Calm After Censure

Not many months ago an official report condemning Joe McCarthy would have set off an emotional H-bomb across the U.S. But last week, after the Watkins Committee recommended that the U.S. Senate censure the junior member from Wisconsin (TIME, Oct. 4), there was no explosion. The press, the politicians and the electorate generally accepted the committee's report as calmly as the committee delivered it, and with almost as much finality.

"Three-Fifths" Innocent. Faithful partisans of Joe McCarthy were hard put to find firm ground for their defense. Working from the remarkable logic that the committee found McCarthy "three-fifths" innocent (since it recommended censure on only two of its five categories of charges), Hearst newspapers headlined their editorial: JOE WINS. But the reaction on the great majority of the nation's editorial pages was quite the opposite. In one sentence, the Los Angeles Mirror succinctly expressed what editors all over the U.S. were saying: "Public opinion has caught up with another demagogue."

From members of the U.S. Senate there was little comment. Most of the Senators whose names will be on the ballot Nov. 2 wanted to take no public stand until after the ballots are cast. This was true of Democrats as well as Republicans. Polling fellow Democrats about the timing of the Senate's special session to consider the report, Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson had argued that a vote before election would put more Democrats than Republicans on the spot because more Democratic incumbents are seeking reelection.

The loudest senatorial reaction came from a close friend of McCarthy. Indiana's Republican William Jenner. Jenner complained that the Watkins Committee had ignored "the most important evidence" that the "Communist world conspiracy" is attempting to discredit McCarthy. His analysis seemed to disregard an important fact: the Watkins Committee did not criticize McCarthy for any word or deed against any Communist conspirator, but for his conduct toward established institutions and loyal citizens of the U.S.

Paging Olsen & Johnson. Paving the way for McCarthy's defense when the Senate meets Nov. 8, McCarthy's attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, filed with the Watkins' Committee a "bill of exceptions." It was a legalistic defense, based almost entirely upon points that had been considered and rejected by the Watkins Committee. Members of the committee were confident that, whatever the defense, the Senate will approve the unanimous, bipartisan censure recommendations.

Of Joe McCarthy personally, there was neither sight nor sound for six full days after the report was issued. Then he stepped before the television cameras on Meet the Press, and had no surprising answers. He was not challenging the Watkins' committee's fairness, he said, but he did want to point out that some members had a record of anti-McCarthy statements before the hearings began. If the full Senate votes to censure him, he added, it will be setting a precedent of censure for any Senator who "fights Communism." But he would "accept" the Senate's decision.