362 ChaPter^7
interests throughout the area. These conflicting needs would only lead to
more crisis, and soon.McCarthyism, Rising and Falling
The political power of anti-communism, best practiced by Senator Joe
McCarthy, remained strong in the early 1950s as figures such as the cross-
dressing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, and Richard
Nixon scored political points by accusing rivals of being “soft” on communism
and thus not loyal Americans. In fact, Nixon was the 1952 Republican Vice-
Presidential candidate who attacked the Democrat running for president, Adlai
Stevenson, as a graduate of “the college of cowardly communist containment.”
McCarthy, for his part, continued to throw wild charges that the media and
public ate up. As mentioned, McCarthy, shockingly, accused General George
Marshall being disloyal and during the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower–a long-
time colleague of Marshall–did not even defend his friend for fear of upsetting
McCarthy–undoubtedly the most cowardly act in his career. McCarthy also
brought on the so-called Pink Scare, in which he began to accuse government
officials of being homosexuals, which was the same as being a treasonousFIGuRE 7-7 J. Edgar Hoover, 1961