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What brought about the downfall of McCarthy?
Between 1950 and 1954 Joseph McCarthy whipped America into anti-communist fervour. Dwight D. Eisenhower vehemently disliked McCarthy, though he refused to engage in his slanderous games of paranoia. Once in office Eisenhower never publicly stood up to the Senator but instead tried to thwart McCarthy behind the scenes, so to speak. This approach as criticised severely as being “at best ineffectual and at worst cowardly.”
McCarthy charged that the H-bomb had been held up because of ‘reds in government’. At that time the administration were undertaking a secret investigation of scientist Oppenheimer. Eisenhower feared McCarthy’s involvement in the case would create the impression all scientists were perfidious and thus ruin the America’s defence program. Had to get him out.
Army-McCarthy hearings – A lawyer on McCarthy’s subcommittee ‘G.David Schine’ was drafted into the army. Stories began to spread in the press that Cohn, a fellow lawyer on the subcommittee had put pressure on army officers to make life easier for Schine. McCarthy responded through claiming the army was attempting to force him to call off his exposure of communists in the military. Deeply embarrassed and sensing McCarthy had to go, decided to hold meetings carried out on live television.
Joseph Welch acted as the army’s special counsel. The hearings opened in the Senate Caucus Room on April 22, 1954, the proceedings lasted 35 days and the television audience was estimated to be as high as 20 million.
At first McCarthy seemed invincible. But Joseph Welch, army counsel, had “a rapier wit[which] repeatedly drew blood.” When he stated to ask McCarthy questions that he couldn’t answer, the impression was given that the senator was just as duplicitous as the communists. Meanwhile the audience were warming more and more to Welch’s dignified manner. In a desperate attempt to get back into favour, McCarthy informed the room that Welch’s law firm had been employing a former member of the communist party, Fred Fisher.
When McCarthy tried to smear Fisher Welch exploded, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.
Have you no decency at long last?” When the audience burst into applause the confused, skulking Senator was reduced to whispering “What did I do?” Newspaper headlines celebrated the defeat of ‘cruelty by ‘decency’.
McCarthy had been exposed as a demagogue and a fanatic. The question was proposed to censure McCarthy. In November 1954, the senator was censured by a vote of 64 to 23.
Eisenhower joked “McCarthyism had become McCarthywasm.”
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· American Studies UWA ·