This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: ChgoKid Surnames: Classification: biography Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.wisconsin.counties.shawano/16978/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Joseph Raymond McCarthy 1908-1957 Birth: November 14, 1908 in Wisconsin, United States Death: May 2, 1957 Occupation: Senator Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 6: 1956-1960. American Council of Learned Societies, 1980. TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY McCarthy, Joseph Raymond (Nov. 14, 1908 - May 2, 1957), United States senator, was born in Grand Chute, Wis., the son of Timothy Thomas McCarthy, a farmer, and Bridget Tierney. He grew up on a farm located in the "Irish settlement" outside Appleton, Wis. Later the family moved to another farm near Manawa, Wis. He received a rudimentary education in a one-room country school and then worked on the family farm until early 1929, when he moved to Manawa to manage a grocery store. In the autumn of 1929 he entered Little Wolf High School in Manawa, and with the aid of the principal completed the four-year curriculum in one year. He enrolled at Marquette University in 1930, and graduated with an LL.B. in 1935. After admission to the Wisconsin bar, he practiced in Waupaca and, later, in Shawano. In 1936, McCarthy ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the post of district attorney of Shawano County. Three years later he again sought election, this time as judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit in Wisconsin, a nominally nonpartisan post for which no party declaration was required. He campaigned hard and succeeded in unseating the incumbent, a veteran of twenty-four years on the court. McCarthy's tenure as judge, like much of his later career, was riddled with controversy; at one point he was reprimanded by the Wisconsin Supreme Court for "highly improper" trial procedures. Nevertheless, he was reelected in 1945. In July 1942, McCarthy took temporary leave from his judicial duties and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the marine corps. He served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific for more than a year before returning to the United States in July 1944. He was relieved from active duty, at his own request, on Feb. 20, 1945, and resigned his commission effective Mar. 29, 1945. McCarthy later inflated his military record by claiming that he had enlisted as a "buck private," that he had served as a tail gunner, and that he had been wounded in action. In 1944, while still on active duty, McCarthy returned briefly to Wisconsin in order to run for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate, but was easily defeated by the incumbent, Alexander Wiley. Two years later he again sought the Republican nomination, this time challenging Robert M. La Follette, Jr., a veteran of more than twenty years in the Senate. Supported by the powerful and conservative Republican Voluntary Committee, McCarthy campaigned aggressively and won a narrow victory. In the November general election he stressed his opposition to farm price controls, national health care and New Deal "bureaucracy," and branded his Democratic opponent as "communistically inclined." He was easily elected. In the Senate, McCarthy generally voted with the conservatives, opposing most social welfare programs though supporting, with reservations, the bipartisan foreign policies of the Truman administration. As one of the "meat shortage boys," as those Republicans elected in the resounding victory by their party in 1946 were sometimes called, he voted against price, rent, and credit controls and in favor of tax reductions. He drew sharp criticism for his close ties with real estate lobbyists, and his support for the soft drink industry campaign to decontrol sugar led reporters to dub him the "Pepsi Cola Kid." McCarthy's Senate career was principally distinguished by his sharp, frequently personal attacks on other senators and by his continual violation of Senate tradition and etiquette. By 1949 he had incurred the displeasure of powerful senators in both parties who considered him an upstart and a troublemaker. McCarthy emerged from this undistinguished obscurity on Feb. 9, 1950, following an address in Wheeling, W. Va., in which he charged that Communists in the State Department were shaping American foreign policy. His accusations were scarcely original. Indeed, much of his speech had been lifted verbatim from earlier attacks on the Roosevelt and Truman administrations by conservative Republicans and Democrats. The timing of the address--less than three weeks after the conviction of Alger Hiss-together with McCarthy's flamboyant and exaggerated claims that he had the documentation to prove his charges, produced sensational headlines and catapulted him into sudden (and unexpected) prominence. A congressional investigation chaired by Democratic Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland found no evidence to substantiate McCarthy's accusations, but failed to diminish his influence or notoriety. Indeed, the hearings attracted widespread publicity and served to rally support among conservatives for McCarthy's scathing attacks on the Truman administration. Although he was by no means the first or only politician to charge prominent Democrats with appeasement and disloyalty, McCarthy was undoubtedly the most daring and reckless of those who did so. The term "McCarthyism" rapidly became synonymous with the charge of Communism in government. He campaigned extensively on behalf of fellow Republicans in 1950 and in 1952, and he was widely, if inaccurately, credited