeed true. I mean, McCarthy did not actually have a list of 200 or 57 card.

Carrying communist Party members inside the State Department. He did have some lists of alleged.

People who might be disloyal to the.

Federal government, but it wasn't quite what he said it was. So the Democrats knew that, they knew that he didn't really have information that he claimed to have and so they believed that in such a debate on the floor of the Senate, that they could expose him for being effectively a charlatan. But it didn't work out that way.

Because first of all, McCarthy was extremely persistent. I mean, he stood at the podium.

In the Senate for like five hours at a stretch, continually hammering away at his opponents. But secondly, because there were a lot.

Of other powerful Republicans in the Senate who up till now had not really been close to McCarthy at all, because.

He had this reputation for being a maverick. He wasn't popular with his fellow members. But those other powerful Republicans in the.

Senate, some of whom were very effective.

Operators indeed, they swung him behind him.

Plus, at the time, there was a problem, which was that the Democratic Party itself was divided. Now, although the Democrats held the majority.

In the Senate and although President Truman.

As a Democrat held the White House, the Democratic Party was quite a dysfunctional organization. It was very divided between different wings.

Particularly divided between the northern liberals and.

The relatively conservative Democrats in the South. And the Democrats of the south actually made up a very large percentage of the Democratic Party. Now, because he wasn't united body and because the Democratic group was somewhat dysfunctional, it was ridden by internal strife. They didn't actually present a kind of united front against Joe McCarthy.

And in fact, there were actually very.

Few Democrats at this stage who were actually prepared to get up and put their own reputations on the line by attacking him.

A lot of them thought it was.

Just too risky to do it because they didn't want to appear to be in any way kind of friendly to.

Or sympathetic to the Soviet Union.

Okay, so what happened next? I mean, what impact did the ensuing witch hunt have on America's institutions?

Well, it fell into two phases.

There were really two halves to Joe MacArthur's anti communist crusade.

Now, the first one was what ensued.

After the wheeling speech. Now, at this point, because the Republicans.

Were in a minority in Congress who didn't control the Senate, they were kind of insurgents. And what they were doing, they were trying to get the maximum mileage they.

Could out of McCarthy's claims, with a view to impacting elections that were due later that year.

Because this was an election year, midterm.

Elections, elections to Congress, which were due in November 1950. So really that was the context of this. They were trying to make mileage for political campaigning purposes. And they just kept at it, and they kept at it and they kept at it.

Now, what happened immediately afterwards was there was a series of hearings by our.

Committee of the Senate called the Tidings Committee. And this committee was convened under the.

Chairmanship of a Democrat to go into the substance of McCarthy's allegations and to try and establish where there was any truth in them.

And to blow him up, if you.

Like, by exposing just how little material he really had. The trouble was, it completely backfired because. Well, for two reasons, really.

Partly because McCarthy kept on, as I.

Say, simply carried on, regardless of whatever people said about him.

Secondly, because he got more and more.

Support from other members of the Republican Party, and also because he actually did.

Manage to find one example of someone who he could really argue had influenced the State Department.

It was an academic called Owen Latimore.

Who had been involved in State Department consultations with a view to determining policy about. Towards Communist China.

And Lattimore did indeed have some connections.

Which could be made to look very suspicious.

So that was one issue.

But the other issue, of course, was.

The outbreak of the Korean War.

When the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, it was a major blow to the credibility of the Truman administration because there had clearly been a failure of intelligence.

They hadn't anticipated it. There had been a failure of deterrence. They'd failed to deter Kim Il Sung.

Of North Korea from invading the South.

And also they were militarily unprepared because the American armed forces had actually been run down by budget cuts imposed by Harry Truman.

So what the Korean War crisis did.

Was it kind of.

It rescued Joe McCarthy. He was having some difficulty standing up some of his charges.

But in the context of this sudden.

Alarming, very definite Communist threat, people sort.

Of forgot about that. They thought, well, the attitude tended to be, well, he may have made some.

