Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (38 page)

Everything finally unraveled for McCarthy in early 1954. In March and April, Edward R. Murrow, a widely respected investigative reporter, ran a series of programs concerning McCarthy on "See It Now," a CBS network production. It was the first time that television—which had expanded by then to 25 million households—had exposed him in any major way. For the most part Murrow let McCarthy's bullying words and truculent actions speak for themselves. McCarthy finally appeared on the show in April and tore into Murrow, calling him "the leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors." Scholars debate the impact of these shows, some insisting that most Americans did not watch them: "Dragnet," a popular police series, drew far more viewers at the time.
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Others add that McCarthy was already beginning to fade before the shows started. These are valid reminders that television was hardly all-powerful. But "See It Now" did attract a great deal of attention and critical praise at the time, and it legitimated rising criticism of McCarthy from other media. If Nixon's Checkers speech indicated that TV could save a politician, "See It Now" and televised hearings that followed suggested it could also help ruin one.

What really brought McCarthy down was his ill-advised attempt at the same time to ferret out subversive activities in—of all places—the United States Army. The army responded by documenting that McCarthy and Cohn had secured special privileges for Schine, then a private in the army.
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The Senate established a special committee headed by South Dakota Republican Karl Mundt to hear the charges and counter-charges. The "Army-McCarthy hearings," as everyone soon called them, began on April 22 and lasted thirty-six days (for a total of 188 hours) through June 17. Often sensational, they attracted more than 100 reporters and crowds exceeding 400. The hearings were televised to Americans who had little good daytime TV to divert them. Some estimates put peak audiences as high as 20 million people.
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Placed on the defensive, McCarthy began drinking heavily. He often slept in his office and showed up looking unkempt and unshaven. On black-and-white television he resembled a heavy from Central Casting. He spoke in a low monotone, often petulantly. Again and again he jumped to his feet to shout "Point of order," so often that the audiences ultimately broke out in laughter. He outdid himself in bullying participants and hurling abuse. Eisenhower, appalled by McCarthy's excesses, thought that McCarthy was "psychopathic" and "lawless," but again he said nothing.

What he did do, however, proved problematic indeed for McCarthy, who was demanding access to sensitive information concerning federal employees, in the army and elsewhere. Key Republican senators backed McCarthy's demands for such access, but Eisenhower firmly resisted them. "I will not allow people around me to be subpoenaed," he told GOP leaders on May 17, "and you might just as well know it now." Senator William Knowland of California rejoined that Congress had a right to issue such subpoenas. The President repeated, "My people are not going to be subpoenaed."
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He then made sure that people appreciated his resolve on the issue, directing his Defense Secretary to withhold sensitive information from McCarthy and his committee. His language was sweeping in its assertion of presidential authority and dismissal of congressional rights. "It is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the Executive Branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters." It followed that "it is not in the public interest that
any
of their conversations or communications, or
any
documents or reproductions, concerning such advice be disclosed."

This was an extraordinary claim; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., later termed it the "most absolute assertion of presidential right to withhold information from Congress ever uttered to that day in American history."
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Earlier Presidents had argued that discussions in Cabinet meetings were confidential, but no one had yet been so bold as to extend executive privilege to the entire executive branch.
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Many people doubted the constitutionality of what Ike had done. It did them no good, however, for the President had spoken. Later Presidents, including Nixon during the crisis of Watergate, used Ike's precedent-setting directive to make similar assertions. More immediately, McCarthy was stymied; without access to such information he could not begin to establish the subversiveness of individuals in the army or elsewhere in the executive branch of government.

Frustrated and exhausted, McCarthy finally finished himself on the afternoon of June 9. The army's special counsel, a soft-spoken but shrewd and able attorney named Joseph Welch, was grilling Cohn on the stand. McCarthy broke in and began accusing Welch's law firm of harboring a leftist lawyer named Fred Fisher. The charge was no surprise to Welch, for McCarthy had threatened in private to bring it up. So Welch was ready and turned to Mundt, as a personal privilege, for the chance to reply. "Until this moment, Senator," he began, "I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." Welch then explained that he had earlier taken Fisher off the hearings because Fisher had briefly belonged to the pro-Communist National Lawyers Guild. Speaking firmly and with a tone of ineffable sadness, Welch faced McCarthy and added, "Little did I dream you could be so cruel as to do an injury to that lad," who would now "always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me."

McCarthy should have let the matter rest, but he bulled ahead with further attacks on Fisher. Again Welch spoke out. "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" When McCarthy broke in again, Welch cut him off:

Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me, and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness.

There was a moment of silence, and the room burst into applause. Mundt called for a recess and walked out with Welch. McCarthy turned up his palms and shrugged his shoulders. "What did I do?" he asked in confusion. "What did I do?"
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He had destroyed himself on national television. The hearings dragged on for a few more days, but McCarthy was by then a beaten man. Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont, a Republican, demanded that the Senate censure him then and there. Instead, the Senate moved deliberately, awaiting the findings of a special committee appointed to explore McCarthy's activities over the past few years. When it reported (after the off-year elections of 1954) it unanimously criticized him for conduct (during earlier investigations of him by the Senate) that damaged the honor of the Senate. This was the narrowest possible charge, one that ignored many more reckless acts. But it virtually guaranteed a favorable response to the report. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to "condemn" McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22. As had so often been the case during the Red Scare, the vote was partisan. All forty-four Democrats voting favored the resolution, as did the one Independent, Wayne Morse of Oregon. The forty-four Republicans voting divided evenly, 22 to 22.
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Eisenhower could relax at last. He told the Cabinet that the movement could now be called "McCarthywasism" and cut him from the list of dignitaries welcome at White House social functions. The press largely ignored him. When Nixon visited Milwaukee during the 1956 campaign, McCarthy sidled up to a seat next to him. A Nixon aide asked him to leave, and he did. A reporter found him weeping.
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Feeling betrayed, McCarthy also suffered from the ravages of drink. He died of a liver condition on May 2, 1957. He was only forty-eight years old and still a United States senator.

A
LTHOUGH
M
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C
ARTHY AND
Red Scare issues threatened to obscure other political matters in the early 1950s, they were by no means the only concerns of the era. Other domestic controversies, mostly fomenting political deadlock, illuminate Eisenhower's strengths and weaknesses in these years.

Liberals who explored Eisenhower's philosophy concerning these domestic issues were sure that he was ill informed and near-reactionary. Concerning social welfare, he had snapped in 1949, "If all Americans want is security, they can go to prison."
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He said of the Tennessee Valley Authority, "By God, I'd like to sell the whole thing, but I suppose we can't go that far."
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Like most politicians at the time, he paid little attention to widespread rural poverty or to urban decay. Eisenhower himself conceded that he was conservative on domestic issues, admitting that Taft, who had come to favor federal aid to education and public housing, was "far more 'liberal and radical' than anything to which I could ever agree."
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Eisenhower seemed so vulnerable on domestic matters that liberals had a field day making fun of him. Some dubbed him "Eisen-hoover." When he tried to summarize his domestic philosophy by saying that he was

Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, Germany, July 1945.
UPI/Bettmann
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Bess and Harry Truman, House Democratic Leader Sam Rayburn of Texas, and Margaret Truman at a party dinner, Washington, April 1947.
Acme Photo, National Archives
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James F. Byrnes, Truman, and Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace await FDR's funeral train at Washington's Union Station, April 1945. By 1946 Byrnes, then Secretary of State, and Wallace held sharply opposing views concerning foreign policy. Abbie Rowe,
U.S. National Park Service
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