The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy
Seabury, Paul
B 0 0 K R E V I E W S Thomas Reeves's Life and Times of Joe McCarthy is a very good biography-objective, fair, complete, and well written. The publisher does not e x a g g e r a t e when he...
...It's the main source of news for nearly two-thirds of the public...
...One can ask many questions about the man and find conclusive answers in this book...
...In fact, due in part to his sequential obsessions, he was neither an effective s e n a t o r or r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of interes,s in his home state, nor, for that matter, a leader of any coherent movement ("McCarthyism") likely to tear the nation apart or reconstitute it as a garrison state...
...JEWS WITHOUT MERCY: A LAMENT Earl Shorris / Anchor Press-Doubleday / $14.95 WernerJ...
...it provides an intriguing if not explicit answer: Both _9 Though it teems with trivia--such as that McCarthy, a frequent visitor to the Hyannisport compound, had a crush on Joe Kennedy's daughter Eunice--the girl who married Sargent Shriver, the fellow who, well, could have been George McGovern's Vice President...
...But evidence is not Mr...
...The oil industry was called on to discuss solutions only 9070 of the time...
...Outside experts were the source only 2~ of the time...
...Jewish neoconservatives are Jews without mercy...
...I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me . . . . You have done enough_9 Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last...
...The man was powerfully ambitious, yet when calculated opportunism led him to a cause, it soon gave way to a zealotry which brooked no opposition...
...It took place on J u n e 9, 1954, in the so-called Army-McCarthy Hearings, with t h e i r dramatis personae of Cohn, Shine, McCarthy, Army Secretary Stevens, and the Army's counsel, a c r a f t y and c u l t i v a t e d Boston lawyer, Joseph Nye Welch...
...Yet the reputation lingers, of the Great Fear, as though it were necessary for some reason of historical even-handedness, to conjure up an American antithesis, of equal brutality and viciousness, to the other Joe of the time--Stalin...
...Shorris and his putrid efforts...
...He had no c o h e r e n t Weltanshauung...
...Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don't know...
...I cannot claim to be Mr...
...What was it then about him which led to the u l t i m a t e McCarthy we remember...
...In all, he was not a r e a c t i o n a r y , much less the f a s c i s t t o t a l i t a r i a n he later was to be portrayed...
...Stripped of its trimmings, the argument of this book emerges as a syllogism...
...Shorris can vent his dislike of the rich, but he must suppress, or at least neglect, a good deal, from the fact that Abraham, the first Jew, happened to be rich, to the fact that the Law of the corners of the field, which he tries to understand as a redistributive measure, actually imposes on the Jews a f l a t - r a t e taxation, usually advocated by conservative economists-and much more...
...and one result of the S e n a t o r ' s e x c e s s e s was to make many think the problem inconsequential, and serious efforts to deal with it a t h r e a t to the civil l i b e r t i e s of Americans, bringing about (as the author Fred Cook called it) a Ntgbtmare Decade...
...Some of them compel the consent of Jewish neoconservatives, not because of the l a t t e r ' s politics but because they are true: "Alger Hiss was guilty...
...He also as much as admits that when it comes to charging Jewish neoconservatives with deviating from the immutable Law he is very much a stone-thrower who resides in a glass house...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 o r d i n a t e c a p a c i t y for drink, which finally grew into alcoholism and h e l p e d h a s t e n his end...
...A group of writers "A breath of fresh air...
...When he died, t h r e e y e a r s l a t e r , Dean Acheson's only comment was, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" (Of the dead, nothing but good...
...Then, if the verdict must be harsh, mercy dictates that mitigating circumstances be mentioned...
...Shorris, who calls himself a radical...
...Indeed, the Bible, in which Mr...
...D e s p i t e efforts of some historians to d e l i n e a t e a "McCarthy E r a " of fear and persecution, such an era is a p u r e invention, it never e x i s t e d , except in the publishing industry...
...Thus Mr...
