Senator Joe McCarthy Paperback – Apr 12 1996

"Senator Joe McCarthy" is an account of the four years, 1950-1954, during which Sen. McCarthy held the attention of the nation and the world. Author Richard H. Rovere was serving as a correspondent covering McCarthy during the period of his national prominence.

This book contains some material on McCarthy's earlier life and political career and a little about his personal life. It, for the most part, focuses on McCarthy's time as the Communist hunter in chief. Little is said about McCarthy's attractive personality and his close friendships in the Senate, particularly with Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

This book makes the case of McCarthy as a demagogue, seeking nothing more than personal glory. He makes the case that McCarthy was misguided and that, if the Communists in government issue had not been available, McCarthy would have pursued some other issue with equal vigor. He makes the case that McCarthy was misguided in that the Communist threat was in the form of external aggression rather than internal subversion. He claims that, for all of his ranting and raving, McCarthy got no Communists out of government. He makes the claim that McCarthy's preparation was sloppy and that his evidence did not support his charges. He criticizes McCarthy's treatment of witnesses as merely being an attempt to make McCarthy look good rather than a legitimate attempt to discern the truth.

Rovere does give McCarthy credit for the immense power which he wielded and the influence which he had, for better or worse. He credits McCarthy for ending the career of Gen. George C. Marshall and other, less distinguished, officials. He explains how McCarthy took the issue of recognition of Red China out of the realm of public debate. He identifies Senators who, after incurring McCarthy's wrath, were defeated for reelection and issues on which the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were terrorized into positions which they, in the absence of McCarthy, might not have taken.

I began this book with the expectation of disliking it. I expected a hatchet job of Sen. McCarthy, but really did not find it. Rovere makes cases for his opinions. He does not dig into the slime of gossip to support his criticisms of McCarthy. He raises the claim that McCarthy was a homosexual, and then concludes that there is no evidence to support it. He comes down very hard on staffers Roy Cohn and David Schine, but limits McCarthy's culpability to the decisions to hire them and subsequent failure to properly supervise. First published in 1959, it lacks some of the historical perspective that more modern works may have. It makes a reference to America falling behind in the arms race with the USSR, an issue which was important in the 1960 election, but which was later shown to have been unjustified. The subsequent opening of KGB archives may place the issue of Communist infiltration of government in a different perspective. The later success of his Senate cronies, Kennedy and Nixon, may shed a different light on the McCarthy's Senate career as evaluated by his colleagues. Rovere repeatedly refers to surveys which found McCarthy to be the worst senator. The quality of his friends may give added stature to McCarthy's career.

This book changed my impression of Joseph McCarthy. He portrayed McCarthy as an opportunist who fought the wrong battle at the wrong time and fought it poorly. While I am grateful for those who carried on the battle against Communism, I am forced to consider McCarthy a flawed knight who lent his words, but not his heart, to the battle. Any book that can change my impression of history has value to it.

I really find out what a controlling nut that Joseph McCarthy was during his time. What a clown. I wish it went into great detail, but it was enough to rate this book as okay and worth buying

Richard Rovere (1915-79) wrote this very readable book about Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin in 1959, two years after Tailgunner Joe passed away. Rovere provides brief background on the Senator, but concentrates heavily on McCarthy's Senate time as a anti-Communist witch hunter from 1950-1954. As the author shows, McCarthy had the look of a one-termer in 1950 and needed an issue to raise his profile when he made that infamous speech at Wheeling, West Virginia that set the ball in motion. Rovere shows that McCarthy was a man in need of an issue, and had communism not existed he would have searched for something else. Readers see how the issue and McCarthy's profile ballooned way beyond expectations, making McCarthy one of the most-feared public figures, not to mention most-admired and most-loathed. The problem, of course, was that McCarthy was couldn't back up his charges about 57 or 205 communists working in the State Department. Harry Truman and Edward R. Murrow stood up to him, Eisenhower saw thru him (but didn't oppose him), and some like Robert Taft saw McCarthy as a usefull tool for attacking the Democrats - but disliked how McCarthy kept going once the GOP took control. As the author shows, McCarthy declined rapidly after his 1954 censure by the Senate, passing away in 1957 from either hepatitis or alcohol-related liver problems. I'd have liked better documentation and more information on McCarthy's assistants (or henchmen) David Schine and Roy Cohn. Still, this is a readable, informative look.

