| Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator | 
 enlarge | Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 664372
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0684836254
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.921092
EAN: 9780684836256
ASIN: 0684836254
Publication Date: December 2, 1999
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Amazon.com Review
"Today [Joseph McCarthy] exists in most people's imagination almost solely as an established icon of evil," writes biographer Arthur Herman. His very name has become an epithet: McCarthyism. Yet Herman believes it's time to reexamine the legacy, and in a brave, eponymously titled biography, he argues persuasively that "McCarthy was making a good point badly." Communism represented "a massive and intractable security problem" for the United States during the 1940s and 1950s; furthermore, "Democratic administrations had been unconscionably lax in dealing with an internal Communist threat." Herman doesn't mean to excuse McCarthy's recklessness--only to offer a balanced portrait of the man and his times. Joseph McCarthy simply couldn't have been written before the late 1990s--partly because the subject still stirs fiery passions, but also because Herman makes use of archival material that only became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His reassessment will no doubt be met with scorn by many leftists: "McCarthy was always a more important figure to American liberals than to conservatives. The nightmarish image of his heavy, swarthy, sweaty features haunted the imaginations of thousands of anti-anti-Communists throughout the fifties and sixties." Herman usefully points out that McCarthy actually had nothing to do with many aspects of the anti-Communist activities commonly grouped together under the label of McCarthyism, including the House Un-American Activities Committee, probes into Hollywood politics, and university blacklisting. (He also humanizes his subject: Did you know McCarthy was "a minor figure in the Kennedy circle," even dating two of the Kennedy daughters and becoming godfather to Bobby and Ethel's first child?) In the end, Herman offers an outstanding, cool-headed, and much-needed reappraisal of a poorly understood man. --John J. Miller
Product Description
Was Joe McCarthy a bellicose, shameless witch-hunter who whipped up hysteria, ruined the reputation of innocents, and unleashed a destructive carnival of smears and guilt-by-association accusations? Were McCarthy and McCarthyism the worst things to happen to American politics in the postwar era? Or was McCarthy just a well-intentioned politician who seized a legitimate issue with the fervor of a true believer? Perhaps something in between. For the first time, here is a biography of Joe McCarthy that cuts through the cliches and misconceptions surrounding this central figure of the "red scare" of the fifties, and reexamines his life and legacy in the, light of newly declassified archival sources from the FBI, the National Security Agency, the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon, and the former Soviet Union. After more than four decades, here is the untold story of America's most hated political figure, shorn of the rhetoric and stereotypes of the past. Joseph McCarthy explains how this farm boy from Wisconsin sprang up from a newly confident postwar America, and how he embodied the hopes and anxieties of a generation caught in the toils of the Cold War. It shows how McCarthy used the explosive issue of Communist spying in the thirties and forties to challenge the Washington political establishment and catapult himself into the headlines. Above all, it gives us a picture of the red scare far different from and more accurate than the one typically portrayed in the news media and the movies. We now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was amazingly extensive -- reaching to the highest levels of the White House and the top-secret Manhattan Project. Herman has the facts to show in detail which of McCarthy's famous anti-Communist investigations were on target (such as the notorious cases of Owen Lattimore and Irving Peress, the Army's "pink dentist") and which were not (including the case that led to McCarthy's final break with Whittaker Chambers). When McCarthy accused two American employees of the United Nations of being Communists, he was widely criticized -- but he was right. When McCarthy called Owen Lattimore "Moscow's top spy," he was again assailed -- but we now know Lattimore was a witting aid to Soviet espionage networks. McCarthy often overreached himself. But McCarthy was often right. In Joseph McCarthy, Arthur Herman reveals the human drama of a fascinating, troubled, and self-destructive man who was often more right than wrong, and yet in the end did more harm than good.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 EXCELLENT BOOK July 3, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thoroughly researched and excellently written, this book is a great read.
It gives a distinct picture of Joe McCarthy, and also educates the reader about the events occurring.
GRADE: A++
McCarthy's cause vindicated with good scholarship September 25, 2006
An excellent book and invaluable for understanding this pivotal cold war episode - the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
McCarthy, on the heels of the Hiss Case in late 1949, started asking, loudly and publicly, what the administration knew about Communists in the State Department and other sensitive places, and what it was doing about it. For the next four years, and particularly after gaining the chair of a Senate investigation subcommittee, McCarthy bore down on this issue, attracting millions of followers who believed in his mission, but also making enemies among the intelligentsia, among elites threatened by McCarthy's populist style, among liberals who saw Communists as ideological allies. McCarthy's own missteps, and those of aide Roy Cohn, helped bring down his career and blacken his name. But only in recent decades has newly declassified intelligence information shown he was more or less on the right track.
