Chapter Eight: A Sense of Decency
Chapter Eight: A Sense of Decency
From Red Scare to Pet Scare: A Legion of Lies
“Truth forever on the scaffold. . . .” - James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)1
There is a straight line from Joe McCarthy through Roy Cohn to Donald Trump. They constitute a genuine axis of evil.
As the presidential election approaches, politicians are lying more frequently than usual. A lie that has generated a good deal of publicity recently deals with the Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio.
Senator JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president and also the junior senator from Ohio, first publicized the claim that Haitians who had immigrated legally to Springfield were eating the cats and dogs of other Springfield residents. In an unaccustomed moment of candor, he appeared to admit that he made the story up.2 In the Harris – Trump debate on September 10, Donald Trump took that ball and ran with it: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs – the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”3 It would indeed be a shame if it were happening. But it isn’t.
From the point of view of the nation as a whole, this is a relatively small lie by Trump/Vance standards. It is a big lie to the city of Springfield, Ohio. And it is probably a terrifying lie to the thousands of Haitians who are legally living there. We have here an example of a lie that matters a great deal to a small number of people.
The ”Big Lie” that the presidential election of 2020 was stolen from Trump by the Democrats matters to all of us. This lie resulted in the attempt on January 6, 2021, to overthrow the nation’s government.
There has been an intriguing development recently in the trajectory of the Big Lie. Debate moderator David Muir asked Trump whether, given his recent statement that he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker,” Trump was acknowledging that he in fact did lose in 2020. Trump was not happy with the question and claimed he had said “lost by a whisker” “sarcastically.”4
Refer to 11:10 in the clip below. Was Trump being sarcastic? Muir did not think so. You be the judge.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R,WI) (1908 – 1957) was the most dangerous demagogue in American history between the death of Huey Long (to whom McCarthy was likened) in 1935 and Donald Trump’s now legendary ride down that escalator in 2015. For a brief period, McCarthy was among the most powerful people in the United States and perhaps the most feared.
The heart of the McCarthy story lasts only a little more than four years, from 1950 to 1954; but its reverberations are felt down to the present day. It all began when he delivered a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, at the Lincoln Day Dinner on February 9, 1950. Unfortunately for an address of this importance, we do not know precisely what he said because the speech was not recorded. In one version, he declares: “I have in my hand a list of 205 . . . members of the Communist Party . . . working and shaping policy in the State Department.”5 However, in the Congressional Record for February 20, we see: “I have in my hand fifty-seven cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the communist party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.”6
The most important difference of course was the number. Was it 205 as was reported in Wheeling, or 57 just a few days later? Perhaps 81 . . . 116 . . . 121. . . 106.7 These are all numbers McCarthy used at one time or another. Were they all “card carrying”? Communist Party USA members had not carried cards for years for obvious reasons.8 All this brings us to another question: Did McCarthy know what he was talking about?
Well-known television newscaster David Brinkley spoke to his sister Mary Brinkley Driscoll (she was McCarthy’s executive secretary) about McCarthy after the Senator’s death. “What did he have in his hand [in Wheeling]?” Brinkley asked. Driscoll: “He had a few scribbled notes to use in his speech . . . mostly about housing for war veterans.” Brinkley: “Did he have two hundred and five names?” Driscoll: “No.” Brinkley: “Where did he get that number?” Driscoll: “He made it up.”9
McCarthy might not have known much about Communism (critics said he couldn’t find a Communist in Red Square in Moscow on May Day);10 but he had a terrific instinct for publicity. According to Driscoll, when McCarthy saw the headlines he generated, he became “nearly insane with excitement. He clutched the newspapers and ran around the Senate office shouting, ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it!’”11 After Wheeling, Joe’s message was “all Commies all the time.”12
McCarthy was capitalizing on the Red Scare following World War II, but he was also amplifying it. He was unsurpassed in manipulating the media. Many newspapers were willing accomplices because McCarthy generated headlines. This he did by making wild accusations against respectable people and then quickly moving on to the next subject. He never allowed himself to be pinned down. When accused of misusing funds, he responded, “I don’t answer charges. I make them.”13.
McCarthy took a special delight in lying. “He lied when it was in his interest. . . but even when it wasn’t. . . . He lied when it served a demagogic purpose to generate turmoil and confusion, and when no obvious purpose was served at all. He probably lied just to stay in trim.”14 His “genius for publicity”15 meant his calumnies were spread far and wide.