My father saw McCarthy speak at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1950's and recalled that every time the skeptical students called for McCarthy to show his evidence, the Senator kept answering that he had the proof right there - but never revealed it. Same old story. Did soviet communist spies exist? Yes. Did McCarthy find any? No.

Just before the American Civil War, a Southern congressman explained why Abraham Lincoln's election was a sufficient cause for secession. He said that it was not merely the election of dangerous man, which he realized was part of the political process. Abraham Lincoln, he argued, was elected because he was dangerous.
Senator McCarthy was not elected because he was dangerous. That McCarthy came to dominate American politics for the last years of the Truman administration and the first few couple of years of the Eisenhower administration was unforeseen by anyone, least of all himself. His rise from anonymity to become among the strongest people in the Unites States, and therefore in the world, was sudden. His decline was even faster, and if McCarthy started 1954 as a major player, by January 1955 Vice President Nixon could report that he was no longer any danger to the administration.
Richard H Rovere, a journalist and an observer of the politics, wrote in 1959 what was seen at the time as the definite account of the Senator from Wisconsin. Rovere, a master of prose, is best when making a psychological portrait of McCarthy, seeing him as an empty cynic, a vain man who believed in nothing, who hunted not for power, but for money and glory. He was a dangerous man, who turned America away from important foreign policy issues and focused on looking for spies, traitors and "bad security risks" - and, although he terrorized the government, forced conformity, and shrank American freedoms, never found any.
Yet there is also a certain mischievous appreciation in Rovere's description. He says that McCarthy was not in the Republican San Francisco convention of 1956, and that it was duller for his absence (p. 242). His descriptions of McCarthy's manipulation of the press, the way he knew how to create a story, appreciates the ingenuity of the Senator. And if McCarthy was a cynic, who ruined people who have not sinned, he also did it without spite or malice. As Rovere has it, McCarthy never took himself seriously, even as the world did (p. 58)
Perhaps the best insight Rovere has into McCarthy is his description of McCarthy's great innovation "The Multiple Untruth". Not a single lie or even a few, McCarthy's lies were so huge and inconsistent, that they were almost impossible to disprove. Any part of it that you knocked down would also make the rest seem the more solid. McCarthy blew so much smoke that people assumed there must have been a fire somewhere.

Rovere's greatest weakness is in explaining the chronology of McCarthy, and the background. Much of it is because he wrote for people of 1959, who knew the general outline. But for people with only a very general knowledge of the 1950s, Rovere's book never quite explains things all the way through. This is especially bad in his description of the Army-McCarthy hearings. As someone who is not very familiar with the events, I emerged from that vital part only slightly more enlighted then before.
Another failure is the journalistic defense of sources, which keeps several of the people involved disguised. It is a little annoying to have pages devoted to either an "unnamed reporter" or to an "X".
Both failures could have been addressed by the introduction, written in 1996 by historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr. Unfortunately, except for a few none too revealing comments on Rovere himself, Schlesinger chose to waste his introduction on a summery of the book's argument.
If the lack of background and specifics make the book a less then perfect history of McCarthy and his time, Rovere's fantastic prose make it a most pleasurable read nonetheless.
His discussion of the effectiveness of McCarthy's networks of informants: "If any communists [existed in the government agency], they were so well hidden that the sort of people who were in the underground [i.e. McCarthy's informants], would never find them - unless, of course, some of those in the underground were communists, which was not altogether out of the question". (pp. 197-98)
Elsewhere, Rovere comments that "Hollywood has always been a hotbed of conformity, and advertising it always ready to ride with any hounds. By their very nature, these institutions yield before external pressure; it is, in fact their substitute for inspiration".
Though dated, Rovere's is still a fascinating and very well written study.

Second rate