Mistakes, he may have made some errors.

He may.

His tactics may be irregular and maybe.

Unpleasant, but he's onto something.

Okay, you mentioned Latimore there. I wonder if you could introduce us to some other of the victims of McCarthyism. What impact did it have on their careers and their lives?

Well, this is really has to do.

With the second phase of McCarthy's career, which began sometime later.

Now, during this early phase in 1950.

At the time of the Tiniest Committee.

As I was saying, Republicans were in.

A minority in Congress.

So there were kind of limits to what they could do. The really big damage that the McCarthy inflicted and the really unpleasant tactics that he used were later on.

That was in 1953 and 1954. Now, what had happened here was that November 1952, the Republicans had swept the.

Board in the elections of that year, and they'd taken the White House President Eisenhower became the Republican president, and also the Republicans took control of Congress as well.

Now, what I meant was that McCarthy could now get the chairmanship of his.

Own committee in the Senate, which he did.

And he also used a subcommittee called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And this had a very broad remit.

To investigate pretty much anything that smacked.

Of misconduct or incompetence or malfeasance within the federal bureaucracy.

And so that's what he did. And now this is the point, really.

At which he became most lethal. I mean, one thing he did was some of his colleagues, of course, was.

To pursue not only communists, but also homosexuals, gay men. He created a situation in which gay men effectively were unable to work for the federal government. And people's careers were ruined because of that. There was a lot of collateral damage. There were people who were not actually.

Persecuted by McCarthy himself, not pursued by McCarthy himself, but they were pursued by other agencies within the federal government. The federal government or by the FBI.

Or by other congressmen.

And that was all part of the kind of the atmosphere that McCarthy created.

I mean, the famous case, for example.

Of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of.

The atom bomb, who was investigating. Now, McCarthy had no role in that, but the atmosphere in which that investigation.

Was carried out, in which Oppenheimer was.

Effectively removed from his position, was part.

And parcel of the atmosphere that McCarthy had tried to create.

And he then went on to in.

His committee hearings, where, of course, he had privilege. I mean, he could say anything, what he liked about people because he couldn't be sued for LIBOR or anything like.

That, because privilege as a member of the Senate.

And so a range of people were kind of accused by implication or by innuendo.

And there were diplomats, government officials who.

Found their careers blighted. They didn't necessarily fire, they weren't necessarily dismissed, but their careers kind of came to an end.

What did the other big beasts in the Republican Party make of this? I mean, surely they must have been a little bit uncomfortable at seeing all this happening.

Well, the Republican Party was quite a complicated beast.

Now, they had, of course, an ideal.

Presidential candidate and an ideal president in Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower had just tremendous popularity raising.

I mean, Eisenhower's approval ratings as president were unrivaled at the time. And since, I mean, no president's ever.

Been as popular as Dwight D. Eisenhower was. And of course, you also have this stellar record from World War II. But although Eisenhower was Republican, he had.

Not really been politically active at all prior to his presidential campaign in 1952. So he wasn't really a mainstream member of the kind of conventional organization of the Republican Party.

The people who were members of the mainstream of the Republican Party, particularly the most powerful, Millman called Senator Robert A. Taft.

They were generally happy to go along.

With what McCarthy was doing. Robert A. Taft was the. He was kind of the uncrowned king.

Of the Republican Party until He died in 1953. He would have been the alternative candidate.

To be president if Eisenhower had not been selected. And Taft really played a great big.

Role in McCarthy's rise to fame and power and so on rise to notoriety.

Because Taft basically, tacitly or openly sometimes.

Gave his approval to what McCarthy was.

Doing, even though Taft himself was a much more solid kind of figure. I mean, he had a very high reputation as a lawmaker, as a diligent worker in the Senate. And even people who were opposed to him had great respect for him.

But he was prepared to Compromise with Joe McCarthy.

Now, you said earlier that McCarthy was quite a big imposing figure. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more, sort of by what he was like to be around. What kind of impression did he make on people with whom he came into contact? What did they say about him once they'd met him?

