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?
Showing posts with label Joseph McCarthy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joseph McCarthy. Show all posts
Friday, March 06, 2009
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
McCarthy and Others
Rooting round for distraction from the tasks on the agenda, and always a sucker for stuff about the years of my lost youth, I was happy to divert myself with David M. Oshinsky's A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (2005).
The takeaway point: it was so short. No, not McCarthy himself, but the age of McCarthy, his time on the world stage. It lasted from February 9,1950, the day of the notorious "Wheeling Speech" until December 2, 1954, the day of the Senate censure vote. That's a little under five years, bracketing the Korean War and about coterminous with The Complete Peanuts 1950-1954 Box Set--little more than a third as long as the nightmare of Adolph Hitler, well less than the time between now and Mission Accomplished in Iraq.
And at the end, there wasn't all that much to show for it. As many have said, as Oshinksy says, he never uncovered a Communist--perhaps never even a "security risk," for however elastic that term may be, it seems likely that every single person whom McCarthy outed either (a) was already identified; or (b) would have been identified in due course. He ruined a few lives, of course and disrupted countless others, but hey you know what they say about eggs and omelettes. Beyond that, it is remarkable how little he left behind. Others--notably Richard Nixon, who scored with Alger Hiss, and even more the mostly forgotten, vastly underrated, Pat McCarren--made a far more lasting impact on our lives.
The other amazing fact is that he really didn’t have any particular talents at all, except perhaps an eye for weakness, a knack for spotting easy targets that other people might not have noticed as easy (the old judge he knocked off in his first race in Wisconsin; Senator Robert LaFollette Jr.; Senator Millard Tydings; Robert Stevens of the Army). Except for that, he really was what Herblock pretended to caricature: a coarse and vulgar bully.
Comparing him with other public menaces is enough to put him in perspective. He's been called an "American Hitler," but this trivializers Hitler: McCarthy had nothing like Hitler's manic, obsessive vision. Comparing with Mussolini is trickier: granted that Mussolini brought down a government, still it is important to remember that Mussolini's Italy was harldy a state at all--only half a century old, and the Pope always telling them that evading the taxes of the secular authorities was not a sin. It's tempting to speculate that if Mussolini had met any serious resistance, he would have caved, too.
Yes, resistance. Granted, reading about the GOP in the 50s is enough to remind you that (aside form McCarthy), they had quite an ample supply of fools, bullies and paranoid nutcakes. I think they may also have had a larger stock of civic-minded gentlemen, though this is harder to say (Arthur Watkins and Margaret Chase Smith probably count; anonymous characters like Norris Cotton; probably Ralph Flanders though he may be a closer case). In any evengt, those who passed as gentlemen at last did what they were supposed to do.
Except that in a sense you could say that McCarthy was the ultimate author of his own misfortune. He never had an agenda, beyond beating up on the vulnerable. By the time of the censure vote he had already begun to drink himself to death. It was only a matter of time before he finished the job.
The takeaway point: it was so short. No, not McCarthy himself, but the age of McCarthy, his time on the world stage. It lasted from February 9,1950, the day of the notorious "Wheeling Speech" until December 2, 1954, the day of the Senate censure vote. That's a little under five years, bracketing the Korean War and about coterminous with The Complete Peanuts 1950-1954 Box Set--little more than a third as long as the nightmare of Adolph Hitler, well less than the time between now and Mission Accomplished in Iraq.
And at the end, there wasn't all that much to show for it. As many have said, as Oshinksy says, he never uncovered a Communist--perhaps never even a "security risk," for however elastic that term may be, it seems likely that every single person whom McCarthy outed either (a) was already identified; or (b) would have been identified in due course. He ruined a few lives, of course and disrupted countless others, but hey you know what they say about eggs and omelettes. Beyond that, it is remarkable how little he left behind. Others--notably Richard Nixon, who scored with Alger Hiss, and even more the mostly forgotten, vastly underrated, Pat McCarren--made a far more lasting impact on our lives.
The other amazing fact is that he really didn’t have any particular talents at all, except perhaps an eye for weakness, a knack for spotting easy targets that other people might not have noticed as easy (the old judge he knocked off in his first race in Wisconsin; Senator Robert LaFollette Jr.; Senator Millard Tydings; Robert Stevens of the Army). Except for that, he really was what Herblock pretended to caricature: a coarse and vulgar bully.
Comparing him with other public menaces is enough to put him in perspective. He's been called an "American Hitler," but this trivializers Hitler: McCarthy had nothing like Hitler's manic, obsessive vision. Comparing with Mussolini is trickier: granted that Mussolini brought down a government, still it is important to remember that Mussolini's Italy was harldy a state at all--only half a century old, and the Pope always telling them that evading the taxes of the secular authorities was not a sin. It's tempting to speculate that if Mussolini had met any serious resistance, he would have caved, too.
Yes, resistance. Granted, reading about the GOP in the 50s is enough to remind you that (aside form McCarthy), they had quite an ample supply of fools, bullies and paranoid nutcakes. I think they may also have had a larger stock of civic-minded gentlemen, though this is harder to say (Arthur Watkins and Margaret Chase Smith probably count; anonymous characters like Norris Cotton; probably Ralph Flanders though he may be a closer case). In any evengt, those who passed as gentlemen at last did what they were supposed to do.
Except that in a sense you could say that McCarthy was the ultimate author of his own misfortune. He never had an agenda, beyond beating up on the vulnerable. By the time of the censure vote he had already begun to drink himself to death. It was only a matter of time before he finished the job.
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