A Myth Exploded

Censure by his colleagues does not mean the end of Joe McCarthy. He has been nourished by headlines, and headlines may still feed him. But he was also nourished by myths. One was that he "rooted the Communists out of Government." Like most myths, this had a basis. There were, calamitously. Communists and Communoids in the U.S. Government. Joe did little to root them out. But he learned, to the dismay of his colleagues, to the shame of the executive branch and to the delight of the press, how to bay the loudest when others were following the scent. The myth of McCarthy, The Red Hunter, was hard to kill during the Truman Administration, which had gone on record as considering some of the most serious and necessary Red hunts as "red herrings."

There was another, perhaps more vicious and enduring, myth upon which McCarthy fed. Eisenhower's victory could not explode it. It was the myth of McCarthy's prowess. No man—especially no Senator (other than an "extreme left-wing bleeding heart")—dared stand against him. This myth, propagated mainly by anti-McCarthy "liberals," helped swell McCarthy's headlines, and, since head lines are a form of power, a gross exaggeration of power begot actual power.

This second myth was killed by the censure vote. To a man, the Democrats voted against McCarthy. Their liberal wing from the northern cities was utterly unterrified by the fact that many of McCarthy's most fanatic followers are Democrats. The Democratic liberals were forced by the vote to abandon their dangerous pretense that the Senate feared McCarthy. The Southern Democrats, who include some of the most conservative men in the Senate, likewise voted against him—rejecting any pretensions McCarthy might have to being a conservative.

Some of the most timid Republicans in the Senate voted against McCarthy. Of those Republicans who voted for him, few if any were intimidated by Joe. They voted their convictions. The source of those convictions can be found in the amazing failure of the Truman Administration to take early alarm at Communist infiltration.

McCarthy had a sound issue. He developed it recklessly and even lazily. He was, no doubt, duped by his own headlines-fed to him by eager reactionaries and defensive "liberals" eager to cover their mistakes with McCarthy's gross blunderings.

That sordid chapter may have ended with the censure vote-delivered on the recommendation of five of the most conservative men in the U.S. Senate. It took an Arthur Watkins to curb McCarthy. Nobody but Joe could have called Watkins a "Communist handmaiden." Joe did, and Watkins beat him-three to one.