Well, he was very popular, some people. I mean, he actually got on very well with the press, for example, in.

The early part of his career, until really about 1953 and 54, the earlier on, he was very popular, he was.

Very affable, he was very convivial, he liked to drink with them.

He was a sort of person. He was kind of a back slapping kind of character. And he would go down very well.

And go among what you might call.

Country club Republican circles. He was fun to be around.

He was a bachelor actually too, for.

Most of his career in Washington.

He only got married towards the end.

Of his career in the Senate.

And that meant, of course, that he was something of a party animal because he was continually being invited, because he was a bachelor as a single man. He was continually being invited to dinner parties and so on. He watched him, he's very sociable. But over time things changed.

He became, over time, more and more aggressive. He became more and more difficult. People became more and more wary of.

Him, as to some extent, it's clear.

It was the alcohol.

The effect of that was his advancing alcoholism.

But also because as he became more.

And more paranoid, because of course, he became subject himself to quite vociferous attacks from all quarters as time went on.

Yeah, so let's talk about that so let's say in early 1954 he was riding high, seemingly impregnable. But then in the spring of that year, his career begins to fall apart. And in November, he was disgraced when the US Senate voted to condemn him for gross misconduct. How did this train crash begin?

Well, during 1953, running this committee had.

The subcommittee on investigations.

He'd made quite a bit of progress in sniffing out, as he thought, various Communists aversives lurking in the undergrowth of America. But what he did was he overreached himself.

Towards the end of 1953, he began.

Investigating the United States Army.

And this was kind of a risky.

Thing for him to do, although he didn't see it that way. The situation was that there was an.

American army base called Fort Monmouth, which.

Was in New Jersey, just across the river from New York City.

And it was the headquarters of the research department of the United States Signal Corps. And what they were doing there was that they were conducting research into radar.

And other forms of advanced sensitive technology. And there had been some concerns for.

Some time in the army itself that some of the people employed at Fort Monmouth might have left wing connections in New York.

They might possibly have some sort of affiliation with people who were Communists or had been Communists. And so there was an investigation into this within the Army.

And what happened was that McCarthy got wind of this.

And McCarthy at the time was working.

With a young lawyer called Roy Cohn, who was the prosecuting counsel for his committee.

And McCarthy and Cone got wind of what was going on at Fort Monmouth. And they obviously saw an opportunity to.

Show that, for example, maybe the army had covered up what they knew or.

That the investigation hadn't been vigorous enough. So they began looking into this and.

Then they came across what they thought.

Well, they thought they struck gold. They came across the case of a.

Chap called Irving Perez, Captain Irving Perris.

Who was actually a dentist.

He was a dentist who had been drafted into the army during the Korean War.

And it turned out that Perez had.

Been investigated by the army because he.

Was one of these people who had.

Some socialist connections in New York. And he'd also personally, he had known.

The Rosenbergs, the Rosenberg family, who were.

Convicted of espionage, atomic espionage, and Julius.

And Ethel Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair and executed in December of 1953. So Perez was a bit suspect. And McCarthy and Cohen heard about this case and what they also heard, that.

It had a curious ending to it, which was that far from being disgraced.

If you like Perez, although he had.

Refused to swear to A loyalty oath.

Perez had actually been promoted to major, and then he'd been given an honorable discharge. And this obviously upset McCarthy greatly, and so he began to probe into this. In doing so, however, what McCarthy did was to personally attack and insult a general called General Zwicker, who was the.

Base commander for Captain Perris.

Now, the trouble was, Zwicker had a.

Very distinguished record in World War II.

He had been at the Battle of the Bulge, or as we would call it, the Ardennes offensive, in late 1944.

He was personally credited with having to help to stop the German advance.

Eisenhower knew him, knew all about him.

And so when McCarthy in 1954 began.

Kind of personally insulted and abused Zwicker during a committee hearing that began to cause a great big scandal, the army.

