The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

by James Cross Giblin

  Joe agreed completely with the thrust of MacArthur's speech but sensed that the tide of the convention was going against the former commander of U.N. forces in Korea. He told reporters he would not campaign for MacArthur during the convention because "both Senator Taft and General Eisenhower are honorable men." But he refused to discuss which of the two he favored.

  Introduced as "that fighting Marine from Wisconsin," McCarthy spoke to convention delegates and a nationwide television audience on the evening of July 9. He repeated his familiar charges about Communists in high places, then roused the crowd in the convention hall with four stirring statements, delivered in his deep, almost menacing voice.

  My good friends, I say one Communist in a defense plant is one Communist too many.

  One Communist on the faculty of one university is one Communist too many.

  One Communist among the American advisors at Yalta was one Communist too many.

  And even if there were only one Communist in the State Department, that would be one Communist too many.

  Cheers greeted each of the statements, and loud, sustained applause resounded through the hall when Joe had finished.

  The next day, the right-wing Hearst newspaper chain hailed his speech, but the New York Times, in an editorial, said that McCarthy's remarks "reached rock bottom." A Wisconsin reporter called it a "middle-of-the-gutter speech." When President Truman was asked for his reaction, he said he had not seen or heard Joe but doubted he had missed "an enriching experience." The reporter pressed on, asking the president what he thought of Joe's mention of "the mistakes of the Acheson-Truman-Lattimore party." "I don't know anything about that," Truman replied, "but if McCarthy said it, it's a damned lie, you can be sure of that."

  The media had predicted that the nominating process would be a long-drawn-out fight. Thus, many were surprised when Harold Stassen threw his support (and delegates) to Eisenhower, and the general eked out a victory over Taft on the first ballot. But the general paid a high price for his triumph. To please conservative Republicans, he had to accept Senator Richard Nixon as his vice-presidential running mate. He also had to endorse a Republican platform that blamed Democratic leaders for the Korean War, charged that they had abandoned Eastern Europe to Communism, and accused them of letting China fall to the Communists. The platform went on to assure voters that "there are no Communists in the Republican party" and that "a Republican President will appoint only persons of unquestioned loyalty."

  Most convention delegates were enthusiastic about the Eisenhower nomination. "Ike" had been Eisenhower's nickname from his early youth, and buttons proclaiming "I like Ike!" and "We like Ike!" blossomed throughout the hall. Joe joined the chorus of praise for the general. "I think that Eisenhower will make a great President," he told reporters. "One of the finest things I've seen is Eisenhower going to Taft's headquarters [after winning the nomination] and accepting Taft's offer of cooperation."

  Eisenhower didn't have as rosy a view of Joe. He kept his opinion to himself in public, but in private he expressed a strong dislike of McCarthy. The general had been deeply offended by what he considered Joe's totally unjustified attack on his friend and close wartime associate George Marshall.

  There were other important differences between the two that Henry'S. Reuss, a Wisconsin Democrat and former junior officer on Eisenhower's staff, laid out for reporters. "General Eisenhower and Senator McCarthy are at opposite poles of the G.O.P. [Republican] scale," Reuss said. "Where one is honest, the other is devious. Where one is well advised in foreign affairs, the other is ignorant. The two are utterly opposed on issues and principles. Therefore," Reuss concluded, "it is obvious that Eisenhower will find it impossible to campaign in Wisconsin. For if he does, he will have to either ignore our junior senator [Joe] or repudiate him."

  Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party's candidate for president, confers with his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Richard M. Nixon, in the summer of 1952. The National Archives

  If Joe was aware of Reuss's statement, he probably dismissed it. His sinuses were bothering him more than ever, and the day after the convention ended, he flew back to Washington for surgery.

