McCarthy Was Wrong

Please give this man some credit! In ’52, he was shopping around for a campaign issue. He had tried other issues, namely giving every American over 65 a hundred dollars per month. Nothing worked until a priest academic from Georgetown suggested Communist subversion. Now fast forward to Feb. 10, 1950, Wheeling, WV, where McCarthy tries on his new suit and likes it. He waves a never-identified document purportedly listing 205 Communists “working and shaping policy in the State Department.” The charge was spectacular. And overnight, Joe McCarthy found himself catapulted ahead of the Senate pack to the front rank of political celebrity.

Now backtrack. Remember that McCarthy started his anti-communist crusade from nothing, from a seat on the Senate Operations Committee. This was a housekeeping body that investigated government motor pool abuses and jacked-up office furniture contracts in federal agencies. No kidding. McCarthy---and his new suit---had managed to transform himself almost overnight into a fearsome instrument of political inquisition.

It didn’t matter that his original charge of 205 Communists at the State department had fluctuated. It didn’t matter that he voted no to the Marshall Plan, no to Point IV aid to underdeveloped countries, and no to military aid for non-communist states.

McCarthy must have been wearing Clark Kent’s suit. The man became invincible. You mess with McCarthy and you were going down. Millard Tydings investigated McCarthy’s accusations and what happened to him? McCarthy campaigned against him and Tydings was defeated. Scott Lucas (IL), the democratic floor leader, challenged Clark Kent and down he went. Senator William Benton (CT), who succeeded Lucas, introduced a resolution to have McCarthy expelled. Whoosh. Superman flew to CT, where Benton was campaigning for reelection, and helped to defeat him. Superman campaigned against Ernest MacFarland (AZ) and had him defeated. Superman then had his crack staff draw up a list of subversive authors---Benet, Dreiser, Ferber, Commager, Dewey, etc.---and U.S. information libraries started yanking their books off the shelves. Superman then cowed the State Department into scrapping two of the most powerful radio transmitters ever built---at a cost of $815 million---because disloyal officials at the VoA had sabotaged the transmitters, so claimed McCarthy. Get the message? The Irish kid had made it. He had arrived. In February ‘54, Joe McCarthy was at his zenith. He looked invincible. Amazing that none of his prior deformities of character seemed to matter to the public at large.

That he had won his first judgeship by tacking 20 years onto the age of his 66-year-old opponent.

That he had campaigned for the U.S. Senate as “Tail Gunner Joe” with 30 combat missions, when actually he had a desk job, fired guns at coconut trees, and flew no combat missions.

That he had wangled a purple heart for “ten pounds of shrapnel” that he claimed he carried in his leg, when actually he had hurt himself falling down a ship’s gangway during an equator-crossing hazing ceremony.

That as a freshman senator, in order to placate German-American voters in his state, he had defended Nazi SS troops on trial for the Malmedy Massacre of over 80 defenseless American prisoners of war.

Before he tangled with Murrow, a Gallup poll had revealed that 71% of the American people had no quarrel with McCarthy.

Hmm. Maybe I was wrong about Egbert Murrow and his importance in tearing apart McCarthy’s new, invincible suit.

OK. I’ll revise it to this: March 9, 1954 did not mark the end of Joseph McCarthy and his new suit, but it can be marked as the beginning of the end for “Tail Gunner Joe.”