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tv   Larry Tye Demagogue  CSPAN  August 29, 2020 1:15pm-2:21pm EDT

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thank you so much. >> good night everybody. >> good night. >> good evening, everyone. i'm connor moran the director of the wisconsin book festival. thank you so much for being here tonight. we are absolutely delighted to be hosting larry tye for his
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book "demagogue" but senator joe mccarthy and larry will appear long side john nichols who many ourself know from his various roles at the capital times, associate editor, the nation magazine, and progressive. we couldn't be more delighted to be hosting these events for you all spring and summer long here on our crowdcast channel and i want to take moment to say thank you to maddison public library and the foundation. they're support for online cultural events has been absolutely unwaiverring, they are -- my gosh, i'm so excited so see john nichols. their support for these events has been sluicely unwavering and they have been so dedicated to bringing author events to all of you whether you're watching watn your home or across the country or across the globe. we have seen an incredible uptick in our audience of people from all over and it has just
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absolutely wonderful to see the response. so thank you to everyone who is here tonight. everyone who has come to one and to all the sponsors who made sure that these events keep going. without further adieu i'd like to bring john and larry to screen and step away myself. >> hi-everyone. thank you for joining us. larry, thank you for coming from massachusetts to be here with us tonight. >> great. >> larry is on cape cod. as we speak. and we have about 100 people with us, in more may joins us a we go along. as was explained up front, we will take questions. i'll ask larry some questions at the start, and then about halfway in we'll invite some questions from you folks and wherever you want to take it, we're very excited to go there. so let me just say a couple of things up front about larry, and first and for most, he is a
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journalist and his books are journalism at its very best, and we live in a time when journalism is under attack, not only by political figures but also simply by the economic forces of the moment in which we live, and the challenges we face, and so it is a great honor to be with another journalist and someone who really has practiced the craft in some of the most creative and exciting ways. so that's only a beginning of discussing larry's many talents and contributions. i also mention we're talking about a new book that he has put out, demagogue, his book on joe mccarthy the form senator from wisconsin. i do want to emphasize that larry has a canyon -- cannon of books that are worthy of attention highway biography of bobby kennedy was brilliant and
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really took in the exploration of the kennedy story and kennedy's journey to new and exciting places. his biography of satchel page was vital contribution to not just sports history but the history of really the evolution of this country and so many fundamental ways. and finally my favorite of his books is rising from the rails his story of the sleeping carporters and i'm a huge fan of a. phillip randolph, and larry just captured that brilliantly. so it's my most highly recommended of his books. we're their talk about a brilliant new book, "demagogue" and i wanted to start out larry by asking you, i notice in some of your eye biographies you had the name of the person, satchel or bobby kennedy in the case of joe mccarthy, you chose a word, demagogue. why was that?
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>> so before i answer that question, i want to just say that the john is one of the many people i interviewed for the book and two things stood out. ones he was the youngest person that i interviewed when i was trying to get a sense of people who really knew the mccarthy era and knew joe mccarthy and the other was he was among the very smartest people i enter view. any of you who are wisconsin readers know his work from the cap times and from the nation and from all kinds of other places he has published so having somebody who is as tuned in to not just mccarthy but mccarthy's context in wisconsin and the nation was extraordinary. and the reason i picked a one-word title that was not mccarthy's name was because this is a book that is about america's love affair with bullies from our very earliest days until today.