It is important to remember the context of the times. The Soviets had ended any illusions about democracy in Eastern Europe. China had fallen to Mao. Manhattan Project spies had given the Russians the atomic bomb and in 1949 they detonated their first. The Korean War began in 1950. Communism was seeking to establish its influence in the developing world. The Cold War was heating up, the U.S. seemed to be losing, but meanwhile the Truman administration didn't seem to want to know about potential traitors in their midst.
Some of the best chapters here focus on historical context rather than McCarthy himself. Herman recreates the Popular Front days of the 1930s, when Communists successfully infiltrated many liberal organizations or duped liberals into joining Communist front groups. In the "Who Lost China?" debate, Communist-influenced diplomats tweaked U.S. policy to finish Chaing on Mao's behalf. And Herman renders a fine consideration of McCarthy's effect on politics between then and now, including the death and rebirth of conservatism, the death of the liberal establishment with the Vietnam War, and the Popular Front's rebirth as the New Left.
History reads quite differently from the liberal conventional wisdom when the then-secret Venona Decrypts or only-recently-availaible KGB files are factored in. Virtually no one McCarthy exposed was innocent. Today's conventional wisdom mistakenly regards Communist ties then as no more than an expression of dissent, a sympathy for the underdog. The CW fails to recognize that it was a lifelong commitment - more like being in the Mafia or a religious cult - where one swore fealty to a foreign and hostile power, created discord to destabilize one's own society, and sometimes aided spies and traitors.
Herman does not spare McCarthy's faults - his drinking, his judgment-impairing mania, his too-trusting reliance upon Cohn. He shows how McCarthy destroyed himself, such as his fit of pique during the televised Army vs. McCarthy hearings, where he reneged on a deal not to expose the Communist-front involvement of one of opposition counsel Joseph Welch's aides.
Those close to him knew the youngest senator was not the best person for this job. He was too raw, too impulsive and too unschooled in Washington's ways. But the way he saw it, no one else was doing it and the job needed to be done.
McCarthy became undeservedly vilified. No one went to jail because of him. He didn't kill anyone. Unlike dissidents in Communist states, those questioned by him were protected by due process of law and had legal counsel. McCarthy was performing quintessential Congressional oversight - shining the bright light of publicity on dark spots within the administration, to influence change through the bringing of social pressure. McCarthy often held closed hearings, when the publicity of open hearings would have helped him more, to protect witnesses or those they testified about from being smeared. His questioning style was tough but typical of a courtroom. And the government really did have Communists buried in its bowels, often with access to sensitive information, with an administration too often unwilling to act.
Herman highlights some amazing ironies of McCarthyism:
--The truest single victim of "McCarthyist attacks", someone railroaded and hounded to death in sham hearings, was McCarthy himself. Liberal journalists with little regard for the truth smeared him, and frequently.
--The executive privilege so loathed by liberals when Nixon claimed it during Watergate, was pioneered by Eisenhower expressly to stonewall McCarthy. That marked the beginning of "the imperial presidency" and decline of Congessional oversight which liberals particularly often decry - sentiments with which McCarthy himself actually agreed.
--Bobby Kennedy's well-received Congressional investigations of the Mafia and labor racketeering in the late 1950s used the identical tactics he had learned working for McCarthy, and for which McCarthy was condemned.
--The Kennedys were not only McCarthy allies, but refused to go along with the rest of Congress in abjuring him. John Kennedy scheduled surgery so that he would not be present for the vote to censure McCarthy, while Bobby discreetly attended McCarthy's funeral in Wisconsin.
--The New Left, born in 1962, was explicitly an attempt to revive Communist activity in the United States, minus the Soviet ties. The biggest purveyors of the "paranoid style" in American politics, a term often tied to McCarthy, has actually been the left, with its dark vision of a world dominated by a malign U.S. government and its all-powerful corporate allies.
