Eisenhower’s failure to combat Senator
McCarthy until much damage had been done at
home and to America’s reputation abroad exposed
a deficiency in the president’s political skills. As the
senator’s accusations grew wilder and bred a
destructive atmosphere of suspicion and denuncia-
tion among tens of thousands of loyal American
citizens, many appeals reached the White House
demanding that the president speak out against
McCarthy. Eisenhower’s response was that it was
the task of McCarthy’s fellow senators to discipline
one of their own; the presidency, he claimed,
should not interfere in Congress. He loathed
McCarthy’s smear tactics and hated the man, but
he to some extent also shared the belief that com-
munist subversion of America’s free society needed
to be checked by loyalty oaths, by investigations
and, where necessary, by other stern measures. His
main reason for non-intervention was undoubtedly
political: he wished to curry favour with the
Republican conservatives even when he privately
disagreed with them. He rationalised his lack of
political courage in various ways. He would claim
that even to mention McCarthy’s name would
increase the senator’s importance. A leader’s job
was to win goodwill; it followed, so Eisenhower
explained, that the leader should reserve all criti-
cism to private discussion and in public should
utter only favourable sentiments. But in the end
McCarthy’s continued attacks forced Eisenhower
to defend some of the senator’s targets. Even so,
McCarthy went on unchecked until the Senate in
December 1954 at last censured him after he had
overreached himself in levelling indiscriminate
charges against the army and the administration.
By then, McCarthyism had lost credibility and
public support, and the senator himself had
become a political liability, his methods and behav-
iour condemned by a majority of senators, many of
whom nevertheless still shared the exaggerated fear
of the ‘communist traitors’ within. Although
the senator tried to continue his crusade, after
December 1954 the media gave him less and less
attention. By the time of his death only three years
later in 1957, this once feared and powerful man
had lost all his influence.
McCarthyism unjustly ruined many lives and
many brilliant careers. The smear of ‘guilt by asso-
ciation’ cast the net so widely that thousands of
innocents suffered. Against these thousands of
loyal citizens, how many real traitors who meant
harm to their country were really uncovered? It is
right that a free society should defend itself. That
national security has to be protected is equally
incontestable, and it was perfectly reasonable to
conclude that the Soviet Union posed a danger
to the West that had to be guarded against. But
in defending itself against dangers, a society
should not destroy the very values it seeks to
uphold. What was ‘unAmerican’ and counter to
the ideals of American values was McCarthyism
itself. McCarthyism also proved a temptation: it
pandered to the resentment of the less well-off
against the privileged, the so-called eastern estab-
lishment. McCarthy declared that the traitors
were to be found not among the poor or the
minority groups but among ‘those who have had
all the benefits’. Those who identified themselves
with McCarthyism thereby automatically pro-
claimed their ‘patriotism’. The pre-eminent
significance of the McCarthy years, however, is
that the senator and his works were in the end
rejected, that American institutions proved suffi-
ciently strong to cleanse themselves after a period
of weakness.
But there was another issue, of much longer
standing, going back to America’s colonial past,
which starkly revealed the contrast between the
constitutionally endorsed aspirations of a free and
democratic people and the reality.The issue of civil rights and equality came to
dominate American political life in the 1950s and
1960s. About one in nine Americans was classi-
fied by the census as non-white, the great major-
ity of these being black: in 1950 some 15 million,
in 1960 18.9 million and in 1970 (out of a total
US population of 203.2 million) 22.7 million.
African Americans were denied civil rights not
only in the South but also in the North, where
they were increasingly crowded into city ghettos.
They suffered more than their share of poverty;
social deprivation as well as segregation and the
prejudice of the majority whites meant that from
one generation to the next opportunities for
advancement were limited.