...That, of course, is nonsense...
...Presented With Wit and Style...
...Yet how could a youthful, c a r e l e s s indulgence in verisimilitudes grow to such vast final proportions...
...One might add that Mr...
...Some obey most of the 613 commandments--nobody can obey them all...
...Meanwhile capitalist countries grow the grain to feed the hungry, and feeding the hungry is a form of mercy...
...from time to time he certainly intimidated powerless individuals...
...McCarthy's most bitter early critics really could not make up their minds on this, but R e e v e s ' s story clarifies a great deal...
...some are dear friends of mine...
...I'd like to try The Southern Partisan at the special introductory rate of $12.00 per year...
...Nor was he an isolationist or very much of an anti-New Dealer...
...Given its influence on people, it's fitting thaL TV should come under scrutiny for its news coverage of a major public policy issue of the past decade: the oil crises of 1973-74 and 1978-79...
...He should be reminded that one can be a neoconservative without being Jewish, a fact he f o r g e t s forty or fifty times in his book, but let that go...
...According to Reeves, he then did not even recognize the name Earl Browder...
...Shorris sometimes writes as though the Statc of Israel can do nothing right...
...88"2.-A, P.O...
...Shorris ascribes to Jewish neoconservatives all that seriously and concentrate on his charge that they pursue the politics of selfinterest at the expense of mercy...
...Some are so sensible that one hopes all human beings would assent: "Communism is not good for the Jews...
...Thus, whether it was McCarthy's attacks on the Washington establishment (the powerful) or his cruel persecution of the powerless which proved to be the principal cause of his downfall is not an unimportant question for students of American political demagoguery...
...Read Andrew Lytle, Russell Kirk, M.E...
...When first elected to the Senate, in 1946, the Milwaukee Journal guessed that he would locate himself in the Progressive wing of the GOP, then occupied by such f i g u r e s as Wayne Morse, Harold S t a s s e n , and George Ball...
...Let us look at it this way: McCarthy became a bully...
...As a result, the Media Institute says, the public got a distorted view in which only certain solutions became the focus of discussion...
...he died in virtual obscurity...
...35,000 Americans died in Korea at the time, but none at the hands of Joseph McCarthy...
...he played absolutely no role in a determination of the great policies of those years--policies which he took little interest in...
...UNITED TECHNOLOGIES dent to guide them...
...Shorris includes passages that show he really does know his adversaries are really Jews...
...However much we may disagree as to its meanings, "McCarthyism" is now at l e a s t synonymous with the big smear...
...Similarly, they look benignly on capitalism not because the latter is sacrosanct, but because of the blessings it has secured for mankind...
...Welch had p r u d e n t l y kept him from involvement in the case: McCarthy (to Welch): I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him on the committee...
...And that was it...
...But what is mercy...
...They gave scant heed to possible solutions through the mechanisms of the marketplace...
...Still, a few reminders are in order...
...It was a very real fear which arose from Communist aggression...
...Box t t7o8, Columbia, South Carolina 292tl A Publication of the Foundation for Amer/can Educat/~m I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 31 - - t h a t McCarthy was an interloper wrecking their show...
...McCarthy uncovered not a single one of these...
...Common sense defines a Jew as somebody born of a Jewish mother who has not converted, or someone Werner J. Dannhauser is a Fellow at the National Humanities Center...
...Shorris's strong suit...
...He frequently appeals to the "immutable Law" given to the Jews at Mount Sinai, and he thinks of t h a t Law, mirabile dictu, as "the idea of socialism in a democratic political setting...
...He might even agree that one has to be alive before one can be merciful...
...Yet an equally intriguing aspect of McCarthy's fanaticism (to be played down by many later writers, Left and Right) is that his zeal did not really encompass the syndrome of ideologically contentious issues which swirled around him at the time...
...9 . . Little did I dream you could be so . . . cruel as to do an injury to that lad...
...By now the falsity of Mr...
...For them, McCarthy became an albatross...
