WEBVTT - Joe McCarthy - Part 2: When Power Corrupts 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:11.280 Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome back 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.840 to part two of Joe McCarthy, who has rapidly risen 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.360 to the role of U S. Senator of Wisconsin. Initially 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.960 seen as a moderate Republican, his first few years as 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:26.119 senator were not especially remarkable. He was noted, however, for 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.360 being an excellent orator, but his reputation would soon change. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.960 I'm doctor Gale Salts, and this is Personology. My guest 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.519 again today is journalist and author Larry Tye, a New 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:43.280 York Times bestselling author and author of newly released Demagogue, 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:49.960 The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. We've 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.360 sort of talked about the groundwork as to why Joe 0:00:54.440 --> 0:01:01.480 McCarthy might have been the right person characteriologically to embark 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.760 on what he ultimately did. But there was also, you 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:07.800 have to say, somewhat of a right person at the 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:12.640 right time and right place. Right. So it so happened 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:19.240 that in during the Cold War Jitters rising Uh, the 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:23.800 House un American Activities Committee becomes a permanent House committee 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:28.520 having nothing to do with Joe McCarthy himself, so that 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:35.960 the idea of investigating communist subterfuge becomes a reality in 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.080 the Senate at that time, and concerns about the Cold 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:44.880 War means that the American public is very comfortable and 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:49.720 ready to buy into the concern that Communism has to 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.560 be ferreted out in any way possible. So I think 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:55.560 it goes back to the word opportunists, and there are 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.920 two sides to that word. One is recognizing the opportunity 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.320 and the other is willingness to exploit it. The opportunity 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:04.960 was there, and that we were I don't know what 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.000 kind of language I can use here, but we were 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.560 scared as heck in terms of what was going on 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:11.320 in the world. There was a real threat off in 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:15.000 the Soviet Union, and there was a real sense in 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.160 America that we could go to nuclear war and kids 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.680 would very shortly be taught on how to duck and 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.440 cover under their desks. That was the response if there 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.720 was a nuclear attack and the time was ripe for 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:31.880 somebody to come along. And John McCarthy brilliantly understood that fear, 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:36.919 and like any good opportunist or any good demagogue, knew 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:39.040 how to play for it, played to it, and he 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:43.240 played to it not with a realistic and sensible and 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:48.359 boring response He played to it with dynamism. He played 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:52.440 to it with dynamite. He played to it by saying 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.160 things that weren't true, but that he knew his listeners 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.680 would want to hear. And he understood that just saying 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.880 that there were maybe traders out there, Um, if you 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.320 did it in general terms, wasn't going to mean anything. 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:08.760 What you had to do was he had to name 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.000 the traders, and you had to count the traders. And 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:15.600 he knew how to, in a wild West kind of way, 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.000 go in and really shake things up. You know. He 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:24.840 stoked general paranoia, right, And of course, as the saying goes, 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:27.320 just because your paranoid doesn't mean you don't have enemies. 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:32.519 So we did have enemies, and people were fearful about that, 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:39.400 which does tend to ignite more paranoia because there's always 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:44.520 a kernel of seeds of truth there. And the question, 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:47.800 you know, so paranoid is a term that went along 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.560 with Joe McCarthy for for many years, uh following his 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:58.280 death even and the question is really whether we don't 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.080 see a lot of evidence of paranoia before this time, right, 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.600 we don't see him walking around supposing enemies all over 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.920 the place and being paranoid, which is interesting because when 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:14.200 someone has let's say, paranoid personality disorder, you would expect 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.840 to see it much earlier than this in their life. Uh, 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.479 It's it's true that a traumatic event can happen that 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:24.120 can change someone's trajectory and make them more paranoid. And 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.719 it's also true, and I think this does become a 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.080 question that substance use and abuse can also heighten a 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.839 person's paranoia. And so we do have to wonder whether 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.560 ultimately that comes to bear in terms of the degree 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.160 of paranoia that he seems to exhibit. But it does 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.800 seem at this juncture that it's more likely that, as 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:49.000 you said, he sees an opportunity, and he sees that 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:53.719 the general paranoia that can be ignited and inflamed can 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.960 be an avenue for him playing the role of rescuer 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.479 protector and therefore holding the power holding being the gatekeeper 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.839 and UM, and that's just that is very interesting. Whether 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:13.120 that ultimately later dovetails with his increasing drinking and as 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.159 we'll get to later, the use of other substances that 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.159 may have heightened his thoughts around this UM is also 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:26.120 something worth positing. But let's move as you said to UM, Really, 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.920 his launch into McCarthy is m like his launch into 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:36.440 this whole prosecutorial role. Yes, so I want to just 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.360 revisit paranoia for one second and we can come back 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.760 to this later. UM. I would say that while Um 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.119 he was often called a paranoid, especially in the early days, 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:50.440 UM he was anything, but he was playing to other 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.200 people's paranoia. But he was seeing things clearly, and he 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.559 knew that he didn't believe in what he was saying. 