  16. The Missing Paragraph

  THE OPERATION TO CLEAR Joe's sinuses went well, but then another problem arose. For some time, the senator had complained of sharp stomach pains, and his doctors discovered that he was suffering from a herniated diaphragm. Another operation was required, a complicated one that involved the removal of a rib. It left Joe with a long scar that began on his belly, then ran under his right arm and on up his back to his right shoulder. Later, he delighted in showing the scar to children and watching their astonished expressions.

  Joe's doctors urged him to take two months off to recover from the surgeries, but he was impatient to get back into the election campaign. The Democrats, meeting in Chicago in late July, had chosen Illinois's Governor Adlai E. Stevenson as their candidate for president. Gifted with a fine mind and guided by strong principles, Stevenson intended to carry forward the liberal policies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He had no patience with the methods employed by Joe in his anti-Communist campaign, and had criticized them openly on more than one occasion.

  Soon after accepting the Democratic nomination, Stevenson gave a speech at the convention of the American Legion, an ultraconservative organization. Without naming McCarthy, he said, "There are those among us who use 'patriotism' as a club for attacking other Americans." He went on to cite as a "shocking example" of such false patriotism "the attacks which have been made on the loyalty and the motives of our great wartime Chief of Staff, General George Marshall." The Democratic nominee concluded his remarks by stating, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind ... are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."

  Joe could not let such a speech go unchallenged. Although less than three weeks had passed since his abdominal surgery, he called reporters to his bedside to denounce Stevenson's remarks and hint that the governor was a supporter of accused Communist spy Alger Hiss. Three weeks after that impromptu press conference, Joe ignored his doctors' orders to rest and flew to Wisconsin to preside over his Senate reelection campaign.

  In his absence, Jean Kerr and his other staffers had been hard at work. Jean had prepared a 104-page paperback book called McCarthyism: The Fight for America. It chronicled Joe's struggle against Communists in the government and was filled with photographs of documents and clippings that seemed to prove his case. Thousands of copies of the book were printed, and it sold briskly for fifty cents a copy wherever McCarthy appeared on the campaign trail. Long lines of purchasers waited to get his autograph, and Joe willingly stayed to sign every last one of their books.

  Governor Adlai E. Stevenson accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the party's convention on July 25, 1952. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

  Joe's sole opponent in the Republican primary was Len Schmitt, a progressive lawyer. He had the backing of William T. Evjue, editor of the Madison Capital Times and McCarthy's longtime foe. Schmitt launched a series of stinging attacks on Joe, but he lacked the funds to promote his campaign, and the media, except for Evjue's newspaper, paid little attention to him. Meanwhile, conservative national newsmen like Fulton Lewis, Jr., and Westbrook Pegler urged their readers and listeners to contribute to Joe's campaign. And on the West Coast, a "Hollywood Committee for McCarthy," under the leadership of cowboy movie star John Wayne, raised large amounts of money for Joe.

  On September 3, 1952, McCarthy gave his first and only speech prior to the primary election, which was set for September 9. The senator made no mention of his opponent, Schmitt. Instead, he concentrated his fire on Adlai Stevenson. "Mr. Stevenson, in three of the speeches which you made since you were nominated on the Democrat ticket, you went out of your way to viciously berate me. Why, Mr. Stevenson?" Then McCarthy went on to m
ake one of his typical vague, unsupported charges. "Could you be disturbed, Mr. Stevenson," he said, "because I am checking your record since the day you entered government service at about the same time and in the same department as [Alger] Hiss...? Are you getting worried about what we are finding?"

  Joe's speech was greeted with repeated cheers by an audience of more than 2,000 gathered in a suburban Milwaukee high school auditorium. A thirty-one-station radio hookup carried his words to thousands of listeners throughout Wisconsin. In the meantime, Adlai Stevenson denied that he had ever had a close association with Alger Hiss. His statement received less coverage in the media than Joe's original intimation that the Democratic candidate had been involved in something shady.

  On primary day, Joe defeated Schmitt by a margin of almost two and a half to one (515,581 votes to 213,701). The size of McCarthy's victory startled political commentators nationally as well as locally. Time magazine said, "McCarthy has grown in power because millions of Americans think he is 'the only one' really against the internal Communist threat."

