[70 years ago this week, the Senate voted to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, a key final step in the downfall of that domineering and divisive demagogue. So in this series I’ll AmericanStudy a few layers to McCarthy’s America, leading up to a weekend post on his and the moment’s modern echoes.]
On a series
of quotes that reflect the histories and figures at the end of the December
1954 censure vote.
1)
“Contrary to senatorial traditions”: By the spring
of 1954 McCarthy had been bullying and blustering his way through countless Senate
hearings, but his April hearings
on the U.S. Army still represented an escalation of those actions and
attitudes. And one that prompted a striking response from one of his Senate and
party colleagues: on July 30th, Senator
Ralph Flanders (R-VT) introduced a censure
resolution against McCarthy, arguing that his actions ran “contrary to
senatorial traditions.” The Senate has always been a body divided between its
ideals and its realities, as reflected by the
history of the filibuster for example; but clearly McCarthy’s ugly
realities had finally become too much to bear by mid-1954, and the unusual step
of a censure debate illustrates that shift.
2)
“A lynch party”: On August 2nd, the
Senate convened a bipartisan
select committee, chaired by Senator Arthur V.
Watkins (R-UT) and featuring three Senators total from each party, to investigate
Flanders’ resolution and the censure charges and report back to the entire
body. Throughout their months of work McCarthy was as aggressive and hostile of
a colleague as we would expect, building to an extended debate in November
during which McCarthy called
the entire investigation “a lynch party.” I’m not sure I need to say anything
else about what that quote reveals about this man and his perspective, do I?
3)
“Dishonor and Disrepute” vs. “Dignity”: In response
to McCarthy’s attacks, Senator
Watkins delivered a speech on the Senate floor defending the “dignity” of
the body. And when the Senate voted
on December 2nd, 1954 to accept the committee’s recommendation
and censure McCarthy, they continued to use that term and contrasted it with
two others, arguing that McCarthy had “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and
tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional
processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity.” Whatever we might say
about the real vs. ideal histories of this body, there’s no doubt that this
unusual senatorial action reflected just how far and how low McCarthy had gone—a
lesson, as I’ll argue this weekend, we would do well to heed.
Special
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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