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and i felt that the subtitle wool capture the sense it was -- that front and center in this book was low blow joe mccarthy, but that it was also important to see him in the context. the reason we're here talking about him 70 years after his beginnings of his crusade is because he was the archetype for this bully or demagogue figure in american history. that's a long-winded explanation and i promise to keep my other answer shorter, john. >> we're actually their hear what you have to say so a little long-winds is okay. i'll keep you on the title. you used the term "the long shadow," the life and long shadow of joe mccarthy. give us a sense of what you mean by that, that long shadow. is it the impact of what he did or is it really this broader notion of the demagogue? >> he partly cast the long
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shadow because of the impact of what he did and not just him as joe mccarthy but the orchestrator of a whole movement, mccarthyism and it is also to say that we just can't stop with his death. we have to look at how he influenced demagogues that came after, whether they be david duke, george wallace, or people who are in our political context today. i want to just say one other thing. the temptation with a lot of the interviews i've been doing on joe mccarthy is to talk but donald trump and this is really a book about joe mart. donald trump's name is mentioned only in the preface and epilogue and yet his story and the story of other dem goings is there in a way in every page in the book. >> i'm going to join new in trying to avoid a very deach discussion of him but tell -- very deep discussion of him. when you start putting the book together it was around the start of his president si, one of the
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it. >> actually a week before the election in 2006 2016 i signed up to write a different book, the biography of barack obama and the day after the election i realized we will not know barack obama's legacy until after the era of trump is over. and it also became apparent to me the day after the election that what i thought was a story of almost ancient history in america in terms of demagoguery is a story of today, that we have not outgrown this affair, this attraction to bullies and the ways i hoped he had. >> let's get into the book. one interesting element which is that you take very casual approach to referring to him, i guess the way to say is when you read the book which has a wonderful narrative throughout, great stream going through it,
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it's a little bit like being -- i don't know -- maybe sitting out in front of somebody's house in a couple of lawn chairs or by the beach or at the end of of a bar and somebody starts to tell a very long story, and you kind of come back -- it's very human in so many ways. i wonder if you sought to do that. >> if you're writing a biography of somebody, you have to humanize them and you have to make a reader feel like they are getting into the spirit of the persons life and whether the person is member who you think of by the end of the book as a hero or villain they ought to know them. so a very conscious thing. the same way bobby kennedy dish talked about him generally using the word bobby and that was a conscious decision. with this one it is lots of joes and it's not just -- it's from -- to try to get in and see him from the inside. >> what did you see when you
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look inside? >> i want to go back to a quiet that is one reason i have had joe mccarthy in the back of hi head ever since i was doing my research on bobby kennedy. a quote from the one person of the 450 people that i interviewed for the beeny kennedy book that was irreplaceable, woman namedthing kennedy, bobbies widow she said something about joe mccarthy i couldn't get out of my head it and was that joe mccarthy might be a monster to much of america but to bobby and to me he was just plain good fun. and the idea of joe mccarthy as good fun was counterintuitive to me and there was some side of him that caused wisconsin to overwhelmingly elect him in two different statewide elections that i wanted to understand. and so i came out of this book
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feel like joe mccarthy became much more of a human being as opposed to caricature we study in our history books then realize. somebody i would love to have gone out for a beer with and sat down and really understood all of his charms and all of his ability to convince the ethel and bobby kennedy he was great guy to spend time with. on the other hand the documents i looked at made him seem even more sinister than the history books did. so the upside was that he became more of a human being. the downside was that a lot of the political things he did and motivation in doing them the more we could see the papers that gave a more candid sense of that made him somebody that if you went out for a beer with him at night that would be fine bit sure as heck wouldn't want to be on the witness stand when he basilling you during the day. >> one of the most things about mccarthy was his ability to
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joke with the people he about to attack or jokingly attack them, and the cap times we remember the stories of john patrick hunter, longtime political reporter, who battled with mccarthy throughout the 40s and 50s for sure, and when hunt we're go to event head started to hide behind polls at the -- poles because he knew if mccarthy saw him in the crowd, mccarthy would launch into a rather jovial attack on the cap times as the pravda of the prairie and an attack on hunter but wouldn't be so mean spirit. almost be for the fun and the joking and the crowd. and i think that was very common with him. >> guest: i think that suggests two things. one is he didn't quite under how brutal he was being, and being
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there with an angry crowd as a journalist being called out by mccarthy was putting hunter at risk and i think that mccarthy didn't quite get that aspect of it but also was that joe mccarthy really did see this as a bit of a game and assumed that everybody who was there journalists or politicians would understand that it was a game, they would understand the rules and they would be able to go out after with him and put it all behind them because after all it was a game. >> i think you're right. that comes out in your book in quite a few ways because you do talk but the human relationships that he had along the way. i don't want to take us through the whole narrative of mccarthy's story because i think people should read the book, but i am interested in your thoughts about at the start of his career. he was a new deal democrat at one point or at least relatively
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liberal character. that was that merely opportunistic or do you think that's where he actually started and then evolved into something else? >> guest: so, you can't talk about much of anything with joe mccarthy in leave out the opportunistic element. was he really the lib rallying he started at or the ultra conservative that the end up as? i think where he started out is where he had the most choice. he wasn't sure what would get him elected. when re ran for district attorney he hand just as a new deal fdr loving democrat but i think as somebody who was fired up enough about that he really believed that was what was best for the country, also his irish roots, suggested that the party of fdr is where he belongs and i think the only time he questioned his being a democrat
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and his bag liberal was when he realized he couldn't be elected from the area around appleton he grew up and he was game to do whatever it took to be elected, and so some night probably in the middle of the night when nobody was leak went and changed his party registration to republican and as you know the store, wasn't just that he became a republican. the opening in the republican party, the progressive wing of to republican party was taken up by robert -- and the opening was the stalwart republicans, the most conservative of the republican party and he would take it and if it meant change his ideology he would do whatever is took and that -- if if was anything that ran throughout his life, it was the theme of whatever it took.