...Now most Jewish neoconservatives do indeed affirm the legitimacy of selfinterest--as does the Bible...
...Yes...
...Was it the p u b l i c ' s instincts for fairness, or the Washington establishment's methods of handling him, which did him in...
...McCarthy was no totalitarian, as Walter Lippmann once d e s c r i b e d him...
...You shall trample down the Senate under foot, confound and crush the generals and commanders...
...Since it is not good for anyone, why should it be good for Jews...
...Buthe was not a coward, nor were the principal objects of his ruthless, incessant attacks intimidated: Truman, Marshall, Acheson...
...I should therefore declare that I have sometimes been called a neoconservative and have never taken offense...
...Little wonder that non-market solut i o n s - rationing, regulation, price controis-- received three times the coverage that market solutions did...
...Jews come in all varieties, like all men...
...For me, t h e r e is one important characterological question: Was the man an o p p o r t u n i s t or a zealot...
...who has chosen to become one, but one can argue that it would be more insightful to define a Jew by what the convert to it accepts explicitly and the born Jew implicitly, the Jewish faith...
...It was this genius which accounted for both his fame and his failure...
...rapher, or even a Reeves...
...but whate v e r t r u t h t h e r e may be in such an assessment, the climate surrounding the S e n a t o r in the f i r s t h a l f of the 1950s certainly was not such...
...He was, for one thing, anything but a " r a c i s t " - - i n the Senate, he fought the housing construction industry's hiring p r a c t i c e s , for example...
...Americans r e g a r d it by f a r as t h e most believable of the news media...
...THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOE McCARTHY Thomas Reeves / Stein and Day / $19.95 Paul Seabury motives are apparent in each phase of McCarthy's career...
...One can go on to insist that ethics is at the core of that faith and mercy at the core of that core...
...In other words, Judaism is essentially a leftwing phenomenon...
...Yet I would never try to expel him from any minyan...
...no real opportunist would have gone so far...
...there had also been Soviet spies and agents "of influence...
...There were victims of McCarthy before he became hyped on Communism...
...Jews without mercy are not Jews...
...like many who in this respect followed in his footsteps, he became a creature of the media, much like those of the later, and more horrifying, time of the 1960s...
...Shorris to use it for partisan polemical purposes, just as it ill behooves him to a t t e m p t to read anybody out of Judaism...
...Paul Seabury is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley...
...This is a fulllength biography, encompassing the man's political c a r e e r b o t h before and after his preoccupation with the Communist issue...
...Campaigning for the Senate seat in Wisconsin in 1946, he traveled 80,000 miles within the state...
...he joined (an odd coupling) with the ACLU and church groups in investigating the Army's alleged procedural foul play in the Malmedy massacre trials of German POWs...
...His fame--as opposed to his brief precarious status as a celebr i t y - w a s conferred on him posthumously by later historians and political scientists...
...For almost four years (from February 1950 until June 1954, to be precise), this man mesmerized millions of media consumers with vituperation and largely false calumnies against fellow Americans for being Communists, fellow travelers, or dupes of Communism-State Department officials, statesmen, military commanders, newsmen, p r o f e s s o r s , and l e s s e r fry...
...Bradford, F. Reid Buckley, unpublished work by Richard Weaver, and more.., in the magazine you've been waiting for...
...All who knew him well knew of his supreme confidence in himself...
...He confirms that he failed to teach the Law diligently to his son, who did not know about the Jewish holidays when he was twelve, and who preferred a trip THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 33...
...Jewish neoconservatives are Jewish indeed...
...Shorris's conclusion should be evident...
...Yet it is a t r i b u t e to Reeves that this balanced biography, with no grand historical designs in mind, in i t s e l f r e s t o r e s a c l e a r e r , if incomplete, perspective to those "times," by r e s t o r i n g McCarthy to a more modest place in them...
...In such a fashion an American nightmare could be neatly juxtaposed to a Soviet one, a balanced 'correspondence achieved...
