Underlying these specific issues was a more generic problem, of which bitterness over the Marshall speech was but a symptom, albeit one of galvanizing rancor. Marshall and Ike were both products of the Roosevelt regime, avatars of the peculiar global vision FDR and Harry Hopkins had promoted during World War II. Both generals had been raised to power over the heads of others by the New Deal White House, and perforce were agents of Roosevelt’s often-addled wartime notions and inertial carry-through by Truman. You couldn’t survey the Roosevelt-Truman record without running across the names of Ike and Marshall.
This put Ike—and the GOP—in a strange position. He had become the successful candidate of a Republican Party pledged to undo the New Deal–Fair Deal program, yet he was in many respects a product and agent of that very program. On domestic issues, where he had never been a player and held relatively conservative views, this wasn’t a major consideration. But so far as foreign policy was concerned, he represented, not systemic change from Roosevelt and Truman, but something closer to continuity. Not for him a punishing hard-line critique of what had been done in Eastern Europe, deals cut at Yalta, or the debacle of the Marshall mission to China.
Also, these connections were more than retrospective. Ike was, by inclination and experience, aligned with the Atlanticist wing of the GOP. This was reflected not only in his personal statements, replete with withering comments on party isolationists confided to his aides and diary, but in appointments made and helpers favored.5 These were on the foreign policy side overwhelmingly from the eastern, internationalist faction of the party, with ties to Wall Street, large corporations, big eastern media outlets, and Ivy League establishment. Such people were generally closer in foreign policy outlook to Dean Acheson than to the GOP in Congress—believers in bipartisan collaboration and consensus with the Democrats rather than sharp-elbowed opposition.
McCarthy, on the other hand, really did believe in repudiating most if not quite all of the Democratic legacy overseas and thought this was one of the main things the new Republican majority in Congress, and new administration in the White House, were elected to accomplish. His idea of the matter, voiced on numerous occasions, was to condemn the postwar Democratic foreign record root and branch, this usually expressed as repudiation of the Roosevelt and “Truman-Acheson” mind-set that led to diplomatic setbacks at Teheran and Yalta, the communization of half of Europe, and the fall of China.
Though frequently derided as an “isolationist,” McCarthy was in fact an interventionist—but with provisos. He voted for the Truman doctrine of aid to Greece and Turkey, and (with less enthusiasm) for the Marshall Plan of economic aid to Europe.6 He believed in standing up to the Soviet/Communist challenge both in Europe and in Asia, as opposed to the Acheson-Marshall policy that blithely sandbagged Chiang Kai-shek (not to mention the backstage plotting) while focusing its main concerns on Europe. Ike, and many of those around him, were closer to the Acheson-Marshall stance than to the more militant, generic anti-Communism espoused by McCarthy and such of his Republican Senate colleagues as Styles Bridges of New Hampshire or California’s William Knowland.
Here was an irreconcilable conflict in the making, though there were some who did what they could to reconcile it. One such was Ike’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. Though himself an establishmentarian Wall Street lawyer with a history of bipartisan involvement, Dulles was also a bit of a messianic anti-Communist, and so had certain affinities with McCarthy’s worldview. He made several attempts early on to bridge the gap between the internal Republican factions, though in the end these proved unavailing, and Dulles himself would in due course become a critic of McCarthy.
Others who sought to bind the disparate elements of the GOP together included the new Vice President, Richard Nixon, raised to that post from a two-year stopover in the Senate. Himself a hero to the anti-Communist right for his part in exposing Alger Hiss, Nixon had the credentials for appealing to McCarthy, while diligently cultivating his role as a faithful second in command to Ike.7 Nixon’s balancing act between such countervailing forces would continue for the next two decades and eventually get him to the White House. (It was only when he reached that long-sought goal that he would fall off the teeter-totter, landing with Henry Kissinger in Red China, thereafter pushing on into the mists of détente with Moscow.)
