McCarthy Meets His Match

It’s great to see a windbag deflate—and that’s exactly what happened on this date in 1954. Senator Joe McCarthy squared off against someone who dished it right back.

This date marked the beginning of McCarthy’s fall from power.

All of this was a little before my time, but my history lessons taught me something about McCarthyism. Namely, that the Republican Senator from Wisconsin was a bully, a liar and a cheat.

His political star rose in 1950 when he charged that hundreds of “known Communists” were in the State Department. Our fears of the Soviet Union and Communist infiltration in the 50’s cannot be minimized—even though such notions are considered somewhat paranoid today. Perhaps a parallel can be drawn with today’s fear of terrorism.

Just as charges that so-and-so is a terrorist, with links to Islamic extremist organizations-would ruin someone’s reputation in 2010 (whether or not the charges were true), the same can be said for it’s 1950’s counterpart. If you were a suspected Communist in the 50’s, you were toast.

McCarthy’s rampage against “suspected” Communists in government, in Hollywood and elsewhere destroyed lives and careers. The Republican Party looked the other way prior to 1953, as much of McCarthy’s venom was directed at the incumbent Truman Administration.

However, when Eisenhower was elected, the Senator from Wisconsin began to become something of a liability—and his influence began to wane. McCarthy, in a desperate attempt to keep alive his Communist crusade, made a fatal error. In 1954, he charge that the U.S. Army was “soft” on communism—and ordered hearings into the Army from his position as Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee.

Big mistake.

The Army was represented by one Joseph N. Welch. During the hearings, Welch hammered away at every charge from McCarthy, enraging him with his articulate response to each wild accusation. A highly intelligent lawyer with a biting wit, he methodically destroyed McCarthy’s arguments one by one.

On June 9th, McCarthy charged that a young associate in Welch’s law firm (Frederick G. Fisher) was a long-time member of an association that was, as McCarthy put it, the “legal arm of the Communist Party”

Well, the usually soft spoken Welch unloaded on McCarthy, uttering the famous phrase, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Here is a two-part video of that testimony:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po5GlFba5Yg




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTwDUpbQHJg&NR=1


Just one week later, the hearings ended, with McCarthy exposed as a reckless bully. In December of 1954, the U.S. Senate officially condemned him for “contempt against his colleagues”.

For the next two years, McCarthy, largely stripped of his power and influence, became even more erratic as alcoholism took over his life. Still in office, he died in 1957.

The name McCarthy is synonymous with “witch hunt”. It would serve us well to remember this dark chapter in our history the next time people’s reputations are attacked without cause or proof.

If you’d like my blog in your weekday box, just drop me a line: tim.moore@citcomm.com