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.839 I'd love to take your listeners to a moment where 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:03.000 I think McCarthy is m was born, and that moment 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.960 was in February of nineteen fifty. There is a tradition 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.599 in Republican circles in America that the one night that 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:14.560 is best to raise money is when you are honoring 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:17.239 the birthday of the patron saint to the Republican Party, 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:22.120 Abe Lincoln, And they're famously called Lincoln Day dinners. And 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.320 if you're a prominent U. S. Senator, you get invited 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.920 to places like New York and Boston and San Francisco 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.599 and Chicago. If you're Joe McCarthy, the consummate backbencher who 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.320 looks like he's on his way to defeat. After one term, 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.719 you get invited to Wheeling, West Virginia, which is where 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.279 he gave the speech. That night, he shows up with 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.719 a briefcase with two speeches. One of them is a 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.560 snoozer of a speech on national housing policy that he 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.880 actually knew something about, and had he picked that speech 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.039 that night to deliver you and I seventy years later, 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.599 wouldn't be paying attention to Joe McCarthy. But instead he 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.360 grabbed the other speech in his briefcase, and that is 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.599 a speech on a subject that he knows arguably less 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.880 about than any other member of the U. S. Senate 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.400 in that year of nineteen fifty, and that's a speech 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:15.520 on the communist threat not in the Soviet Union, but 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.960 behind every pillar in the U. S. State Department. So 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:23.480 he grabs a sheaf of papers and he waves it 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.760 around like this in the air, saying, I have in 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.320 my hand the list of two hundred and five subversives 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:34.120 in the State Department, and I have the actual names, 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:37.520 and I know the jobs they have, and I'm going 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:41.160 to call on the government to route these people out. 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.400 And it was a passionate speech, and it was a 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.840 brilliant speech, and it was, as his fellow senators would 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.680 later conclude, a fraud in a hoax because a he 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.080 had I don't know what he had in his hand. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.840 His friends have speculated that it could have been that 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.400 day's racing sheet. But what it was it wasn't a 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:04.600 list of two hundred and five subversives in the government. 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:09.440 What it probably was was a list, a recycled list, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.520 based on the things that I saw in his archives, 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.880 a recycled list of the House on American Activities and 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:22.400 other early first generation Red hunters in America. Many of 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:26.960 the people who we actually had names of were people 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.000 who no longer worked for the State Department, or who 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:34.000 had had a sister or a brother in law, or 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:39.480 their own association with left wing activities twenty years before. 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.160 They were not Flaming spies. Most of the twenty four 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.360 Carrot spies had been rooted out long before Joe McCarthy 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.160 joined the hunt, most of the ones. When we got 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.160 to see the Russian archives, most of the spies who 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.520 were still there, Joe McCarthy wouldn't have recognized if he 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:58.960 had tripped over them in the dark on the way 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.520 to his speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. But what happened 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:06.160 two days after his speech was he was on page 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.880 one of every newspaper in America. He had the Truman 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.199 administration on the defensive, and he never turned back. That 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:16.960 was the moment where he realized this was the issue 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.679 that was going to bring him the limelight. And if 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.640 there was a moment where McCarthy ism was given birth, 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.160 it was in front of that audience of mine operators 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:30.719 and whoever else was there that night who didn't recognize 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.839 what was going on and didn't recognize for sure that 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.680 a crusade like we had not seen in a long 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:42.160 time in America was being born. You mentioned, who knows 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:44.320 what those papers were in his hand, Maybe they were 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.840 race sheets. I should mention that actually Joe McCarthy was 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.000 a gambler. He he liked to bet, He bet in 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.439 all kinds of ways, and and that's just important to 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.720 keep in mind. Well clearly that that night he bet 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.280 on himself and uh and one and the thrill of 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.800 the wind, whether we're talking about horse races or his 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:12.520 individual political races or you know, political moments, the reward 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:18.040 of that was addictive. I'm gonna I'm gonna say addictive 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:23.160 for Joe McCarthy. He had Um. You know, some people 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.560 from a neuro lot and from a neurological point of view, 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:30.040 are more susceptible to addiction than others. There is something 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.920 about their dopamine, the neurotransmitter dopamine of reward, that reward 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:40.080 system that is primed to take off and super reward. 