Yet another who sought to hold things together, though he had little time to do it, was the Republican leader of the Senate, Ohio’s Robert Taft, who had lost the presidential nomination to Ike the previous summer.*251 Taft was the highly respected spokesman for Midwest “Old Guard” Republicans in the Senate, unquestionably agreed with McCarthy in his critique of Yalta, the Acheson State Department, the debacle in China, and other foreign issues, and often said so.8 Yet he was of a very different temper—prudent, measured, and judicious, adjectives seldom applied to Joe McCarthy. Also, out of his unfailing sense of duty, Taft sought to be a good floor leader in the Senate for the new Republican chieftain in the White House.
Over against these would-be peacemakers were members of the Ike entourage, of moderate-to-liberal hue, who did whatever they could to provoke an Ike-McCarthy showdown. These included members of the New York/Tom Dewey wing of the GOP that included former governor Dewey himself, his sometime campaign manager Herbert Brownell (now Attorney General), former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams (now White House Chief of Staff), Press Secretary James Hagerty, national security aide Robert Cutler, and two key players seconded to the White House from the Time-Life empire of Henry Luce—counselor C. D. Jackson and speechwriter Emmet Hughes.9
Aligned with these advisers were other influential figures not in the immediate retinue but with good access to the President and his palace guardsmen. These included liberal GOP businessman and former U.S. official Paul Hoffman, active in the “Citizens for Eisenhower” brigade in the 1952 elections, trying to corral moderate and liberal votes for Ike; John J. McCloy, who served under both Roosevelt and Truman but was close to Ike and the new power grouping in the White House; and Henry Cabot Lodge, sometime defender of McCarthy in the Tydings hearings but now a determined foe, the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a trusted Ike lieutenant.10
All these Ike counselors had a strong aversion to McCarthy and some had gone so far as to urge an open break even during the course of the election. This had played out in October of 1952, when Ike was scheduled for a joint campaign appearance with McCarthy in Wisconsin. Hughes, Cutler, and other advisers had urged him to include in his remarks on this occasion a ringing defense of Marshall, and thus an in-your-face repudiation of McCarthy. (Eventually, other advice prevailed and Ike didn’t do it.) As such a gesture, whatever its supposed merits, could have done nothing but make trouble for the party, the episode suggested that for many in Ike’s inner circle detestation of McCarthy was all-consuming.
Now that the election was safely over and Eisenhower in the White House, various of his counselors would continue to urge a shoot-out with McCarthy and constantly sought a chance to stage one. In this they would succeed, though not quite in the early going with the direct effects they hoped for. Ike had an ingrained unwillingness to engage in personal conflict or cause a visible rupture in the political family of which he was now anointed leader. This had nothing to do with any softness toward McCarthy but meant Ike’s hostility would be expressed in subliminal ways, behind the scenes and in occasional delphic statements that would in time become more obvious and more frequent.
All these elements would come to the fore as the Ike-McCarthy odd couple set out together, each in his way, to lead the nation in what are now (mistakenly) viewed as the tranquil 1950s. There were other factors also, internal to the McCarthy camp, that would affect events to follow. One such, oblique but still important, was the McCarthy tie-in with the Kennedys.11 This was one of the strangest alliances in our political history, given the standard image of John Kennedy and his brother Robert on the one hand, and that of Joe McCarthy on the other. Few politicians
have had a better historical press than have the Kennedy brothers, and nobody could possibly have had a worse such press than Joe McCarthy.
Despite these discrepancies in reputation, the affinities between McCarthy and the Kennedys were solid, hence an embarrassment to historians who venerate the Kennedy name but become apoplectic at the mention of McCarthy. As a young congressman, indeed, Jack Kennedy had entered the hard-line anti-Communist lists before the 1950 arrival of McCarthy, denouncing Owen Lattimore, John K. Fairbank, the IPR, and the Acheson policy in China in terms McCarthy himself could not have faulted.12
John Kennedy’s younger brother Robert was if anything even more attuned to McCarthy’s views—inviting the senator to speak at the University of Virginia Law School when Robert was a student there, working for McCarthy after graduation, and asking McCarthy to be the godfather of his firstborn child (the eventual Democratic lieutenant governor of Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend). So loyal was Bobby to McCarthy that, at a speech by famed CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, who had vehemently attacked McCarthy, the younger Kennedy brother walked out in protest.13
The mind boggles at what might have happened if young Robert Kennedy (then twenty-seven) had become, as he and his father devoutly wished, the chief counsel to new committee chairman Joe McCarthy. Kennedy’s own political career would doubtless have been different in many ways, and Joe McCarthy’s would have been quite different also. And the historians who idolize the first and condemn the second would have an even more awkward task before them in squaring this improbable circle.