This book is one of the major sources for Ann Coulter's bestselling "Treason". Coulter's polemics rouse her base but may alienate even the undecided. Herman's evenhanded tone and treatment of the subject matter, though, do credit to his work, which lends a measure of vindication to McCarthy's short but searing political career. He continues to be vilified today, through movies such as "Good Night and Good Luck". Hollywood wants to keep history's spotlight on McCarthyism, but you get the idea that's mostly to keep us from looking where our attention belongs - on what McCarthy sought to expose.
Terrific book March 3, 2006
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
Professor Herman does a great job in clarifying the real story of the so-called McCarthy era. Most books and movies rehash the same tired line: innocent Americans were persecuted by witch-hunting Congressional investigators. Herman shows that was not the case. As he points out, no one was deprived of legal counsel or of their Fifth Amendment rights. The McCarthy era was far more benign than the administrations of Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, where Americans were jailed by the thousands for speaking out against the government.
Herman makes a vital point: McCarthy was concerned only with investigating Communist subversions among government employees. He had nothing to do with the Hollywood investigations. Herman makes an even more important point, one that is the heart of his book. There was a massive infestation of Communists in the government. The Truman state department did a horrible job doing background checks on government employees. McCarthyism was not, as most historians have said, a withchunt against innocent liberals. There was a legitimate problem with Communist subversion, and McCarthy was destroyed for trying to do something about it.
Herman freely admits McCarthy made errors of judgment. He also points out McCarthy was often right. I wish more Americans would read this book. What people think they know just isn't so.
A much needed balanced account of Joe McCarthy and his "ism" October 1, 2005
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
"Received wisdom" places Senator Joseph R.McCarthy(1908-1957)only a few notches below the likes of Hitler and Stalin in the pantheon of great political villains of the twentieth century.The fabled "visiting Martian" might find this hard to understand.While Stalin,Hitler and co waded thru the blood of the millions of victims of their tyranny,Senator McCarthy never killed anyone,never started any wars,never even had anyone put in jail! He did once drunkenly assault columnist Drew Pearson in a tender spot though! The Martian would doubtless have his amazement compounded by the knowledge that McCarthy spent his career opposing communism,a despotic totalitarian political system,responsible for countless deaths and vicious oppression across the world,setting himself against those in his own country who sought to serve the interests of foreign communist regimes and who eagerly wished to overturn the US political system in favor of the communist one.
This biography by Arthur Herman,seeks to explain the "how and why" of Joe McCarthy,the man,his career,the political context in which he operated,and the Senator's legacy.This is a broadly sympathetic picture of the the Senator and his "crusade".The only similar pro-McCarthy biographies before Herman which I am aware of,are those by Joe's friends and colleagues-William F.Buckley and Brent Bozell(1954)and Roy Cohn(1968).Biographers who have tended to "have the floor" on McCarthy,are Richard Rovere(1959)and heavyweight writer Thomas C.Reeves(1982).The latters biography has probably been seen as the "standard" one up to now(admirers of the Reeves take on McCarthy might not be so pleased about his later demolition job biography of liberal icon Jack Kennedy!)
Herman has the advantage in having access to intelligence material de-classified in the US(especially the "Venona" documents),and the Soviet archives opened after the fall of communism.This allows a much fairer assessment of the period,and McCarthy's career,grounded in solid research.
Here we see that the so-called "Red scare" of the 40's and 50's,far from being based in unjustified hysterical paranoia,exploited by seedy political operators like McCarthy,Jenner,McCarran and co,was a response to a subversive threat which was all too real.Soviet spies and agents of influence-many directly in league with Russian intelligence, were working within the heart of the American political and cultural establishment,secretly promoting communism at home and overseas.It was indeed "a conspiracy so immense"(McCarthy's words),which had seen,for example,the widespread entry of communist agents into highly influential positions within Roosevelt's Democratic administration,often with access to classified material which they passed on to Moscow.Stalin was allowed to swallow up large chunks of "liberated" Europe,China fell to Mao and communist North Korea invaded the capitalist South-all this seemingly with US acquiescence.Those,such a Whittaker Chambers(a former communist agent),who had warned the authorities what was happening in their midst,were largely ignored or ridiculed by a complacent administration and a "liberal"leaning press.It was only when the revelations surfaced about Alger Hiss,that a reluctant establishment was forced to at least look seriously at the issue.However it was generally the "outsiders"-poiitical mavericks like Richard Nixon and J.Parnell Thomas of The Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) and Senators like McCarthy and William E.Jenner-who forced the issue to the forefront of politics.Many of the political and media elite found men like McCarthy "vulgar"-rowdy and unsympathetic.Unlike(say)the Soviet agent from Harvard,Alger Hiss,who they initially championed,farm boy Joe McCarthy was not "one of them".