...It excluded much of what economists and outside energy specialists were saying about solutions through marketdirected measur/~s...
...Among those most remorseful about McCarthy's recklessness were men such as Taft, Hickenlooper, and Mundt--conservatives for whom the Communist issue was one means of driving New Dealers out of Washington...
...Shorris calls " t e n e t s . " He lists over fifty of them...
...With the help of computers, its researchers analyzed the three networks' coverage of the oil crises as reflected in 1,462 stories totaling 39'/2 hours of air time...
...As his reckless c h a r g e s mounted in irresponsibility, his victims, growing in strength and numbers, showed ability to play as rough a game as his...
...They are powerful, frightened, vulgar, inauthentic, petulant, and they " l i e awake nights entertaining paranoid fantasies about welfare cheats...
...Many historians of what they, and even Reeves himself, have called the "McCarthy Era" have chosen to depict it as a time of fear...
...At most, t h e r e was a spell of t i m e - - roughly between the late winter of 1950 and the spring of 1954--when McCarthy figured in the American press and occupied some of the headlines, vying with o t h e r headline grabbers of the time...
...What Reeves's account of these squalid interlocked episodes shows is not the fear which McCarthy inspired in the land, but rather the passions of anger and remorse which he engend e r e d - a n g e r , among those of both parties and many persuasions who f o u g h t back at him...
...Shorris recognizes as much...
...Then the other problems--his in"]'As Reeves points out, McCarthy's detractors, like Richard Rovere, were totally off base in attributing his bullying tactics to inner self-doubts and insecurities...
...and, then, finally, a matter of no small import a n c e to those who s t u d y political style: his pursuit of politics as the art of personal confrontation...
...In TV's coverage of the two oil crises, the government was the largest single source of information--56070...
...The networks relied excessively on the government for information...
...Shorris journeyed East he found that Poland looked "like Illinois before the invention of the tractor" and that Soviet land was "even less efficiently used...
...The time has come to cease being just and to begin to be merciful...
...McCarthy was' also a sequential monogamist to these causes, giving each a full measure of undistracted devotion, concentration, and combativeness...
...Shorris doesn't really like them...
...history could point to a McCarthy era of terror and intimidation-and so, students, there was this time, this era, of the Cold War, when Stalin reigned with fear in Russia and when McCarthyism and fear gripped America, too...
...The Media Institute asserts that its findings "place a burden on the networks to explain why the government's role in causing and prolonging the oil Grises received such little coverage, and why deregulation and price decontrol were given such little attention as a solution...
...retreat.., a hell-for-leather a s s a u l t . . . " --Human Events --Chronicles of Cu/ture --Char/eaton News & Courier "For those concerned about preserving Southern culture...
...Even Reeves has little to say on this, other than the obvious: The lies, starting off as almost casual remarks, were what made him...
...Briefly, he threatened to debase the coinage of civil discourse in both Senate and nation--but it was for this reason that the Senate, finally, subjected him to its censure, and brought his c a r e e r to an end...
...One can surely find Jewish neoconservatives who deserve to be disliked, but that is beside the point...
...When Mr...
...What then are his strong points...
...We are told to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, because only those with a sane self-interest are capable of love...
...he was an a m a t e u r . His rendezvous with Communism was pretty much an accident...
...he was no fascist...
...For Mr...
...Before that, his b r i e f t e n u r e on a Wisconsin Circuit Court had gained him a r e p u t a t i o n as a f a i r and effective judge...
...The liberal historian who first took upon himself this task of historical rectification, Richard Rovere, had this to say of Joe McCarthy in 1959: By the spring [of 1950] he was a towering figure . . . . [N]o man was closer to the center of American consciousness or more central to the world's consciousness o c America . . . . He f i l l e d . . , the role described by Aristophanes...
...From t h e r e it was all down hill...
...he was, in the Senate to which he belonged, a man of little influence over its proceedings...