However, while Bobby would go to work for McCarthy, his rise to eminence in that office was not to be. Standing in his way was yet another wunderkind, even younger than himself, with a glittering résumé that neither Bobby nor any other candidate for the job could hope to match. His name was Roy M. Cohn, in early 1953 all of twenty-five years old but already a veteran Communist-hunter and in certain circles well regarded. He would accordingly secure the place the Kennedy clan hoped to get for Bobby.
Cohn was the son of a Democratic judge from New York City, closely connected with the still-potent though somewhat rusty Ed Flynn machine, of the Jewish faith, observant though not conspicuously pious. Short of stature and with hooded eyes that made him look perpetually sleepy, Cohn was anything but. He was in fact a prodigy who graduated from Columbia Law School when he was only twenty years old and thus had to wait for half a year before admission to the bar and appointment as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The assignment reflected his good connections in Democratic political-legal circles but was arguably justified by his talents.
As Cohn’s five years at Justice coincided with a flurry of high-profile legal actions against the Communist Party and those accused of serving its interests, he was soon immersed in cases of this nature. A liberal Democrat by upbringing and affiliation, he now developed considerable anti-Red expertise working on the trials of Communist Party leaders, the case of William Remington, a perjury indictment of Owen Lattimore, and a grand jury investigation of suspected American Communists employed at the United Nations. In the most prominent case of all, and by his own account the most traumatic, he was part of the prosecutorial team that secured the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage conspiracy.14
All this was more than enough to recommend Cohn, despite his youth, to Joe McCarthy, but there were other factors also. Cohn was close to the influential Hearst columnist/backstage political impresario George Sokolsky and to the Hearst press in general. Sokolsky-Hearst in turn were among the strongest journalistic backers of McCarthy, and it was in part through the recommendation of Sokolsky that McCarthy met with Cohn and offered him the main staff job on the investigations panel.15
As events would show, the affinities between McCarthy and Cohn went beyond their anti-Red convictions. Though differing in religious faith, ethnic roots, and social background, they were in many ways political/intellectual soul mates. Both were tough infighters and geared to action more than theory. Both were also quick studies, reputed to have photographic memories, and capable of moving rapidly from one topic to the next at a pace that left their colleagues gasping. Each had a way of cutting through reams of data to get to the core of the issue as he saw it. This meant they were able to do, and did, a vast amount of work in the comparatively brief span in which they were able to run their new committee.
The McCarthy-Cohn combine also had, as might be guessed, the defects of its virtues. The rapid clip at which they acted, their proclivities for multitasking, and the fact that they carried so much information in their heads had an obvious downside, made worse by the fact that neither was renowned as an administrator. Indeed, the McCarthy office and subcommittee were by general reputation haphazard, not to say chaotic, places—stacks of documents and case folders, phones ringing, people coming and going in profusion. All of this was very different from the orderly ways of the FBI or the systematic methods of Robert Kennedy, who made up for lack of surface brilliance with a capacity for driven, focused effort that would become his trademark.
Also on the McCarthy staff was another youthful member who would turn out to be, when all was done, the most significant of them all. This was G. David Schine, heir to a substantial fortune (the Schine hotel and theater chain), graduate of Harvard, and notable young man about town in New York and Boston. Schine, too, was twenty-five at the beginning of 1953 and had the previous year become a friend of Cohn’s. When Cohn took over the counsel’s job for McCarthy, he brought Schine along as a volunteer consultant. As the affluent Schine was willing to work for nothing, McCarthy had no objection to the arrangement. Thereby were sown the seeds of future troubles.