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:43.840 Whether it's a gambling win, whether it's with substance use 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:48.240 and addiction to alcohol or drugs, or whether even it's 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.720 something like a political win. But the thing that gives 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:56.120 you that dopamine high is just irresistible. And that seemed 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.440 to be a really important feature that we see in 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:02.079 many different ways, the ways in which he was I'll 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.640 almost say a slave to his dopamine system, um, and 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.680 how that drove a lot of behaviors for him. But 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.760 upon this win this night, as you said, there was 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.800 no turning back. And it's interesting because from a concrete 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:19.000 point of view, you know, is there any evidence that 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.480 he wanted to be president, that he wanted to and 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.880 of the words move into into that position of power 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.560 or what was the end goal? So there was no 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:28.839 end goal, and that to me is one of the 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.440 fascinating things and it is reminiscent of what we see 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:33.679 maybe going on today. That the goal was to get 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.040 power and hold on to power. It was not what 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:38.080 you would do with it, whether he ever wanted to 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.640 be president. Every time he would deny it to one person, 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.720 he tells somebody else he did. I saw a wonderful 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.840 check that had never been cashed to the McCarthy for 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:52.920 President committee in his um personal papers. But I want 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:54.520 to just say one more thing about the addiction. You 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.600 talked about it compellingly from a mental health point of view. 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:01.760 I want to say that in later years, when McCarthy 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:05.959 went after not just communists, but he went after gays 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:09.520 and lesbians in government, he said that the reason he 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:14.240 was doing that was because they're being closeted where their 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:21.360 sexual orientation made them vulnerable to blackmail by Soviet operatives. 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:26.240 I think Joe McCarthy's addictions made him vulnerable. His gambling 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.360 addiction is what he was doing with his money, his 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:33.319 alcohol consumption, all of those are things that made him 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.440 more vulnerable than all the people he was targeting for 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:41.520 their alleged vulnerabilities. And it is one more way where 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.760 we see hypocrisy defining what he did. But that's another 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.240 element I think of opportunism, well, hypocrisy, but what I 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:54.439 would call projection, right, these things within himself. Um, I mean, 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:58.200 he was the one being the bad guy, He was 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:03.319 the one lying, He was the one destroying other people's lives, 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.120 and he projected all of this out and including as 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:11.080 you said, the addictions and the self destructive and and 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:15.600 stigmatized behaviors that he was committing. All of this was 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.880 projected out. It's I'm not the problem. Other people are 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.319 the problem, right. Other people are the spies, the bad guys, 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.920 the self destructive guys, the stigmatized guys, and and that 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.439 was a huge part of his m O. I guess 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:33.640 I'll say that he that he needed to project all 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.120 these things outward and he but at the same time, sadly, 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.040 for many other people in this country. Again, his moral 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.840 compass didn't seem to make him sympathetic at all or 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.840 empathetic at all in terms of destroying other people's lives. 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:52.679 He was sympathetic and empathetic only when he was going 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:54.719 out for the drink after he had destroyed them during 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:56.120 the day, and when he was taking him out and 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:59.560 being their buddy afterwards. He was a bit empathetic. But 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:04.200 in terms of the randomness of this whole um launch 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.640 of McCarthy is um, I want to just it is 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.920 partly fatuous, but I also think it partly suggests how 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.240 random the whole thing was. One of the many ways 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:16.640 his numbers that first week kept changing between especially two 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.520 numbers two communists or fifty seven, and the fifty seven, 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.600 it was suggested, could have come he was a big 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.320 Hamburger eater, and it suggested that he might have gone 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.640 in and used Hines fifty seven sauce and that number 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.760 stuck in his mind. And that wouldn't surprise me because 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.880 the numbers didn't mean much of anything, and it could 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:41.000 have come from anywhere. Let's take a quick break here. 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:56.760 We'll be back in a moment, bed bed bedding. It 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:59.960 is important for people to understand it was not unusual 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.120 will for him to have a multi drink lunch, um 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.520 to show up on the floor after lunch appearing drunk, 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.560 to show up the next day in the Senate appearing hungover, 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:18.400 and um somewhere in this time period became this really 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:23.960 unfathomable story that it seemed he was probably at some 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.520 point started to use opiates. It may have started because 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.520 he he was prescribed them for pain. He had a 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:33.000 lot of accidents, he broke a bone or or something 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.640 like that. Um it may have started because he had 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:39.280 terrible hangovers the next day and was looking for some relief. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:45.720 But UM, the story of the secrecy of his addiction, 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:49.400 the discovery by the head of the Federal Bureau of 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:54.720 Narcotics and his the the Federal Bureau of Narcotics being 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:59.920 convinced that they basically had to maintain his habit UH 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:04.760 to somehow protect the world or protect his ongoing crusade 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:12.480 against communism, provided him ongoing morphine via a Washington, d c. 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:17.800 Pharmacy and the impact of that secret because you have 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:22.160 to understand that if you think drug use and alcohol 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.520 use or substance abuse is stigmatized today, which it is 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.440 a deeply, deeply stigmatized and not understood really as an illness, 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.760 the degree to which it was stigmatized in the nineteen 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:37.080 fifties is UH today pales in comparison. So I want 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.960 to push back a little bit. So what you said 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:44.800 about the morphine addiction, the opioid addiction UM was reported 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:49.200 in the newspapers, and it was in an unnamed way 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.920 by the guy who ran the drug agency, and Slinger 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.400 was his name. UM. He indicated that there was an 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.080 unnamed senior politician who this happened to, when everybody presumed 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.360 and it may have been that he was referring to McCarthy. 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:05.720 The pushback on that as I want to be fair 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.240 to him. There's enough that we know about what he 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:13.160 did that that would have shown up, I think given 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:17.880 the way his alcohol addiction did in his exhaustive records, 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:21.760 thousands of pages of records UM from Bethesda Naval Hospital. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.560 And I didn't trust who am I a an old 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.400 health reporter to sit down and try to make sense 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.080 of that and whether there was really any sign of 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:31.679 addiction there. So I sat down with three doctors, one 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:34.520 of whom had just stepped down as dean of Harvard Medical, 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.800 A second was the editor in chief emeritus of New 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.359 England Journal, and the third was an expert on a 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:44.960 lot of the areas that McCarthy had suffered various medical woes. 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.360 And we actually there were four doctors and we sat 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.720 down and looked through every one of those pages, and 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.720 there was no evidence in his medical records. That doesn't 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.680 mean that he wasn't addicted, but it was no evidence 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:04.280 of that addiction. There was a jolting and upsetting set 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:10.000 of evidence of his alcohol addiction, and it was there 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.159 at an early stage from the moment that he was 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:19.520 condemned by his fellow senators. That alcohol consumption was quantified 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:23.359 in the records. And the only surprise to me is 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:25.920 that he lived as long as he did drinking that 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.000 much in the later years. But one of the interesting 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:33.320 things we now have access to all of the nine 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.840 thousand pages of transcripts of McCarthy's closed door hearings, two 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.760 thirds of his hearings were behind closed doors. He thought 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.080 that they would never become public, and they showed Joe 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.719 McCarthy unhinged when he thought nobody was watching. And one 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.120 of the many interesting things to me in those hearings, 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.919 it wasn't just how he abused the rights of witnesses 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:59.000 and how somebody who appeared before him in a private 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.879 closed door session that was used as a staging ground 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:04.720 to see whether they wanted to bring him before the 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:07.359 public and if they were too good a witness, meaning 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.040 if they fought back effectively. They never showed up in 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:12.240 the public hearings. It was only the ones that he 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.360 knew that he could get the better of. But another thing, 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.119 and it may be my looking for it, but I 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.640 don't think so. His demeanor changed from the morning sessions, 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.879 where I think he was sober, to the afternoon sessions, 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:30.880 where his fuse became shorter. He gave longer diet tribes 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.080 of speeches, and I think it was for two reasons. 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:39.679 I think one, his standard lunch was a burger, a 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.640 raw onion, and whiskey, and I think he had had 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:46.240 enough whiskey at lunch that he lost his temper more 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:48.920 quickly in the afternoon. But the other thing that I'm 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.720 intrigued about from his medical records is he had hemorrhoids. 