...When he is not fulminating--a rare occasion-he advocates the practice of mercy among Jews because it helps them to survive...
...In this s e n s e , one gains a strong impression of the man: Observed carefully, he was not a zealot in our ordinary understanding of the t e r m - - one who is abidingly consumed by one overriding thing (as in the case of, say, a Ralph Nader...
...The publisher does not e x a g g e r a t e when he says that this book will be the "standard work" for anyone who wishes to learn about the "man...
...But s e l f - i n t e r e s t need not conflict with decency...
...Most Jewish neoconservatives, then, defend principles of self-interest, not because those principles are holy but because they are useful for securing h i g h e r things...
...9 . . If it were in my power to forgive you . . . I will do so...
...TV viewers were "led to believe that half the picture was in fact the whole picture," the Institute notes...
...A Thucydides, rather than a Plutarch, in other words a writer narrating a time rather than a life--could point out something very obvious about that f o u r - y e a r period which Reeves does not: namely, that it almost exactly corresponds with the time of the Korean War, beginning in the late spring of 1950 and ending, in formal s t a l e m a t e , in the Geneva agreements of 1954...
...It should be noted that Mr...
...When one turns to this book's minor premise, one must first give some idea of its author's description of Jewish neoconservatives, who are much more for him than simply Jews without mercy...
...One finding stands out:TV failed to give the viewing public sufficient information to make informed judgements about the crises...
...Seeking to d i s c r e d i t Welch by his usual techniques of insinuation and guiltb y - a s s o c i a t i o n , the S e n a t o r announced that he had "discovered" a yodng lawyer in Welch's Boston firm, once briefly a member of the Lawy e r s ' Guild...
...But as Latham indicates (and Reeves accepts his distinction without much e l a b o r a t i n g on it), there was also a Communist problem--in Washington and elsewhere, h was one which Truman and then Eisenhower both faced in t h e i r White House years and for which n e i t h e r President had beneht of past preceTV and the Oil Crises T here's no disputing the power and influence of TV...
...One can try to excuse him by arguing that the book's argument is more complex than I have suggested...
...Shorris's moral s u p e r i o r , having never met him, but I know I loathe much of what he advocates...
...They didn't adequately present the economic dimensions of the crises...
...The 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 sovereign and ruler of them all, of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies...
...Since oil crunch days, America's energy picture has improved markedly, thanks in large part to the government's easing of restraints on the forces of the marketplace...the very factors that TV slighted m its news coverage...
...What matters in the present context is t h e i r political views, which Mr...
...Others are a little weak on religion as a whole, like Sidney Hook, whose work I admire but whose piety I suspect...
...S e n a t o r McCarthy surely is no stranger to readers of this journal, and thus Reeves's book supplies no large surprises...
...Yet the author may have some kind of point...
...For all this, he was at all times impervious to any suggestion that he was wrong...
...As quickly as his meteor rose, it fell...
...In effect, the debate was limited...
...Have you no sense of decency...
...I assume that you did not, Mr...
...I will try to manifest both justice and mercy in my review of Jews Without Mercy...
...Whether it can serve as well for anyone wishing to understand Joe McCarthy's " t i m e s " is another matter...
...His stormy s e n a t o r i a l p e r s e c u t i o n s of subpoenaed witnesses in the housing i n d u s t r y - - g r e y marketeers - b e a r comparison with his later handling of alleged Communists...
...Some are good Jews and some are bad Jews, but all are Jews...
...r e m o r s e , and even disillusionment, among those of the Republican Right who came to realize--some, very late in the game The Conservative Voice of the Unreconstructed...
...William Buckley, fresh from Godless Yale, marveled at his "lack of intellectual precision...
...The q u e s t i o n can n e v e r be definitively answered, but Reeves's account provides a strong answer to the proximate cause of his downfall: a minor episode, to be sure, but J o e McCarthy never recovered from it...