Were furious about it. The Pentagon were furious about it. They protested. And this led to a kind of complicated chain of events.

But the bottom line was that in.

February, March 1954, Eisenhower himself got involved. Eisenhower delivered a kind of mild public rebuke to McCarthy. He didn't actually name McCarthy, but he gave a press conference in which he.

Talked about the fact that, yes, we need to investigate and to deal with any subversion or espionage or any kind of Communist infiltration, but we must do.

So within the limits of fair play and honor.

Now, this greatly upset McCarthy, who took it as a personal insult.

And so McCarthy fired back with a press conference of his own in which he, although he didn't name the President, effectively accused Eisenhower of being soft on Communists.

Now, what McCarthy had therefore done then.

By about March 1954, was he'd kind of declared war on President Eisenhower.

And once he'd done that, then that was the beginning of the end for him, because of Eisenhower has enormous popularity and his great prestige within the Republican Party. And in the ensuing weeks, more and.

More people began to come forward in the way they hadn't before to condemn McCarthy.

There was a famous television documentary.

This was the very early days of television journalism.

But there was a great American journalist called Ed Murrow who produced a documentary.

Series called See It Now.

And in his edition of CNN in early March 1954, he compiled a whole.

Collection of film clips of McCarthy in such a way as to demonstrate McCarthy's tactics.

That he was bullying, that he was malicious, that he was economic with the.

Truth or simply told lies.

And it had a great effect. About the same time, Richard Nixon got involved.

Richard Nixon was the Vice President. Richard Nixon also gave a speech in which, again, he didn't name McCarthy, but.

He made it clear how much the Republican the administration of Eisenhower disapproved McCarthy's tactics. Other members of the Cabinet became involved too.

And the Democrats were furious because just Prior to this, McCarthy had gone around.

The country doing a big speaking tour.

And the speaking tour he described as.

The 20 years of treason tour, because.

Everywhere he went, he went around accusing the Democrats of having been guilty of 20 years of treason while they occupied the White House.

So everybody by now was furious with McCarthy. His popularity ratings in early 1950s were very high.

He had a favorability rating of 50%.

With the American people. But during the spring, his ratings began to collapse.

Now, what Congress did was they appointed.

Another committee of the Senate to investigate.

The dispute between McCarthy and the Army. It went very badly for McCarthy because his manner, his demeanor during the hearings.

Was so aggressive and so rude and so bullying.

So he lost support there. So the army hearings went very badly for McCarthy. And that began the process that led eventually to the Senate censuring, which McCarthy officially for bringing the organization to dishonour.

And distribute at the end of 1954.

So his collapse was swift and very dramatic. What happened next? You mentioned he was descended into alcoholism and he died very young. So can you tell us what happened after his disgrace?

Well, not really much happened, actually. He simply drifted off into obscurity.

He was still a member of the Senate because he'd been reelected to his.

Seat for Wisconsin in November 1952.

So he was still a member of.

The Senate when he died.

But he became less and less visible in the chamber.

He didn't get committee assignments.

He was kind of ostracized by his colleagues, and he became this kind of.

Sad and lonely and pathetic figure.

He's hospitalized, didn't really make any serious attempt, as far as I can see, to break his addiction. And also, of course, what was happening was that people were sort of piling abuse on his head because, of course.

The term McCarthyism had been coined, had.

Been coined back in 1950, and few.

People had a good word to say for him.

Now, he did have some supporters McCarthy.

Had then has always had people who.

Have defended his reputation and defended what he did. But by the time it got to.

1957 when he died, he was a.

Figure sort of been cast out into the wilderness.

It's actually a very sad story because.

You can argue, as I certainly do when I write about McCarthy, that he was actually a very talented individual being, if you like, pointed in the right direction.

Then he might have been a very successful politician indeed and might have achieved.

A great deal One of the issues about him, I think, was that he.