  Right-wing newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was jubilant. He wrote in an editorial: "While Communist apologists and others, including the Democratic Presidential candidate, keep acting as if the [Communist] conspiracy never existed, Fighting Joe has appealed to the conscience of a people aroused by the treachery of the Hisses and the other proven associates of the Kremlin."

  The mud leaking from a vehicle driven by Sen. McCarthy attracts three neat and clean children carrying signboards saying they're against McCarthyism BUT— Cartoon by Herblock, The Library of Congress

  Others were far less enthusiastic. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said, "McCarthy is what he is, not because he opposes Communism but because he exploits the fear of it for his own political gain." U.S. News and World Report sounded a warning: "McCarthyism, as a result [of Joe's primary victory], emerges as a political force to be reckoned with, not just in Wisconsin but in other states where others in politics will be tempted to exploit its vote-getting possibilities."

  One Wisconsin politician, Thomas Fairchild, had just won the Democratic primary for U.S. senator and would be facing Joe in the general election. Because of the effective way Joe employed the issue of Communists in government, Fairchild decided to avoid the Communist theme as much as possible and focus instead on the continuing investigation in Washington of Joe's alleged ethical misconduct.

  That investigation, triggered by Senator William Benton, had suffered one blow after another. First, a key investigator for the subcommittee resigned. Then a Republican member, Herman Welker, quit, charging that the subcommittee was being used as a "political vehicle by the Democratic Party." When the chairman, Guy Gillette, submitted his resignation also, many Washington observers thought the investigation of McCarthy's activities was dead.

  An elephant, symbol of the Republican Party, runs gleefully toward an overturned garbage can labeled "McCarthyism." Cartoon by Fitzpatrick, The Library of Congress

  Carl Hayden, the seventy-six-year-old chairman of the parent Rules Committee, was determined on principle that the subcommittee continue its investigation. He appointed a new chairman, Senator Thomas Hennings, and Hennings and the remaining members went back to work. It wasn't likely, though, that their findings, if any, would come in time to affect Joe's reelection campaign. Election Day, November 4, was less than two months away.

  Back in Wisconsin, Thomas Fairchild pursued a thoughtful, intelligent, but unexciting campaign against Joe. Fairchild occasionally attacked McCarthy for "destroying the rights of free speech and free thought," but he mainly tried to revive voters' interest in the old, unproved charges that Joe had been guilty of income tax evasion while serving as a judge. As a result, Joe didn't take Fairchild seriously. In speeches on the campaign trail, he often ignored his opponent and focused his scorn instead on Adlai Stevenson. He drew big laughs whenever, in a seeming slip of the tongue, he called the Democratic presidential candidate "Alger Stevenson."

  McCarthy was so confident of victory that he volunteered to tour the country and speak on behalf of other Republican candidates. Party officials jumped at the offer; Joe's reputation as a fighter against Communism carried tremendous weight with the Republican base. McCarthy was stung, however, when a political columnist reported a rumor that Gen. Eisenhower did not intend to campaign with him in Wisconsin. McCarthy was aware Ike didn't like him, but he still expected to be included in the general's plans because of his home-state popularity.

  Joe shouldn't have been surprised. In a news conference in late August, Eisenhower had declared that he would back McCarthy as "a member of the Republican organization." But the general went on to say, "I am not going to campaign for or give blanket endorsement to any man who does anything that I believe to be un-American in its methods and procedures."

  Everyone at the conference realized Eisenhower was referring to McCarthy. When a reporter brought up Joe's speech attacking George Marshall, Ike got angry. He rose from his desk and began to pace back and forth. "There is nothing of disloyalty in General Marshall's soul," he asserted, adding that Marshall was "a patriot and a man of real selflessness. I have no patience with anyone," he concluded, "who can find in his record of service to his country anything to criticize."