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.000 And it may just have been if you sit for 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:59.000 two hours, the hemorrhoids are controllable. You start looking nasty 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.640 after four or five, have a six hours Okay, So 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:07.480 that's interesting. Well, certainly chronic pain of any sort could 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:11.399 definitely shorten your fuse, no question about it. And we 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:15.960 have to wonder why he went from really being I 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:20.240 guess we'd have to argue quite successful in his pursuits right, 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:24.000 in his effect and in his acruement of power in 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:28.439 terms of inflicting McCarthy ism on the on the nation 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:34.840 to to ultimately creating his own downfall by going for 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.119 the military, for going going at the army. And that 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:44.720 seems like such a clear, uh self destructive maneuver, I guess, 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:49.600 I'll say, or a very very poor decision that we 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:53.680 have to wonder what what was instrumental in that decision 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:57.000 for him that ultimately brought his downfall. So I think 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.920 what happened to Joe McCarthy is he began his crisis 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.159 sight of McCarthy is um with that accidental delivery of 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:06.080 a speech that he never knew was going to take 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.640 off in that way. And he knew in those early 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:12.720 days when he was raising those charges that he was 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.000 being an opportunist and that he didn't have to believe 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:19.440 in the things. I think over time, something strange happened 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:22.600 that he started to believe his own rhetoric in early 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:28.680 nineteen fifty four. By the time he took on the military, 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:31.840 he had failed to see that he was overstepping that 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.960 you could bully people in the State Department, you could 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.159 get away with it at the Voice of America, you 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:39.600 could get away with it in the government printing office 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.640 because nobody particularly knew who those people were or cared 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.200 much about them. But there was an institution in America 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.520 that was too big to bully. That was the U. S. Army. 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.240 That was also the moment when he did that, that 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.919 not just the army eventually developed a backbone and taking 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:00.520 him on, but our commander in chief, the one person 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:04.920 in America more popular than Joe McCarthy, This former war 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:10.480 hero Dwight Eisenhower, finally understood that the army was something 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:12.960 he wasn't going to let McCarthy get away with bullying. 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:18.520 He understood that McCarthy was overstepping, and Joe McCarthy went 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.040 one step further. Had he not done that, he could 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.360 have gone on for years. But I also think what happened. 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.840 We look at his poll numbers and when he took 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:32.400 on the Army, the U. S. Senate, his old sub 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.320 committee ended up running what was the most famous set 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.760 of hearings ever run. They were called the Army McCarthy Hearings. 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:41.320 At the start of those hearings, Joe McCarthy was at 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:45.800 a full fifty percent popularity. The gallop Poles said one 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:48.600 in every two Americans thought he was doing a great job. 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:51.639 By the end of those hearings in the summer of 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:56.320 nineteen fifty four, his numbers had gone from fifty down 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:00.560 to thirty. And anybody who's old enough to member those 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:05.240 hearings remembers one magical moment where a very smart, Harvard 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:09.240 trained lawyer from Boston named Joe Welch stood up and 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:13.760 said when McCarthy went after Welch's young associate and said 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:17.119 that he had been affiliated with a left wing legal group, 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:22.480 Joe Welch famously said, Senator, have you no decency? Well, 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.320 the truth is that was not the magical moment, and 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:27.800 the truth is Joe Welch had been waiting during the 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:31.160 entire hearings. He was a performer as well as a lawyer. 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:34.399 He had concocted that line and he was waiting for 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:37.560 a magical moment to deliver it. He picked a great moment. 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:41.520 But the moment only worked because I think Americans had 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:44.400 been watching this guy, who they thought was their hero, 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.760 look more like the schoolyard bully on public television, and 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.760 they wanted to ask, Senator, have you no decency? And 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:58.119 so that line crystallized the question America had on its mind. 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:02.760 It showed the power of television to take a guy 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:07.000 who was a schoolyard bully and make him look that 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:10.879 way to the American public. And my book begins with 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.439 the line, this is a book about America's love affair 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:18.680 with bullies. But I also think that American knows when 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:22.040 a bully is really going too far and it will 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:26.480 part company. So I wrote a book in part about 0:24:26.520 --> 0:24:30.239 one of the darkest chapters in American history. But I 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:34.080 think there is ultimately a very uplifting message of this 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:39.640 book and the book. The message is in American history 0:24:40.040 --> 0:24:44.639 with our uniquely American strain of demagogues, from Huey Long 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:51.040 and the Jew baiting radio preacher Father Charles Coglin to 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:56.600 Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump. The lesson is that give 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:59.520 a demagogue enough rope and they will hang themselves. And 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:03.399 is part of the hanging that the overreach for power, 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:08.000 the displaying who you really are inside, and people finally 0:25:08.040 --> 0:25:11.440 being able to grasp that. What what is the lesson 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:17.840 that we can we can learn today about ultimately? You know, 0:25:18.040 --> 0:25:21.160 is it the doer or the dewey that ultimately catches 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:25.439 on to the demagoguery. Great question, It's both. I believe 0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:27.920 two things about the American people. I believe we are 0:25:28.000 --> 0:25:33.440 more naive and susceptible to bullying into demagoguery than we 0:25:33.480 --> 0:25:37.359 think about ourselves, because we've shown it repeatedly, you know, 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:42.439 George Wallace, the lots of people who we've bought into. 0:25:43.119 --> 0:25:47.520