with the election of more than a dozen senators and with the defeat of such Democratic opponents as Tydings and William Benton of Connecticut. McCarthy was reelected in 1952 by a large margin, although he ran far behin! d Dwight D. Eisenhower and other Republicans in Wisconsin. When the Republicans organized the 83rd Congress in 1953, McCarthy became chairman of both the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its investigative arm, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He quickly launched a series of investigations ostensibly designed to document his charges of Communism in government. Although these investigations produced little evidence of wrongdoing, they stirred up enormous amounts of controversy and publicity. They also brought McCarthy into growing conflict with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had supported the senator in the heat of the 1952 campaign but now sought to dissassociate himself and his administration from McCarthy's tactics. McCarthy's last investigation, into alleged subversion in the army, aroused the wrath of many military leaders and contributed, indirectly, to his sudden political demise. The army, in an effort to descredit McCarthy, charged that he and the chief counsel of the committee, Roy Cohn, had sought to obtain special privileges for G. David Schine, a young committee aide who had been drafted. McCarthy responded by countercharging that the army was holding Schine "hostage" in order to halt his investigation. The hearings into these and related charges, conducted before a television audience estimated at 20 million viewers, lasted from April to June 1954 and, together with McCarthy's increasingly sharp attacks on the Eisenhower administration, served to erode support for the senator among Republican party leaders and the public at large. On June 11, 1954, Republican Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont introduced a resolution calling for McCarthy's censure; and on Dec. 2, following len! gthy hearings and debate, the Senate voted 67-22 to condemn McCarthy for behavior that was "contemptuous, contumacious, and denunciatory" and obstructive of the legislative process. McCarthy's last years were spent in relative obscurity. He was largely ignored by the White House, by his fellow senators, and by the press. There was time now for a private life--he had married Jean Fraser Kerr, a long-time member of his staff, on Sept. 29, 1953, and in 1957 they adopted a daughter. But these years were marked by illness and heavy drinking. He died at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Md. As a child McCarthy had been withdrawn and insecure, shunning strangers and clinging fearfully to his mother. As an adult he was loud and aggressive, submerging whatever insecurities he may still have felt in frenetic displays of energy and assertiveness. His political style was crude but, in the context of the early 1950's, startlingly effective. He had an unparalleled talent for political invective, a flair for self-dramatization, and a willingness to lie so flagrantly and consistently that one critic credited him with the invention of a new technique of propaganda: the "multiple untruth." He was extremely combative and, perhaps because of an inner sense of desperation, stubbornly unwilling to retreat. "One should play poker with him to really know him," wrote a friend. "He raises on the poor hands and always comes out the winner." McCarthy's influence and notoriety owed less to his personality and style than to the transformation of American politics wrought by the cold war. Since 1947 the Truman administration had been emphasizing the menace of Soviet Communism in an attempt to win public support for the new diplomacy of containment. Conservative critics of the administration took an even more belligerent position, condemning the Democrats for their "softness" on Communism at home and abroad. The conservative attack on the Truman administration intensified following the victory of the Communists in China, the arrest of men and women accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. By 1950 the targets of such charges included even such staunch anti-Communists as Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall. McCarthy's real triumph following his Wheeling address lay in identifying himself so completely with the issues generated by this attack. Restraining him thereafter became immensely complicated. Republicans generally endorsed his assaults on the Truman administration, although with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Democrats, fearful of being labeled pro-Communist, sought to undercut his appeal by stressing their own fervent anti-Communism. McCarthy's influence declined rapidly after 1953, partly because of the moderation in international tensions produced by the Korean armistice and partly because the election of a Republican administration removed much of the partisan rationale of his attacks on the Democrats. He contributed to his own downfall by attacking the Eisenhower administration. Even in condemning him, the Senate avoided the issues on which he had built his career, choosing instead to censure him for conduct "contrary to senatorial traditions." Although McCarthy was more the product than the cause of the second great "red scare" in America, he symbolized, more than any other person, the political extremism of the era. His legacy, and the legacy of all those who contributed to the strident politics he represented, included the erosion of civil liberties, the restriction of dissent, and a foreign policy of reflexive anti-Communism. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.