Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It..or
Where is My Roy Cohn?
I recently listened to a Fresh Air podcast with Larry Tye, the author of a new book about Senator Joe McCarthy called “Demagogue, the Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy”. I assume that most of my readers will have heard of him and his story or remember watching it unfold. He Shared the following.
In the early 1950’s he was the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations. He mercilessly attacked Americans accusing them of being communist traitors, spies who infiltrated the US Government, or security risks because they were homosexuals, even though most accused from all categories were innocent.
Listening to Terry Gross’ questions and his answers had my hair standing on edge. As I share the story with you from the 1950’s do not be surprised if you think you are hearing in stereo with one ear in the 1950’s and one tuned to today. I will put an asterisk at each such overlap, and you can fill in the connection.
McCarthy accused Americans from different fields of being, “part of a conspiracy so immense, and or infamous, so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man”. He ruined thousands of lives, and even led to people committing suicide.
He was a Republican senator from Wisconsin of no particular note, barely known by anyone, and no one took him seriously.* His party saw him as a backbencher who in all likelihood would not even be reelected. In February 1950 on Lincoln’s birthday the party sent out Senators to speak around the country. Big venues went to major senators and small venues went to the lesser lights. McCarthy was sent to Wheeling West Virginia which tells you all you needed to know about him and his prospects.
He gave a barn burner of a speech and launched his career as an anti-communist crusader. He held out a piece of paper and declared that he had a list of names of 205 spies in the State Department. No one ever saw any of the names on the paper but by the next day every paper in the country wrote about him and his shocking list of spies at the highest levels of Government. *
How did he become so infamous and so good at manipulating the country, when he had little evidence against the accused? *
He understood that unlike other anti-communist crusaders who made general claims about traitors in the State Department, he named names and counted the numbers of people. He thus made it real for the population and they stood up and took notice. *
He was the master manipulator of the press.* He knew that if he revealed a new accusation in the hinterland, away from the major press core and he released it 5 minutes before deadline, his accusation would make it into that day’s newspaper on page 1. By the time the press could get in touch with officials to verify the story, their rebuttal would come out the next day on page 24.
He knew that if you lobbed a big bombshell that would eventually prove to be false, rather than wait for the press to prove you wrong he had another bombshell ready to throw out the next day that would take over the news story. **
He discovered that if the news coming out that day was bad for him, blame the reporters. *
He used every tool that previous demagogues had used only he refined the tools so that every demagogue who followed him used his playbook.
He chose his targets from recycled old targets and accusations that had proven false. He had names of people who had left the State Department, people who had previously been exonerated etc. When reporters asked to see the list, he always had an excuse why he could not show them. He left the list on the plane or it was in his briefcase back in the hotel. *
He would smear people, then offer them a way out if they named names of others who were communists. If they did not co-operate, he threatened them with Justice Department prosecutions. * Many such accused were low level people of little means who were intimidated by these threats. *
He went after homosexuals because they were weak and vulnerable. They could easily be blackmailed for their sexual preferences and so posed a security risk while at the same time he hid his excessive drinking and gambling that made him equally susceptible to blackmail and being a security risk. *
McCarthy had no ideas of how to solve anything, he only knew how to attack, and when attacked he fought back like a wrecking ball.* The pollster George Gallup said in 1953 of McCarthy supporters, ”Even if it were known that McCarthy killed 5 innocent children they would still go along with him”.**
McCarthy never really had an ideology he believed in.* He only wanted power. In his first election for DA in a rural area of Wisconsin, running as a democrat led to an overwhelming defeat. He changed immediately to a Republican. He went from a left leaning FDR Democrat to the Conservative extreme of the Republican party. He did what it took to get elected and he was in it for the power. *
One wonders how the rest of his party and his Republican colleagues allowed him to get away with all of this. The answer is illustrative of how he played the game of power. * There was a well-established,4 term senator from Maryland, Miller Tydings, who stood up to him and denounced him. He called McCarthy a fraud and a hoax. McCarthy called him. “an egg sucking liberal”. * McCarthy helped put up a nobody to run against Tydings and then helped him raise funds and smear Tydings’ reputation. Tydings lost and after that everyone in the senate feared losing their position if they crossed McCarthy.* He was now immune.
The FBI kept top secret dossiers on Americans. In total violation of Federal laws, many of these dossiers were leaked to him so he had files on many people, again adding to his power.
Assisting McCarthy and serving as legal counsel to the committee was a young, Jewish, closeted gay attorney who over the next 35 years was constantly in the public eye using McCarthy like tactics to bully people. His name was Roy Cohn and he would become Donald Trump’s personal attorney and fixer. **
When Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russian investigation Donald Trump uttered the famous line,” Where is my Roy Cohn?”
Perhaps the answer is to be found in the following 2 pictures:
In addition to the public hearings McCarthy would take the hearings on the road and often hold meetings in private. Frequently he was the only one in the room with a stenographer interrogating witnesses. Those who stood up to him never made it to the public hearings. Those that he could bully often did. * When someone would take the 5th, he would chide them and call them “5th amendment communists”. *
Finally, Joe met his match when he went after the US Army. In televised hearings at Ft. Monmouth N.J he accused the army of harboring spies. He had served in the Pacific and even there, disregarded rules that limited his ambition. He thought the officers were beneath him and called them, “mental midgets”. * While still in the army he ran for office and had banners hanging and he continued to campaign in direct violation of army regulations. Rules were not meant to be observed by him. *
By the time he went after the army the country was getting sick of him. Though popular at the beginning with a 50% approval rating, by now it was down to 34% as people saw him for the bully that he was.* Finally at one of the live televised hearings, a well-known Boston attorney Joe Welch was testifying for a young member of his firm that McCarthy was attacking and he said, “Have you no sense of decency at long last, Senator?”. That was the beginning of the end for McCarthy. In 1954 the senate by a vote of 67 to 22 voted to censure him. In 1957 deprived of his power and sick from all his drinking he died.
All that is missing is for a new Joe Welch to stand up and ask, “Have you no sense of decency at long last, Mr. President.”
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