Of the many internal problems that afflicted the McCarthy staff, the deep-seated enmity between Cohn and Kennedy was by all odds first and foremost. They were both too much driven by ambition and indomitable will to be working partners, and their relationship was at the best of times marked by strain and tension. Both would establish flamboyant track records as over-the-top, type-A personalities, each disdainful of the other. When Bobby in the early 1960s became Attorney General, he would devote much time and energy trying to put Cohn in jail, and Cohn would gladly have returned the favor. These later battles were well presaged by their taut relationship as McCarthy staffers.16
Not of course to be omitted from this picture are the senatorial members of the committee, who would have historic roles to play in the rest of the McCarthy drama. Primus inter pares was Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S.D.), a veteran Midwest conservative of the Taft wing and former member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He had presided over the latter phases of the Hiss-Chambers hearings in 1948 before ascending at the end of the year to the Senate. He was knowledgeable on security issues, a stalwart anti-Communist, and a born ally of McCarthy.
Next up on the GOP side was Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who had defeated Scott Lucas in 1950. Also a former member of the House, Dirksen too had delved into internal security issues before this and knew a fair amount about them. He was a mellifluous, theatrical orator of the old-fashioned type, given to verbal flourishes and courtly phrases. He was nonetheless a shrewd operator behind the scenes who would go on to become Republican leader of the Senate. He too was a McCarthy ally, though one who worked hard to keep lines open to the White House.
The fourth Republican on the PSI was Charles Potter of Michigan. A Purple Heart veteran of World War II, in which he had lost both legs to a land mine, Potter was the most moderate of the GOP contingent, most amenable to approaches from the White House, and thus most easily divided from McCarthy. His susceptibility on this front would be a critical factor in disputes that happened later. Other than their Republican label, common service in the war, and a generic anti-Communism, the affinities between Potter and McCarthy were few.
At the Democratic end of the committee table, the cast of characters was distinguished and would in time become the more so. The ranking Democrat was John McCl
ellan of Arkansas, a long-serving member and future chairman of the panel. Dour, cagey, and conservative, he had been in the Senate since 1943 and was a leader of the Democratic establishment in that chamber, then heavily weighted by seniority toward long-serving Dixie members. These included such as Richard Russell and Walter George of Georgia, Tom Connally of Texas, and Harry Byrd of Virginia, who had chaired committees under Democratic rule and were still powers to be reckoned with in a closely divided Senate.
Second ranking among subcommittee Democrats was a rising freshman and former member of the House, elected to the Senate in 1952, Henry Jackson of Washington State. “Scoop” Jackson would become a leading defense hawk in the Democratic Party, and in later years a presidential hopeful of moderate, defense-minded elements in the party. He was close to the labor movement, hence liberal on domestic issues, but a hard-liner on security matters. He would become, after a relatively benign beginning, a tough McCarthy critic.
The third committee Democrat was W. Stuart Symington of Missouri. If one had gone to central casting for a presidential character in a movie, Symington would have filled the bill. Tall and of impressive bearing, he not only looked the part but had strong credentials in military matters as a former Secretary of the Air Force under Truman. A successful St. Louis businessman, also elected to the Senate in 1952, Symington was a staunch liberal on domestic issues and would in due course become McCarthy’s main antagonist on the panel.
There were of course many more characters in the story, both in the Senate and outside it. These included majority leader Taft and his soon-to-be successor in that role, William Knowland; the conservative GOP godfather of the chamber, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire; the learned Ferguson of Michigan; stalwart McCarthy allies Hickenlooper, William Jenner of Indiana, Herman Welker of Idaho, Goldwater of Arizona, and a numerous cast of others. On the Democratic side, Lyndon Johnson of Texas was already displaying the formidable skills that would soon make him the unrivaled master of the Senate. Liberals such as William Fulbright of Arkansas, Herbert Lehman of New York, and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota would inevitably be among McCarthy’s chief opponents.
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