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>> host: were there people who helped him make the change? i'm thinking of the folks up in appleton, particularly ben sunday stern and others. >> a lot of people who helped him. -under bran van susteren was his best friend and sagest adviser and helped steer him. the people at the newspaper in appleton, the post crescent helped steer him. he had lots of people who ended up being his enablers, his benefactors and being his guides and he was willing to take advice from anybody who was willing to serve the ends of joe mccarthy. >> they like that. that made him appealing. >> they loved. they think van susteren was an extraordinary character and from comments he made over the years everybody from journalists to authors to his children, they
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suggest that van susteren truly adored joe mccarthy, that he understood mccarthy's flaws and shortcomings, as well as anybody did, but that he was loyal friend and he stuck with him and never publicly repute pewsated mccarthy, even when his temptation was to do that and even when he was telling his kids that mccarthy had gone off the rails again, and i think that was a lot of people had a lot of loyalty to joe mccarthy, including somebody whose spire family was representing the iconic liberal first family of america, the kennedys, and bobby kennedy remained loyal enough to joe mccarthy that he not only never publicly questioned him but when his brother, jack, said stay away from mccarthy's funeral in appleton in 1957, bobby said, thank you, jack, that's interesting advice. he flew interest appleton with
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republican congressional people and on the one hand he went up in the choir loft so nobody could see him at the funeral tempgraphside service he stood off to the side where nobody could see him. after the funeral, he begged the journalists who were there not to put his name in those stories and not get him in trouble with his big brother jack, but until the very end, and until today, for ethel, the kennedys generally and bobby specifically stayed very loyal to him as mccarthy for all of his flaws was guy who inspired on a personal level that kind of enormous loyalty. >> it's notable that john kennedy danced around mccarthy rather than standings up to him. >> john kennedy has different relationship. bobby was a more straightforward, less plotting guy that john kennedy. john kennedy was always thinking
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of his next step, i'm convinced the day that john kennedy was born, he started plotting his presidential campaign, and -- his father did that absolutely but jack picked it up quickly and in 1952 ken john kennedy was a relatively unknown and unaccomplished congressman from massachusetts, running against the very powerful senator henry cabot lodge to try to take the seat away from at the republicans and lodge, he -- papa joe kennedy had one big request for joe mccarthy which was stay the heck out of massachusetts. joe kennedy hat given enough money to joe mccarthy that whatever he asked mccarthy was likely to say yes. joe kennedy was smart enough to know that if joe mccarthy came to massachusetts, and campaigned for the republican lodge, lots of irish catholic voters who loved joe mccarthy whether they were republican order more likely democrats, would do what
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he said to do, and jack kennedy ended up winning that senate seat by just three percentage points in year of an eisenhower landslide where eisen power won we nine. i think joe kennedy and jack kennedy were wright. mccarthy staying out of massachusetts ensured that jack kennedy won the seat and jack kennedy for the res of his life had a certain kind of loyalty for mccarthy. when mccarthy was censured the only senator in the senate at that time who not only didn't show up and vote but who we don't know how they would have voted, was jack kennedy, not exactly the kind of profile in courage that jack kennedy was famous for talk about. >> so, you're from massachusetts. and you -- we have already spoken far too much but massachusetts so let's talk but wisconsin. in the 1946 campaign that
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product mccarthy to the u.s. senate he took on senator robert follett junior who came backbar the republican party of having been out for a dozen years as a leading figure with his brother in the progressive party. mccarthy obviously was making an on continuistic run. but follett was an epic figure in the state and he -- it appears that at least early on, la follett did not take mccarthy seriously or did not take him seriously enough. >> you captured what -- the through line for all after mccarthy's campaigns hitches opponents seldom took him seriously. tom coleman, the dean of the stalwart republicans in the state, never took him seriously as the guy to carry their cudgel against la follett. tom colemans dream was somehow
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beating la follett. joe mccarthy would be his vehicle for doing it, is something he didn't accept until he watched mccarthy and watched mccarthy go out and hustle the -- all of the republican activist and especially young republicans, in a way that finally coleman became convinced this was the guy who was so determined to win that he was the guy he ought to get behind. the way i think that joe mccarthy beat la follett was partly what you were suggesting that la follett beat himself. he was almost like he was surrendering. i think he was getting older, he had been in office long enough, his health wasn't great, and i'm not convinced he was sure he really wanted another term or at least not wanted it enough to fight hard and to fight dirty like he would have to do to bet a guy like joe mccarthy. so mccarthy raised legitimate issues in the campaign like
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whether la follett had been captured by the republican establishment, whether he still had the kind of rootedness in wisconsin that voters in any state want to see when they're elect somebody and also fought dirty and raised issues like the fact that la follett owned a home in virginia and mccarthy was suggesting that was a mansion and a place that la follett considered home and not wisconsin, and if anybody shouldn't have had to show that they had deep root friday in the state of wisconsin it was somebody whose family had given up as much as la folletts had and served the state really well and for a long time but a time la follett came back and start campaigning hard, the campaign was essentially over and mccarthy won by outhustling his opponent. >> very close -- actually about 3,000 votes, right. >> it was a very close election.