McCarthy’s lies about the most prominent of Americans were hard to keep up with. He was the master of “the multiple untruth.”16 He emerged as a liar whose falsehoods were different not only in degree but in kind from standard political mendacity. Some people were destroyed by him.
It is difficult to combat the kind of menace McCarthy projected. Could you ignore him and let his charges go un-answered? If so, they could be mistaken for the truth. What was the best way to fight for one’s integrity. If you tried to play his game, the odds were against you. “He was an alley fighter who relished confusion and trouble and tumult. . . .”17 He was utterly unhampered by the truth and a completely vicious man. He would win a game played on a field of his choosing.
McCarthy died in 1957. I was 10 years old then, and I remember asking my parents about him. What was most important, they said, was that he was discredited before he died.
My parents were referring to the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, carried live on television. The climactic moment of these hearings was when counsel for the army Joseph N. Welch confronted McCarthy when he attempted to impugn the integrity of one of the younger members of Welch’s law firm. Welch’s words live down to the present day. "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. . . . Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”18
Welch was calm. Unafraid. And he posed as a question a forthright assertion (which was what the Red Baiters did with “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”). The Senate and the nation saw through McCarthy in that moment. Later in 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy. He lived on until 1957, but he was through.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” a plaintive Donald Trump asked in March, 2017, soon after being inaugurated as President.19 Roy Cohn (1927 – 1986) was McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings. After the hearings, Cohn decamped to New York to inaugurate a star-studded law practice. Among his clients was none other than Donald J. Trump.
Cohn was quite as vicious and quite as without decency as his mentor McCarthy. Ken Auletta, a well-known journalist, called Cohn “the personification of evil. . . . I’ve never met a more revolting character.” Auletta believes that Trump has internalized the lessons he learned “from his mentor Roy Cohn. Attack. Never apologize. . . . Lie.”20 Cohn was a man who had the respect of no one whose respect is worthy of respect. The fact that Donald Trump wanted the help of a resurrected Roy Cohn is yet another indication of how wildly inappropriate it is for Trump to be in the White House.
McCarthy, Cohn, and Trump display an easy willingness to break rules which deserved to be followed. By their misconduct, they give others permission to break rules as well.
What does the future hold for Donald Trump and for our nation? Will there be a man or woman who will be able fully to unmask this man (as Welch did to McCarthy) who has been hiding before us in plain sight since the ride down the escalator?
Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Donald Trump have one thing in common. No sense of decency.
“The Present Crisis,” 1845, https://poets.org/poem/present-crisis.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Alexandra Petrti, “Opinion: Every time JD Vance tells a story, a sinkhole swallows 30 people,” Washington Post, September 17, 2024.
Riley Hoffman, “READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript,” ABC News online, September 10, 2024.
“Full Debate: Harris vs. Trump in 2024 ABC News Presidential Debate | WSJ” YouTube, uploaded by The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgsC_aBquUE
Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) p. 130.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, speech, Congressional Record, Senate, 81st Cong., 2nd sess., 20 Feb. 1950, 1954, 1956-57 reprinted in Ellen Schrecker and Phillip Deery, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford, 2017 – online).
Stephen J. Whitfield, “The 1950’s: The Era of No Hard Feelings,” South Atlantic Quaterly, Summer, 1975, p. 550.
Tye, Demagogue, p. 133.
Tye, Demagogue, p. 139.
Tye, Demagogue, p. 817.
Tye, Demagogue, p. 140.
Tye, Demagogue, p. 169.
Whitfield, “1950’s,” p. 554.
Stephen Whitfield, “From McCarthy to Trump,” Society, June 12, 2019, p. 195.
David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense (New York: Free Press, 1983) p. 198.
Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy quoted in Whitfield, “McCarthy,” p. 195.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Forward” to Rovere, McCarthy (1996 printing) p. xi.
Oshinsky, Conspiracy, pp. 462 – 463.
Whitfield, “McCarthy,” p. 192.
“Jim Zirin-What Did Donald Trump Learn from Roy Cohn?-Ken Auletta,” Youtube; Ken Auletta, “Don’t Mess With Roy Cohn,” Esquire, July 13, 2016.