The idea of a reign of terror by "redhunters" is seen to be a misleading exaggeration-in fact it was often more "respectable" and acceptable in many circles to be opposed to the likes of McCarthy than be for him-there was massive hostility in much of the press,and among the political and legal elite(though Joe did,of course have his cheerleaders too-notably in the Hearst papers and among veterans groups).The CBS TV network could still run a breathtakingly unbalanced attack on McCarthy by Ed Murrow on "See it now"(mythologized by Hollywood at the moment in "Goodnight and good luck"),at the height of "McCarthyism"(this term itself-significantly-was coined by McCarthy's target,the academic Owen Lattimore-a State Department advisor on China,who did much to promote the cause of the murderous maniac Mao and his communists in the United States)
Herman does not shrink from identifying McCarthy's faults and failings-he was a heavy drinker(it killed him),had a volatile temper,often didn't do adequate research,exaggerated,lied(which politician has not?),was a publicity hound who loved to be in the headlines,and was prone to serious errors of judgement(the biggest being over his blind faith in the Chief Counsel to his Senate Committee,Roy M.Cohn-this directly led to his downfall).But we are given a portrait here far removed from the one dimensional ogre of legend-McCarthy was basically kindly,he didn't tend to hold grudges(Drew Pearson excepted!),even when it came to his biggest political enemies like Secretary of State Dean Acheson(meeting Acheson in an elevator,McCarthy shot out his hand saying "Hi Dean!"-Acheson,coldly furious,stiffly ignored Joe,a reaction which left the Senator genuinely puzzled).His methods could be clumsy and his manner harsh(though no more than other government investigators in other areas),yet he was often right about his targets.In this context,Herman looks carefully at some of McCarthy's best known "victims" like George C. Marshall(so insouciant in allowing pro-communist advisors to guide him into effectively handing millions of Chinese to Mao),Owen Lattimore,Irving Peress and Annie Lee Moss.Even the notorious 1954 Army case(known as the "Army-McCarthy hearings")-which would destroy him politically and eventually personally-shows McCarthy was quite justified in launching his probe into Army "leaks",and came to grief thanks to his unreliable subordinates(especially Roy Cohn),his unfortunate television image and style(in contrast to his slippery unctious adversary,Army counsel Joseph Welch)and because he had taken on the massed ranks of a jittery political establishment(Democrat and Republican-including President Eisenhower),which finally decided to unite against him.
McCarthy's last years were a miserable record of political oblivion,heroic boozing(he became a hopeless alcoholic)and poor health.Ignored by the press(which was especially hard to take)and fair weather friends-only a few stuck by him such as Bill Jenner,Roy Cohn and notably Bobby Kennedy(who briefly worked for Joe and liked him)-McCarthy died of liver disease,still in his 40's.Yet when he passed away,even his inveterate enemy and victim Drew Pearson expressed genuine regret.
 McCarthy-"Misunderstood" Senator September 11, 2005
6 out of 32 found this review helpful
I have never read a biography of Joe McCarthy. Most of what I have always heard about him and his career has been quite negative (i.e. the blacklists, "commie" trials etc.) To be sure, Joseph McCarthy could not have been the only man involved in the blacklisting and destruction of so many reputations of politicians, artists, scientists etc. We would be giving McCarthy the man way too much credit (and from the book, it is clear that he was not all that capable.)
However, the book never looks at anything in McCarthy's career (beyond his work in the commitees investigating alleged members of the communist party or communist sympathizers.) As a man who was a senator (and supposedly working on behalf of his contituents in Wisconsin) one would think that there would be more. Mr. Herman does not discuss this. I would have liked to know what Joe McCarthy did, as a seator, for the people in the state of Wisconsin!!
In my opinion, Mr. Herman's book is a defense of Joe McCarthy, period. He does not write as an impartial observer, using the many primary and secondary sources as a historian should. There were many times in the course of the book where Mr. Herman seems to rant and interject his own subjective views about McCarthy or his era (i.e. page 90), rather than letting the evidence and his sources speak for themselves. In this way, the writing was disappointing.
Did I learn about Joe McCarthy and his era? Absolutely. However, Mr. Herman seems more desperate about getting his own conservative agenda across than writing a true and balanced history of that time.
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