...For one thing, an immense inner strength translated into an obsession with winning in comb a t . t Until his downfall he seemed almost inexhaustible...
...A Jew without mercy would seem to be a merciless J e w , and that is that...
...By arguing such a thesis, Mr...
...I don't think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist party...
...An ironic consequence of the Senator-'-s final d i s g r a c e and downfall, in 1954, was to strengthen the centrist forces in the GOP and in the Eisenhower White House, as against those fundamentally opposed to the l a t t e r ' s chief foreign and domestic policy directions at the time...
...Dannhauser J u s t i c e demands of a reviewer that he describe a book fairly before judging its worth...
...newsmen such as Murrow and Wechsler, and so on...
...Ff/elch (to McCarthy): Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...
...it took command of him, whichever cause he e s p o u s e d . In the end, this was his ruin...
...The smear tactic, which McCarthy developed into a fine a r t , was to be i m i t a t e d by his enemies as well...
...The fear in the land then, such as it was, was not a f e a r which a "McCarthy" or "McCarthyism" inspired, but one of a very much larger o r d e r of magnitude--of a major American defeat in an Asian war, and of a Third World War...
...To talk about solutions, the networks turned to government sources 77070 of the time...
...None of which means that the Law is essentially a right-wing phenomenon...
...convinced) that the time a voice crying in the has come to reverse the wilderness...
...What show...
...for, as Plutarch insisted, biography is not history, certainly not the kind that Thucydides wrote...
...Indeed it is...
...It is neither to the Left nor to the Right but Above, and it ill behooves Mr...
...Some years ago, Earl Latham, in his Communist Controversy in IVasbington (1966), drew a critical distinction between what he called the Communist issue and the Communist problem of those years...
...There is a striking pattern in J o e McCarthy's passion for causes: The two qualities, zealotry and opportunism, were present in his attachment to them, but in sequence...
...Structurally flawless, this syllogism suffers only from the falsity of its major premise, minor premise, and conclusion, but let us-not rush to judgment...
...And, then, there were to be seen, even in the early phases of his career, clear traces of a disregard for t r u t h and exactitude when it suited his ambitions...
...As a group, they do their best, and one would have to have evidence before one could justly suggest that they are less merciful than a group of, say, liberals, or people of the p e r . suasion of Mr...
...The dissection has been done by a research organization in Washington known as the Media Institute...
...Thus in l a t e r times a t e a c h e r of U.S...
...I mention myself at this point because I must now turn to the neoconservatives, whom Mr...
...But this is a matter for a Thucydides, an honest historian, to cope with, rather than a Plutarch, an honest biog...
...What can be said for Mr...
...Shorris pretends to believe, contains portraits of cruel Jews and kind ones, bright and dull ones...
...He fails to connect what he saw with the practice of socialist economics...
...some of his causes were even nice liberal ones...
...12.00 check enclosed [] Bill me Name S t r e e t a d d r e s s C i t y S t a t e Zip Mail to: The Southern Partisan, Dept...
...Shorris it is more than, say, the Bible's command that one show concern for the lot of widows and orphans...
...After his reckless (if casual) Wheeling, Lincoln Day speech in 1950 first cast him into national prominence, even his most sympathetic well-wishers became astonished at his ignorance of elementary facts about Communism in America...
...A few times, Mr...
...Shorris attacks so unscrupulously...
...Perhaps one should not take the tenets Mr...
...For there were Communists in government, and there were fellow travelers...
...Also, I am privileged to know many of the people he slanders...
...This was not, it should be emphasized, a Cold War...
...it was a very hot one, and it was one which, at several critical moments, gave signs of becoming far more than the " l i m i t e d war" which we, with advantage of hindsight, now know it...
...hence, Jewish neoconservatives are not Jewish...
...And some can be espoused by nobody in his right mind: "The State o.f Israel can do no wrong...
...Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh...
...McCarthy became a controv e r s i a l figure...
Vol. 15 • August 1982 • No. 8
