Given the dominance of leftists i.e. communists and libs in the media even in those days, it’s no wonder McCarthy was treated as an ogre. He was rash, and he even a lot of moderate Pubbies were glad to see him gone. Nevertheless, he did the country a great service.
Sure, McCarthy may very well have exaggerated his war experiences. But the fact remains that he did volunteer for the US Marines, he did serve in a combat area, and he did fly 12 combat missions as a crew member.
But serving in the US Marines in the Pacific in World War II is not where McCarthy put his life on the line and eventually surrendered it. It was his work trying to bring the issue of Communists in the US government to the forefront, and making himself a target for every leftist and communist sympathizer that did him in.
In my opinion, he wasn’t doing it primarily for political gain, although being a politician makes nearly everything that person does be an element of political gain. Joe McCarthy was fighting on this issue when no one else (or very few others) was willing to open their mouths on the subject and thereby invite attack. In that environment, McCarthy both worked himself and drank himself to death.
As far as I’m concerned, McCarthy purchased this country more time to try to stave off leftism and communism… And he did succeed in making it disreputable to be a member of the Communist Party or to be a communist sympathizer.
In the 1960s that all changed. That set up the environment for people like Bill Ayers to present themselves as citizens of the community, instead of the totalitarian, power-hungry leftists that they are. It is why today we have people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton holding government office and making decisions about the future of our nation.
In the end, McCarthy bought us time, and we didn’t take advantage of it.
The Venona project was indeed confirmation that McCarthy was right all along, but I didn’t need to see the results of Venona to know that McCarthy was spot on. All I had to do to realize that McCarthy had been attacked and vilified for telling the truth was to look at the tactics used by the left since McCarthy to attack those who tell the truth. That’s pretty telling.