Explaining Away McCarthy

...But while the authors seem here to be on sound ground in their suggestions, it does not seem to me that what they say is relevant to McCarthy...

...They suggest that a new approach should be employed which would make it possible for an administration to dismiss anyone in such a position without lengthy procedures...

...Each administration attempts to put its own men in policy jobs and then freeze them in with Civil Service protection: Even such an obvious policy job as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management was so frozen by the Truman Administration...

...In my opinion, their position is sound and is, indeed, supported by many distinguished authorities in the field of public administration...

...In short, Buckley and Bozell have engaged in rhetorical legerdemain in the effort to draw the reader away from McCarthy by castigating his enemies...

...Here, Buckley and Bozell examine the oft-repeated charge that McCarthy has imposed an atmosphere of conformity on the American scene, and find it incorrect...

...Again, I find that I agree with much that they say: There is an organized and vociferous opposition to McCarthy, the guillotine has not been set up in the shadow of the Washington Monument, and the "liberals" (a term which Buckley and Bozell use as synonymous with the clientele of the Nation) have not always been men of principle...

...The individualist ethic which supports the democratic faith forbids innocence by opposition equally with guilt by association...

...Here, the authors examine the problem created for a new administration by civil servants with tenure in policy-making jobs...

...One suddenly has a feeling that he has heard this pitch before, only Vishinsky was proclaiming it to a Moscow jury as proof of Trotsky's role in German intelligence...

...There is also a discussion of the State Department's general disinterest in security in the postwar period and a tiring, conspicuously scholarly evaluation of the Tydings Investigation, directed to the point that, while McCarthy may have lied, he was provoked into doing it by the Democrats—a type of excuse seldom acceptable much beyond the second grade...

...However, the breathtaking feature of Book I—and I should make it clear that my Book I has no relation to the pagination of Buckley and Bozell...

...The end product, while not lacking in a certain facile charm, simply does not hold up under close logical examination...

...Reviewed by John P. Roche Department of Political Science, Haverford College...

...Whether Lattimore was actually on the Soviet payroll becomes, from this viewpoint, an irrelevant consideration: if he was not getting paid for his good work, he was being cheated of his rightful remuneration...

...Perhaps McCarthy has not contributed as much to it as some have claimed, but to assert this is to join the lady who justified her illegitimate child on the ground that it was a very small child...

...Perhaps lesser means might have been kinder, but the American people unfortunately do not respond to the voice of reason...

...Thus, the central proposition of Book I is the infallibility of McCarthy's appraisal of national security and of the measures necessary to secure it...

...and if, in the course of saving the country from Democratic incompetence, he is forced to overstate the case, it is regrettable but essential...

...But when all this is said and reiterated, it is patent that the atmosphere of conformity (never absent from the American scene) has been intensified and worsened by McCarthy's activities...

...co-author, "The Dynamics of Democratic Government" McCarthy and His Enemies is an attempt at a rhetorical tour de force, but while the authors give it what might be described as the old college try, they run into the same problem that Mr...

...It was, for example, necessary for the good of the nation that George C. Marshall's reputation be destroyed, and there was no better way of achieving this end than calling him a Soviet agent...

...In effect, McCarthy and His Enemies is three books: one concerned with McCarthy, and two with various aspects of American life which the authors contend are relevant to the analysis of McCarthy...

...True, the authors admit, McCarthy did go too far in his assertions about Jessup, Lattimore, et al., but they suggest that, in the objective view, this extravagance was necessary to destroy the reputations of these men...

...McCarthy's intentions are, say Buckley and Bozell, sound...

...Book II: Bureaucratic Responsibility in the United States...

...They spend a great deal of time evaluating the argument as to whether McCarthy said there were 57 or 205 card-carrying Communists in the State Department, and the reader begins to compliment the authors on their scholarly objectivity until he suddenly recalls that, either way, the statement was a lie...

...But if McCarthy is to be justified or condemned, it must be done in terms of McCarthy and not of his opposition or friends...

...Here, the authors examine McCarthy's various public statements on the subject of Communists in the State Department and decide that, although he exaggerated a bit here and there, his intentions were good...

...Buckley encountered in his earlier God and Man at Yale: Levitation takes place, but the wires are apparent...

...McCarthy's campaign has hardly diminished since Eisenhower replaced top Democrats with Republicans...

...There is a conflict between the principle of Civil Service tenure and executive responsibility...

...To be precise, in God and Man at Yale Buckley announced one premise as fundamental to his analysis (that professors should teach what the alumni want taught) and then wrote his book on an entirely different premise (that Yale professors did not teach what Buckley wanted taught), and in McCarthy and His Enemies he has improved his game by adding a second supplementary premise...

...parts of what I call Book I are scattered throughout the text and appendices—is its cold-blooded call for a revision of the democratic ethic and the establishment of what Albert Camus has called "the Kingdom of Ends...

...Presumably, it was this freezing of policy jobs by Truman that made it necessary and just, in their view, for McCarthy to engage in terror tactics, but there is no necessary connection...

...Book I: McCarthy and His Intentions...

...Security, as the current hearings have shown, is not itself an objective concept: McCarthy's spies in the Government are not security risks, since presumably, sub specie aeternitas, they are promoting national security by violating security rules...

...Book III: Is This an Age of Conformity...

...Not that Buckley and Bozell are lacking in talent—they are obviously bright young men—but they have gone beyond their depth in attempting the rhetorical version of the Indian rope trick...