Adlai McCarthy Nixon
1-6-1954: But while Senator McCarthy denied any shift in emphasis from Communism to other investigating fields, he did say that Communist issues would not predominat in the next two major investigations he had planned for this year. The next big inquiry, he said, will be of “disturbing” tax settlements made during the Truman Administration. Another, which he refused to identify, will deal with graft, inefficiencies, corruption, and mismanagement with Communism as a minor element, he declared. That one will not be ready for hearings for another six months.
“Just before the elections?” a reporter asked. “You go to Hell,” Senator McCarthy replied with a broad grin. […]
But while Senator McCarthy denied reports that Senator John McClellan, Democrat of Arkansas, was considering reintroducing a five-year old resolution to create a joint House-Senate committee to deal with subversion in place of the three committees now handling the problem: “I have too much respect for McClellan to think he’d be the tool of left-wing elements of his party.” Asked why a joint committee would play into the hands of “left wing elements”: “That’s too obvious to require an answer.”
1-23: The strategy of Democratic leadership in the Senate is to avoid a major clash with Senator McCarthy and allow public attention to focus on the decline in farm prices, the rise in unemployment, and other “pocketbook” issues. On this basis the Democrats figure to win the November election, but it has lead them into an awkward conflict between politics and principles. In private they are the bravest drawing room critics of McCarthy in the city, but in public they say very little and are remarkably casual about their responsibilities as minority representatives of McCarthy’s Permanent SubCommittee on Investigation. […]
They walked out of the subcommittee last July in protest against McCarthy’s dictatorial administration of the committee and they are still out, though they have not carried their complaints to the floor of the Senate, and all three [Democratic Senators of the Subcommittee] have recently voted in favor of giving McCarthy another $200,000 to cary on his work for another year.
2-6-1954: Senator McCarthy called the Democrats “the party of communism, betrayal, and treason” in a fiery speech before McComb County Republicans tonight. He appealed to “all good Democrats to desert the ‘party of betrayal’ and join the Republicans to do the job which is so far from completed.” The Senator linked what he called the “ADAers” and “Adlaiers” […] “Decent Democrats have repudiated ADA because it so often parrots the Communist line.”
[I assume you remember from your history books, or a few blog entries back, that Adlai Stevenson gave a speech calling the Republicans “half Eisenhower — half McCarthy” — a description that describes Richard Nixon perfectly, actually. Consider “McCarthyism” as — at base — the issue of “National Security”, and understand the nature of historical dejavu. As per: Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado sayeth “[Feingold] has time and time again taken on the side of the terrorists that we are dealing with in this conflict.”]
3-7: Some of the leaders attending the dinner expressed privately their belief that Mr. Stevenson’s speech contained political elements for a “parting of the way” among those Democrats who differ strongly on the technique for leveling criticism at the Eisenhower Administration. […] Some Democrats, notably in the South, are said to prefer to base the 1954 and 1956 campaigns on issues other than Senator McCarthy.
3-9: The Senate Democrats dew together today in support of policies that forecast an attempt by them to fight the coming Congressional Campaign almost wholly on economic issues. […] In their first caucus, the Senate Democrats made no move in support of the apparent decision by Adlai Stevenson to make “McCarthyism” and Eisenhower’s alleged tolerance of it a major issue in the fall. […] Instead, they took up a series of positions, sometimes loosely defined, that amounted to an effort to appeal to large farmer and consumer groups.
For what it’s worth, the History books tell us that once Nixon gave the response regarding McCarthy (and the big brohaha was that Eisenhower tapped Nixon to give the “equal time” response and snubbed McCarthy in the process), McCarthy faded into history. The newspaper accounts of the time tell us that Nixon then proceeded, through the Autumn mid-term elections, to call every Democratic Candidate and high profile Politician a traitor and a Communist. Curiously, Nixon was the most powerful vice-president in history up to that point… this since been by-passed by Mondale, Bush I, Gore, and especially Cheney… All this means is that the President of the United States started to give a role and have their vice-president do stuff. Nixon’s role was political hatchet man, so that Eisenhower could remain above the fray. The Demise of McCarthy was simply a passing of the baton on title of Chief-Hatchet Man.
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howie – Adlai the Unusual… I did not vote for him because I thought him to be some kind of mishmosh mouthed nothing. I believe that may have been the first time I ever used the term “an empty suit”, certainly not an original with me but it fit so well I believe I used it in something I wrote at the time. I have to agree with you on the Sainted Adlai, I don’t know what he was either. I do remember the boys in Poly Sci thought he was the best thing to come along since Pepsi Cola, though. His GREATNESS was completely lost on me.