On this day in 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy played a game of guilt by association. He attacked Joseph Welch, special counsel to the United States Army, suggesting that an associate at Welch’s white-shoe firm, Hale and Dorr, had ties to a Communist organization. McCarthy referred to Fred Fisher, who had, while in school, joined the Lawyers Guild, a group devoted to protecting civil liberties. In this case, though, unlike many other episodes during McCarthy’s reign of terror, somebody powerful pushed back. Welch replied to McCarthy:
Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Television cameras captured the moment, reducing the jowly, sneering McCarthy in size. By refusing to back down, Welch unmasked McCarthy as a fraud and thug, a bully without any decency at all. The confrontation between the two men turned out to be the apogee of the 50s Red Scare.
The Edge of the American West 
21 comments
June 9, 2008 at 4:47 pm
urbino
This is often — usually — how this moment in history is presented. That is, that Welch, through the simple act of invoking decency in response to McCarthy’s smears, stood the senator down.
The thing is, if Welch had said exactly the same thing in exactly the same way a few months before, I think McCarthy would’ve blown through it like he blew through everything else. He would’ve blustered about how ridding the country of communist infiltrators was decency without equal, and charged ahead.
Welch’s answer worked only because McCarthy was already pretty damaged goods at that point, no?
June 9, 2008 at 5:16 pm
ari
To some extent, I suppose. But the fact that the hearings were televised was the key variable. That Welch kicked sand back in McCarthy’s face on national television, and that McCarthy sputtered and fumed and crabbed, that was the real story.
June 9, 2008 at 5:18 pm
ari
Also, we don’t always have to be revisionists, do we? Which is to say, sometimes the stories, as presented in the textbooks, are right enough.
June 9, 2008 at 5:40 pm
urbino
Sure. Except when they aren’t. I have a couple of problems with having this representation of the Welch-McCarthy exchange in the textbooks.
First, it makes McCarthy seem much less powerful than he was. If this little bit of objection could bring him down, a young student might reasonably ask, how big a bully could he have been?
Second, it misrepresents the other members of the committee by leaving out the fact that many of them had raised strong objections to his methods — including during the televised hearings — and even staged a walkout, all of which helped weaken McCarthy enough for Welch’s remark to finish him off.
June 9, 2008 at 5:51 pm
ari
All fair points, Urbino. But McCarthy comes across as pretty powerful in every book I’ve ever read and in the popular imagination (ugh — I hate myself for typing that): he has an era and an ism named after him! Seriously, I don’t underplaying McCarthy’s ickyness is a real concern. Your second point, though, is a good one. And, as I noted above, you’re right: he was weakened by this point. But the confrontation with Welch was huge and rightfully occupies an important place in the literature. So, can we split the difference? Because disagreeing with you/me is its own kind of schizophrenia.
June 9, 2008 at 5:55 pm
mrh
How many of us, I wonder, are familiar with that exchange thanks to the REM song?
June 9, 2008 at 6:22 pm
The Modesto Kid
Wait, REM has a song about the Army-McCarthy hearings? Or is this like a lyric in “The End of the World as We Know It” or some similarly lyricky song, mixed in with a lot of other stuff?
June 9, 2008 at 6:24 pm
eyeingtenure
This is Dramatic, with a capital D. That’s why it occupies the place it does in the literature, and rightfully so.
June 9, 2008 at 6:27 pm
eyeingtenure
Couple copy notes: Lawyers Guild has no apostrophe, and you’re missing the word, “Senator,” after, “this lad further.”
June 9, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Cala
It’s in one of the songs on Document, called ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ if I remember correctly. I never realized it had been televised, knowing the audio sample only from the song.
June 9, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Cala
I’d also never heard the next few lines, where McCarthy jumps up to get beat down.
June 9, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Greg Miller
You did not mention the role of slimeball Roy Cohn in this episode, and it was his relationship with G. David Schine that brought the Secretary of the Army–and Joseph Welch–to the hearing room. I discuss that here.
June 9, 2008 at 7:41 pm
urbino
and rightfully so
Bah!, sez I. And feh. It’s rightfully well known, but it doesn’t rightfully occupy the place it does in the literature, methinks.
June 9, 2008 at 7:56 pm
ari
Urbino will not be shouted down, people! (And I’ll fix the errors. Thanks, eyeingtenure.) And thanks, too, to you, Greg. I opted for a short post rather than my usual long and rambling nonsense. It seemed to me that the video told the story here. (Until Urbino had to go and get all persnickety.)
June 9, 2008 at 8:07 pm
urbino
Nor will I be persnicketed down.
June 9, 2008 at 8:07 pm
urbino
Or even up.
June 9, 2008 at 8:08 pm
ari
Sideways?
June 9, 2008 at 8:18 pm
SEK
urbino is Urbino! He is up, down, left, through the garden and right into the room Raffaello was born. (Lo these many months I have waited to crack this particular wise.)
June 9, 2008 at 8:40 pm
urbino
Sideways?
Only if you buy me dinner first.
June 9, 2008 at 8:41 pm
urbino
He is up, down, left, through the garden…
Yeah, I get around.
June 10, 2008 at 11:50 am
ron
I watched “Point of Order” again recently and there is a lot more there, of course. One is that Welch never proposed Fisher as a counsel for the committee, as the chairman states several times.
Another is that McCarthy thought he was coming to Cohen’s aid during Welch’s examination of him. It is fun to watch the video and watch Cohen while McCarthy melts down.