♪ ♪ AL SPIVAK:
Everywhere you turned-- in the evening and morning
newspapers, on television news, on radio news-- Joe McCarthy was the
main story of the day. SAM TANENHAUS:
Joe McCarthy was one figure who came along
and turned anti-communism into something bigger
and more dangerous than anyone else ever imagined. He was the demagogue
of American anti-communism. He wasn't the inventor of it. One communist on the faculty of one university is
one communist too many. (crowd cheering and applauding) DONALD RITCHIE:
McCarthy is a person who, for what he thought were
the right reasons, did all the wrong things. Even if there were
only one communist in the State Department, that would still be
one communist too many. (cheering) RITCHIE:
And really inflicted
a great deal of pain and anguish on individuals,
but on the society as a whole. (bangs gavel) You-you will answer
the question. TIM NAFTALI:
There are moments
in American history when the country is afraid, when there is a threat
that is hard to define, and it's in those periods
that demagogues arise. We don't always show
the best of ourselves when we're afraid. McCarthy tested the system, and the institutions
that should have stopped him didn't-- for a while. Answer that, yes or no,
do you know this man? JELANI COBB:
McCarthyism represented
a cyclical phenomenon in American life. If we look at that dynamic
that has been connected to the junior senator
from Wisconsin, it's a dynamic that has a
particular kind of resilience in American life. And so there is a question as to whether the spirit
that animated McCarthy and animated McCarthyism
has ever really gone anywhere. ♪ ♪ (indistinct chattering) ♪ ♪ ELLEN SCHRECKER:
Every Lincoln's birthday, the Republican Party holds
its special Lincoln Day dinners addressed by a major politician,
if they can get one. ♪ ♪ DAVID OSHINSKY:
As Republicans are celebrating
in 1950, their big guns are being sent
to Chicago and New York and Los Angeles. And you can get an idea of what Joe McCarthy's status
at that moment was that they sent him
to the Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. OSHINSKY:
And no offense
to Wheeling, West Virginia, the person who gets sent there
to talk is the person at
the bottom of the totem pole. Joe McCarthy's Senate career
from 1946 until 1950 is one of repeated failure. No one is expecting him
to win reelection. So, what is
most extraordinary here is that
the most important speech, in some ways, of that generation
is given in a place where there is a sense
by the people who sent him there that nobody really cares
what he has to say or is going to listen very hard. COBB:
The expectation was that McCarthy was going to give
a standard, boilerplate speech that you give to, you know,
a Republican constituency. In Wheeling, West Virginia, they really weren't sending him
there to make headlines. He comes out and says that there are 205 communists
in the State Department. Well, that's electrifying. It's so electrifying that
people are almost distracted from the question
of who these communists are, whether they actually exist, why does McCarthy know this
and other people don't. OSHINSKY:
It's, in a way,
a kind of brilliant speech. "We are the most powerful
country in the world. "We're the most influential
country in the world. "And yet we're losing
everywhere. "We're losing in Asia. "We're losing in Europe. "We're losing technologically
now to the Soviets. How do we explain this?" And what McCarthy does in
Wheeling is to explain it by waving a list, saying, "We are being sold out
by traitors." (propeller droning) TANENHAUS:
Joe McCarthy is travelling
through the United States on his Lincoln Day tour, and reporters
keep coming up to him, saying, "Joe, do you really have
the numbers? Are there really
that many communists?" And Joe would say,
"Well, you know, "let me go through my papers. I think we've got
some names for you." He realized
he had a thing going. He'd found his shtick at last. ♪ ♪ RITCHIE:
He called back to his office, and he asked his secretary,
"Are we getting any publicity?" And she said, "We're getting
a lot of publicity." His secretary described him
as being almost intoxicated with the joy and excitement of getting this much attention
for a story. ♪ ♪ OSHINSKY:
What is really interesting
about Wheeling is that it takes a while
for it to sink in. Once the attention starts
to mount, the public really began
to sort of link onto the fact that,
"Oh, my God, "this guy has done his research. "This guy has names,
this guy has numbers. "He has really gone in "and scrupulously looked
for information. He's doing research." McCarthy had no list
in his hand. He had nothing in his hand. It was a fraud. (chickens clucking) McCARTHY:
I often think of the days
I spent back on the farm. As a small boy,
I had three brothers. My mother used to raise chickens to help pay the grocery bills
and get her Christmas money. And one of the jobs I had
with my three brothers was to go down into the swamps
and dig out the skunks that used to come up
and kill our baby chickens. You learn early in life
that you don't go skunk hunting with striped trousers, a silk
handkerchief, and a top hat. You just can't do it. (audience laughs, applauds) (horse whinnying) SCHRECKER:
Joseph McCarthy was born
on November 14, 1908, outside Appleton, Wisconsin. He came from a real
working-class farm family. He is this tough guy who pulled himself up
completely on his own. (cows mooing) DOLLY McCARTHY PLESSER:
His farm was about a mile and
a half from my father's farm. What was raised on the farm
was mostly milk cows. He had a very good mind, and when he got set
on something, he went through it, and he worked hard
at what he was doing. ♪ ♪ He graduated from high school
in one year. And after that, I guess
there was no stopping him. His family, I think,
were very proud of him, and the other boys were kind of
left in the shadows after Joe started out like that. ♪ ♪