Didn'T really actually, at the end of the day, in the last analysis, actually have very strong political views of his own. He adopted his anti communism as a political strategy or a political maneuver. Prior to that date, in fact, McCarthy had actually been quite a middle of the road Republican. And in the 1930s, when he first ran for office as a district attorney.

In Wisconsin, he had actually been a.

New Deal Democrat supporting Franklin Roosevelt. And so he didn't really have a strong underlying set of political values and beliefs.

If he had, then he might actually.

Have been quite a formidable operator. Instead, what he did was instead of.

Having a really strongly worked out set of political ideas and a political vision, a political program, he staked everything on anti Communism.

And finally, Nick, what is his most significant legacy? I mean, why is he an important figure for us to be talking about today?

Well, it has been commonplace since 2016.

Or so for American commentators to liken Donald Trump to Germany.

I mean, there have been people in.

The New York Times who've said that Donald Trump is essentially Joe McCarthy. Come again? And you can see why people might say that because there are certain similarities.

In terms of the rhetoric, in terms of conspiracy theories, in terms of kind.

Of a deliberate attempt to sort of find polarizing issues, not to sort of build consensus.

So it's important, therefore, I think, to.

Look at that kind of claim and.

To understand whether there's really any kind of truth in it, because it remains.

A sort of abiding concern.

I mean, McCarthy remains, because of that.

Kind of context, McCarthy remains a figure that people still discuss today.

And so it's important to actually get.

A grasp of what he was really all about.

I mean, I'm not entirely. I mean, I can see what people mean when they Compare Trump and McCarthy. And there is a direct personal connection, because Roy Cohn, the Prosecuting counsel for McCarthy, whom I mentioned earlier, did indeed, in the 1970s and 80s, actually go.

On as a New York lawyer to.

Be a kind of mentor to Donald Trump.

But there are also some big differences. And the big difference really, the two big differences really are, first of all, that Donald Trump is a far more.

Resilient figure than McCarthy was. I mean, Donald Trump is a great.

Survivor, whereas McCarthy was totally self destructive.

And the other thing that's really important is the fact that McCarthy was only a senator. He had no prospect of ever getting.

The Republican nomination for president.

I mean, Eisenhower was the perfect candidate. He was a senator and he enjoyed the Senate.

Some aspects of the Senate he enjoyed campaigning. He enjoyed being connected with his local constituency.

Donald Trump's very different to that. I mean, Donald Trump has only ever been interested in one job in politics as far as one can see, and that is being the chief executive of.

The United States, being the president, he would have actually no patience for the kind of nitty gritty, kind of hard grind of legislation and budget making in Congress.

So there are some big differences. Personally, I think there is, however, one.

Parallel which people don't tend to draw, and that is between the situation that.

President Biden has found himself in and the situation that President Truman found himself him.

Now, both in some way had some.

Achievements, big achievements to that. Harrison made big achievements in the field of foreign policy, NATO, the Marshall Plan, and so on.

And actually the American economy in 1950.

Was actually doing very well. There had been a recession in 1949, but in 1950 it was actually doing very well.

Low inflation growth, unemployment very low, lots of people finding jobs.

It was in a good place. And yet Truman was unable to turn that into a Democratic victory later in November 1952.

And he came under immense amount of pressure from all sides, and his administration ended rather badly.

President Biden finds himself the same kind of situation.

Americans are not happy, even though their.

Economy actually is doing quite well.

They're not happy.

They're increasingly polarized.

They're worried about the standard of living.

They'Re worried about things going on overseas. And it's precisely in those sorts of.

Circumstances where the sitting president is unpopular and just can't make any inroads in.

Defending his record that precisely provides the opportunity for someone I've, Joseph McCarthy or Donald Trump or J.D. vance to argue, look, there's something very.

Rotten in the state of the country.

There's something very rotten in Washington, and.

We need to do something very radical to change it.

I think that's actually the real parallel. It's the situations that are parallel rather than actually necessarily the people.

[Spencer Mizzen]

That was author and historian Nick Bunker. His books include in the Shadow of America and the World in 1950, published by Basic Books. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.