McCarthy and his critics: No sauce for the gander

I've noted before that Joseph McCarthy's negative image has remained unchanged despite the flood of revelations about Soviet intelligence activities in the US. Further, that much of the damaging material on McCarthy focuses on his personal behavior and that of his staff, his pre-Senate career, and his aptitude as a television performer. Finally, that much of the “evidence” used to disparage the senator is of dubious value-- unsourced gossip, innuendo, and partisan hype.

Which supposedly adds up to something like this: The investigations were partisan exercises, not serious fact-finding. McCarthy was a Republican cat's-paw and a tool for the China Lobby. His popularity was fueled by bigotry and populist resentment. McCarthy, a lifelong liar and braggart, was not to be trusted. The messenger and the message could be rightly dismissed. Red scare. Witchhunt. Paranoid style. Anti-intellectualism. Case closed.

It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.
― Warren Buffett

But what if McCarthy was approximately right while his critics were wrong on both the big questions and exact details? That is one question that is studiously avoided in the mire of the journalism of personal destruction.

Another question this time relating to the narrative: What happens if we applied the “scrutinize the messengers; don't trust liars” rule to McCarthy's critics?

II

If McCarthy is untrustworthy because he exaggerated his war record, then what of his nemesis Edward R. Murrow? The doyen of CBS News and secular saint to journalists everywhere lied his education and experience as he scrambled for a toehold in the world of eastern media and NGOs.

Take the worst things said and written about McCarthy and he still looks angelic compared to his most persistent critic-- Drew Pearson. The discovery that he employed not one, but two Soviet assets should have prompted at least some rethinking about the Narrative. Then there is his collusion with Moscow to protect his brand and their operations. Surely Pearson's unfounded and libelous attacks on the anti-communist Secretary of Defense James Forrestal deserve examination. (Forrestal and McCarthy were polar opposites in nearly every respect. Practically the only things they had in common was a fierce opposition to Joe Stalin and sustained calumny at the hands of Drew Pearson.

Pearson cheated on his wives and cheated his business partner who helped launch “Washington Merry-Go-Round”. Pearson, a Quaker, took advantage of his patriotic partner who joined the army after Pearl Harbor. Robert Allen lost an arm; Drew Pearson gained a business.

Pearson's legman Jack Anderson admitted that he committed perjury to cover up his and Pearson's crimes in their Get McCarthy crusade. Yet Anderson's gossip-filled “biography” of the senator is still cited by writers today.

Thomas C. Reeves:

But every chapter contained factual errors, slanted interretations, partisan conclusions, and even occasional fiction.

As is Richard Rovere's biography. What is not often mentioned is that Rovere – who covered McCarthy as the New Yorker's Washington correspondent – wrote for the CPUSA's New Masses during the 1930s. The Narrative demands that we trust this one-time Stalinist stooge to properly assess the extent of communist subversion and the possibilities of liberal cover-ups. It also demands that we ignore the fact that Rovere was an ardent defender of Alger Hiss -- again, not a good look for a man who claims expertise on the question communist subversion.

Ralph de Toledano:

Richard Rovere, formerly an editor of the Communist New Masses, later The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, at the National Press Club bar, holding forth on the hundreds of lives Joe McCarthy had destroyed. “Name one,” I ask. Silence, then, “Well, he’s shacking up with Roy Cohn, isn’t he? And how many spies has he caught?”

III

If McCarthy's critics were held to the same standard that they apply to the senator, then the melodramatic Good vs. Evil framing falls apart. And we cannot have that.

McCarthy must be portrayed as evil because he represented a threat to the newly empowered experts and the mediators of democracy.

For all the moral posturing and journalistic justifications, the treatment of McCarthy was simply liberals, left-wingers, and communists following the Munzenberg template.

Don't argue with them, Make them stink in the nose of the world. Make people curse and abominate them, Make them shudder with horror.

While claiming to uphold American values, McCarthy's enemies often resorted to Stalinist tactics.

During the 1950s the friends and supporters of McCarthy complained bitterly about the 'double-standard' employed by his liberal critics. In particular, they charged that the righteous people who condemned his name-callng were the same people who called him a Nazi, a jackal, and a thug; that the people who yelled loudest at his 'dirty' tactics were the same people who spread rumors of his alleged homosexuality and hired spies to infiltrate his office and dredge up material about the personal habits of his aides. Needless to say, the liberal press ignored these shameful and frequently illegal acts; they were too busy portraying the senator as an enemy of democratic institutions and free society.

There is a good bit of truth to this contention. McCarthy's critics could be hypocritical and cruel. Many viewed him as the new Hitler, a man to be stopped quickly and at all costs. The means were often irrelevant.

David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy

Related:

Mediated democracy and the temptations of Leninism

On the utility of “Fascist”

The essence of “McCarthyism”: The Administrative State strikes back