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it was an unlikely election for mccarthy to be able to oppose la follett and it was the toughest election he would ever face. the easy thing was bating the drat after you beat la follett and the republican nomination, and that was -- so when mccarthy shows up in washington in early 1947, he shows up there arguably as one of the biggest surprises in that new class of senators, arguably the least qualified new senator to be taking a seat like that, but he also from his earliest days gave an indication that if anybody had been paying attention then he was somebody to be reckoned with. he was throwing bombs before he even was seated in the senate. essentially saying that striking miners -- we ought to think but using the death penalty against striking minneres.
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whether he really throughout that nobody will know but i don't think he did. just knew instinctively how to get journalists like you and me to pay attention to him and that was partly by outrage joyce and partly saying he would put them on page one and it was partly by charming them. >> i want to do one more thing on the '46 election to close the circle. one interesting this mccarthy may well have won that '46 primary because the rise of the modern democratic party because the democratic party in '46 after having been 0 the sigh lines for most of the 30s and 40's in wisconsin had genuine candidate and genuine competition. dan hone the former mayor of milwaukee came over to run for
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governor. mcmurray was good candidate for u.s. newscast. primaries for congressional seats and suddenly some of the energy had gone to this other place. >> i think you're exactly right in the clicheed story told but that election is that mccarthy was elected with the support of communists and wasn't this an irony. in fact much more important was the fact that there really was a democratic alternative, that lot of progressives who would have been temped to go with la follett interest the republican party and stick with him there, ended up instead voting voting a democratic primary and la followlet had not counseled on the democrats offering a real alternative for the first time in wisconsin and that was just one more miscalculation on his part that made mccarthy's role as a kingmaker easier than it might have been otherwise. >> absolutely. and so i think mccarthy himself perhaps a little surprised to get to washington. arrives out there and bomb thrower from the start.