  After Joe's overwhelming primary victory in September, Eisenhower's aides urged him to reconsider his decision not to campaign with McCarthy when his whistle-stop train tour of the Midwest reached Wisconsin. Much back-and-forth discussion ensued, and in the end Eisenhower gave in reluctantly. But he insisted that his speechwriter, Emmett John Hughes, include a passage defending George Marshall in the speech Ike was scheduled to give in Milwaukee on October 3. Hughes came up with the following paragraph:

  Let me be quite specific. I know that charges of disloyalty have, in the past, been leveled against General George C. Marshall. I have been privileged for thirty-five years to know General Marshall personally. I know him, as a man and as a soldier, to be dedicated with singular selflessness and the profoundest patriotism to the service of America. And this episode is a sobering lesson in the way freedom must not defend itself.

  The paragraph seems like quite a mild rebuke, given the strength of Eisenhower's feelings about Marshall. However, the general's aides were still debating whether it should be included in the Milwaukee speech as Ike's campaign train moved slowly across central Illinois. Some of the aides thought it would be taken as an unfair attack on McCarthy. Others feared it might hurt the chances of the entire slate of Republican candidates in Wisconsin.

  Word reached Joe of what Ike intended to say, and he and Wisconsin governor Walter Kohler decided to fly to Illinois and confront Eisenhower in person. Their mission: to get the general to agree to change the speech before he reached Wisconsin. Ike was not pleased to see them, and, according to witnesses, even less pleased when Joe said straight out that he didn't want him to include the passage about Marshall in his Milwaukee speech.

  The general responded with what one aide described as "red-hot anger." He began by telling Joe exactly what he thought of the way he had conducted his anti-Communist crusade. Then he defended Marshall and reaffirmed his determination to include the words of praise for his old friend in his talk. The meeting lasted half an hour. At its end, Eisenhower issued no statement but McCarthy, smiling broadly, told waiting reporters that his conversation with Ike had been "very, very pleasant." Joe added that he and Governor Kohler would be traveling on the general's train when it entered Wisconsin. The reporters wanted to get a shot of Ike and Joe together, but they were turned down.

  The discussion among Eisenhower, Joe, and Governor Kohler continued the next day as the train headed toward Green Bay, the candidate's first stop in Wisconsin. The men gathered in Ike's private car, and he restated his opposition to what he called "un-American methods in combating Communism." Addressing Joe directly, he said, "I'm going to say that I disagree with you."

  "If you say that, you'll be booed," Joe warned.

>   "I've been booed before," Eisenhower replied, "and being booed doesn't bother me."

  A crowd of more than 3,000 awaited the candidate at the Green Bay station. Ike and Joe were introduced together, but Joe stood back as Eisenhower addressed the crowd. The general began by calling for the election of all the Republican candidates in the state, but he didn't single out Joe for special mention.

  When Eisenhower discussed the issue of Communists in the government, he said he believed weeding them out was the responsibility of the executive branch, implying that it was not the responsibility of senators like Joe. He added, "We can do it with absolute assurance that American principles of trial by jury, of innocence until proof of guilt, are all observed, and I expect to do [just that]."

  At the conclusion of his remarks, the crowd did not boo as Joe had predicted; instead, they cheered. One of Ike's aides noted that Joe was scowling as he left the candidate's car.

  The next stop on the tour was Appleton, where Joe had served as a judge, and which he thought of as his hometown. He expressed a desire to introduce Ike there. Only after local politicians argued strenuously on Joe's behalf did Eisenhower agree to the idea. As it turned out, Joe's introduction of Ike to the crowd of 5,000 was just one sentence. He said, "I wish to present to the people of my home city the next president of the United States—General Dwight Eisenhower." Then he stood aside as Ike began his stump speech, the one he usually gave at these train stops. Later, a longtime friend of Joe's said it was the only time he could remember McCarthy apparently at a loss for words.