The McCarthy Problem

The problem of Joe McCarthy stands out on Republican campaign charts as plainly as the Great Barrier Reef. Last week Dwight Eisenhower tried to deal with the McCarthy embarrassment.

Joe's irresponsible accusations--topped off by his sweeping charge that General George Marshall ran World War II and postwar State Department policy with traitorous motives--outrage many fair-minded Republicans. They know that there are more just and more effective ways (e.g., Dick Nixon's) of getting at subversion in Government.

On the other hand, a lot of Republicans are far more concerned about Communist influence in Government than about Joe's methods of getting at it. Joe is offensive; Communism is dangerous. Moreover, Joe is undeniably a Republican, and up for re-election this fall. Wisconsin is a touchy state (it went Democratic in 1948), and its G.O.P. vote is needed both in the presidential election and in the Senate.

The McCarthy issue is a wonderful way for the Democrats to pick up votes and, at the same time, fog up the Democrats' own record of denying or ignoring that there are or have been Communist influences in Government.

"Now Look." Last week the New York Times front-paged a story that Vice Presidential Candidate Dick Nixon would not endorse McCarthy when Nixon campaigns in Wisconsin, would instead "inferentially attack him." In Denver, reporters confronted Eisenhower with Nixon's statement. Ike folded his arms across his chest, looked thoughtfully at the floor of his office, and said: "I am not going to support anything that smacks to me of un-Americanism . . . and that includes any kind of thing that looks to me like unjust damaging of reputation." But he will support McCarthy as "a member of the Republican organization," he said, if McCarthy is renominated in the September Wisconsin primary.

A correspondent tossed in the McCarthy v. Marshall issue. Ike shot out of his chair, rushed around the corner of his desk and paced angrily up & down his office. "Now look!" he exploded. "General Marshall is one of the patriots of this country, and anyone who has lived with him, has worked with him as I have, knows that he is a man of real selflessness. I am not talking about any mistakes in judgment. That was none of my business, and I don't know anything about them . . .

"There are certain things that stand out. There are some things that I will not support. I do support the uprooting of subversion. I think that conditions were serious enough so that serious measures were necessary. But, by golly, un-American methods, as far as I'm concerned, are never justified."

Misplaced Emphasis? Some of Ike's friends thought that his "by golly" should have been in the sentence ahead of where it was, that his emphasis ought to be on the Communist danger rather than on McCarthy's methods. Similarly, Ike cannot go on saying that he doesn't "know anything about" such matters as George Marshall's judgments as a public official.

The loss of China to Communism was a calamity--sometimes described as the greatest calamity ever suffered by the U.S. The U.S. decisions that preceded this are up for debate and popular review in the 1952 campaign.

Ike does, in fact, know and care a great deal about these issues, as he proved a few days later in his American Legion speech.

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