The Middle Name in History

Carpetbagger picks up on (gasp!) Karl Rove saying we shouldn’t call Senator Obama “Hussein” (link). Rove is speaking in chorus with John McCain—the latter of whom, at least, is in his own way a man of honor. CB says that they won’t inhibit the wingnuts. I am sure he is right: they probably remember Joseph McCarthy and the “who lost China?” jihad--the campaign in which he tried to show that just about everybody except Mickey Mouse and Mother Theresa had the taint of Maoism about them.

McCarthy’s particular targets were a gaggle of faceless diplomats who had the misfortune to have middle names. McCarthy loved to roll the names off his tongue--John Paton Davies, John Carter Vincent and John Stewart Service, the last of whom, at least, made a point of saying that he’d never used his middle name before. McCarthy evidently felt that a middle name was the mark of a striped-pants pansy diplomat, just the sort you’d expect to be consorting with the enemy (in fact, all three of these had careers that resonated less with Foggy Bottom than they did with Indiana Jones). The New York Times reported (link) that Service “ once predicted wryly that although he never used his middle name, only the initial, his obituary would identify him not only as an official once accused of espionage, but as ‘John Stewart Service.’” But the quip appeared under a headline saying: “John Service, a Purged 'China Hand,' Dies at 89”—no “Stewart.”

Footnote: And my researches yielded up this anecdote that I’d never heard before, from the obituary of Davies (link): “When Mr. Davies and his colleagues were accused, it was noted that many were named John, which gave rise to a bitter riddle: Who was responsible for losing China? John S. Service, John Carter Vincent, John Paton Davies and John Kai-shek.”