Ike and McCarthy: Did the President Drop the Ball?

Afterthought on McCarthy: I've long heard--and, I guess, believed--the assertion that Ike was to easy on Joe: that through cowardice or laziness (or perhaps because he secretly approved), he did not move as quickly or effectually as he could have.

I recognize that our 1950s view of Ike as a golfing doofus was deeply flawed. New scholarship (most notably the work of Fred Greenstein) has made it clear that the doofus posture was largely an act, and that Ike was deeply involved in every important issue--and that he was far cleverer and subtler than we thought.

What more have I learned now from reading David M. Oshinsky's comprehensive biography of the Senator? Couple of things. One, it seems beyond dispute that Ike detested the Senator: that he saw him as a vulgarian lowlife who had no legitimate place in public life. He did, apparently, have a gnawing sense of satisfaction at the way McCarthy was embarrassing the Democrats. But it was far subordinate to a domnant sense of loathing.

So why didn't he act more assertively? Did he fear McCarthy? Oshinsky doesn't show any evidence of fear, and hey, the guy who defeated Hitler does not show any high level of cowardice. Apparently Ike was stymied for a long time as to how to deal with McCarthy. In particular, he was haunted by the example of Truman, who hads personally taken on McCarthy, to Truman's cost and McCarthy's benefit. Ike didn't want to be thrown into that briar patch.

When he did see an opening, he seems to have done whatever he felt he could to make it happen. In particular, he was delighted with the Army-McCarthy hearings: he foresaw that they would be the ruination of the Senator and he was exactly right.

So Oshinsky paints a more charitable picture of the President in this instance than the one I entertained in my youth. He's largely convincing. Yet one can't escape the notion that it might have been otherwise. I think Ike's case has to be laid in part to a failure of imagination, or a lack of political skill. It is hard to believe that a Lyndon Johnson, or a Bill Clinton--or a Richard Nixon--would have allowed himself to stay boxed in for so long.

There's also the particular case of George C. Marshall. McCarthy's attack on this architect of our victory is one of the most inexcusable episodes in a mean and ugly career. The matter came to a point during the 1952 campaign. Ike had a chance to speak out. Ike said nothing. A charitable reading is that you do what you have to do in politics; Ike's first job was to get elected, and speaking out might well have cost him votes.

Still, if anybody counts as an unsullied great American, I'd say Marshall has to count. More than that, he was Ike's mentor: without Marshall Ike might have retired to obscurity as a colonel. Whatever else we remember about Ike, we'll have to remember him as the guy who did not speak up for Marshall when he could have?