Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy M. Cohn

Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy M. Cohn

The conventional view of McCarthy's fall turns on his erratic performance during the Army hearings. But Roy Cohn believed something deeper was also at work. "Undoubtedly the hearings were a setback," Cohn recalled. "But there were other perhaps more fundamental reasons for his decline. By the time the hearings ended, McCarthy had been the center of the national and world spotlight for three and a half years. He had an urgent universal message, and people, whether they idolized or hated him, listened. Almost everything he said or did was chronicled."

That surfeit of attention, Cohn argued, itself contributed to McCarthy's decline. "Human nature being what it is, any outstanding actor on the stage of public affairs - and especially a holder of high office - cannot remain indefinitely at the center of controversy," Cohn recalled. "The public must eventually lose interest in him and his cause. And Joe McCarthy and nothing to offer but more of the same. The public sought new thrills. … The surprise, the drama, we're gone."

To everything, in other words, there is a season, and McCarthy's hubris hastened the end of his hour upon the stage. "I was fully aware of McCarthy's faults which were neither few nor minor," Cohn recalled. "He was impatient, overly aggressive, overly dramatic. He acted on impulse. He tended to sensationalize the evidence he had - in order to draw attention to the rock-bottom seriousness of the situation. He would neglect to do important homework and consequently would, on occasion make challengeable statements."

To urge to overstate to overdramatize, to dominate the news, could be costly, and so it proved to be for McCarthy. The Wisconsin Senator, Cohn said, was essentially a salesman." he was selling the story of America's peril," Cohn recalled. "He knew that he would never hope to convince anybody by delivering a dry, general-accounting-office type of presentation. In consequence, he stepped up circumstances a notch or two" - and in so doing he opened himself to attacks that proved fatal. He oversold, and the customers - the public - tired of the pitch, and the pitch man.

(Source: The Soul of America - The Battle For Our Better Angels - by Jon Meacham, Page 202 and 203)

Dick Henthorn
13 Feb 2019