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very unfocused. he didn't really -- innocent find his mark right away. >> he didn't find his mark. you're being kind to him. gets there at the start of 1947 and didn't really find his mark until early 1950. tried a lot of issues. some issues that were legitimate issues like housing for returning service men, his fellow soldiers from world war ii, some issues i think were outrageous and may have suggested an element of antisemitism by mccarthy, like defending the perpetrators of one of deadliest massacres u.s. troops during world war ii, the famous mass examiner defending the nazi perpetrators and suggesting the jewish prosecutors couldn't be objective but it because they were jews and after all this was a victor's justice. and he tried just about everything in terms of an issue to grab on to it and wasn't until february of 1950 that he found one that turn out to be
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magical for him. >> let's talk about that. because he was outrageous and bumbling and because the democratic part was start forget its act together, win the attorney general's job in wisconsin in 1948 with tom fairchild, truman winning the state in 48. mccarthy was starting to get a little scared hi might be vulnerable. he wanted to make a name. right? he was looking for something to -- i'll go so far as to say my sense is he was getting a little desperate to have some focus for this senate career because he was coming up for re-election. >> if you maded through three years and still looking like a back bencher and like a patty to take on by any ambitious democrat because you look so weak and i will defined he was desperate because it would have been embarrassment lose his battle for reelection and desperate because holding ton
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power, whether or not he knew what he was going to do with that power, was one of the things that was most vital to joe mccarthy. he had made it at a very young age to appoint i think only in his wildest dreams he ever con seed and the idea of having that taken away from him made him desperate. which is high he was willing to do anything to find the issue to latch on to. >> in your book he went to wheeling, west virginia, with two speeches. am i right? >> you're exactly right. wheeling, west virginia, or at his staffers called is wheeling west by god virginia -- weiner talking about february 1950, on the one day of the year when republicans all across the country do the same thing, which is on abraham lincoln's birthday they celebrate and use that as a way to rally the party and raise
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money and if you're a prominent u.s. senator, you get invited to places like milwaukee or boston, like washington or new york. when you're back bencher like joe mccarthy you get invited to wheeling, west virginia. he shows up there that night, as you suggest, with two speeches in his briefcase. one is a snoozer on national housing policy which is something he knew about. >> and kind of cared about. >> and cared about. had he picked that speech to give that night, 70 years later we wouldn't be talking about him because he would have probably been the one term center. instead he pull odd at brief case he read for in the first time, i'm convinced, when he was delivering is that night. written by a journalist and vary your staffers who did the editing on and its he holds up in his hand a sheave of papers and as part of his speech he says i have in my hand a list of
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205 spies at the u.s. state department. there are people that truman should have known about, the president should have gotten rid of and this is a scary thing. and he was doing this at a moment in american history when we were scared to death about the soviet threat exhibits wasn't just the soviets. we watched very recently the nationalist china turn some red china, watched the atomic spies rosenberg be arrest, trade and convict. we were about to teach our children that something that younger listeners tonight won't believe-but it was the so-called duck and cover strategy which is when the atomic bomb comes you put your hand over your head and you duck under your desk and you'll be okay, and that is how petrified we were. joe mccarthy understood those fears better than just about anybody, he understood that rather than just saying there
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were traitors in our government, if you named and counted the traitors, that was the cowboy way to capture america's imagination. he also understood something that it think was the ultimate in cynicism which is if he delivered a bombshell of a speech like that in washington, the journalis who were listening would have known who to call instantly at the state department for comment. had he delivered a speech like that in the afternoon as a lunch speech the journalist on a deadline would have had plenty of time to call their washington colleagues and find who to call for comment. he delivered the peach at night, he delivered with only two reports who mattered in audience one from the local wheeling newspaper and one the local ap reporter, and what happened afterwards was just what mccarthy dreamed of, within two days he was on page one of every newspaper in america, and
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he never turned back. this was the birth of joe mccarthy in in terms of being associated with the anticommunist issue and this was the birth i think that night of mccarthyity. >> i agree. the other interesting part it was seat of the pants. the number changed. all the time. 205 -- it. >> changed and it went back and forth a bunch of numbers but the two hoe came would those were the 205 and in his personal and professional papers it's wonderful stash of material as marquette university, there were a bunch of different numbers various versions of speech. there was 205 and that was crossed out. ment the other number was 57 and without making too light of it, one of the places that it was suggest he he got in the number 57 was he loved am burgers and
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stake -- hamburgers and steaks and maybe on the way to hisden dinner he stopped a restaurant, poured heinz 57 sauce on and that number captured his imagine if don't believe itself but on the other hand i think given how fat us to the number 205 was it could have come front anywhere because there were not 205 names in his sheave of papers and not 205 spies at the state department. >> this where is it gets interesting because as you say it's interesting that could have been easily checked out and challenged. numbers w. not steady. the reality didn't line up with what he was saying. and yet in relatively short order, he was chairing national hearings and speaking to the whole country being paid an immense amount of attention, and at least for a period there, a
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lot of people who should have gotten in his way or slowed him down didn't the media and political class game him a lot of is? which to operate. >> want it to agree with you and shay that just because you're but one of the only newspapers that as right on joe mccarthy from almost the very beginning was your capital times and they -- and a lot of people took it on then chin by being right in the way that he attacked them, but the truth is, that even when people called him out at the beginning, it looks like he had a free ride, but he was called out very early on by a senator named millard tidings from maryland. he head up a special committee to investigate hoover mccarthy him didn't mince a word when he called mccarthy a fraud and hoax. what happened to tidings sent a lesson to anybody temped to call
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him out. he delivers a speech. mccarthy deliver's i famous speech in february of 1950. that spring, tied examination his committee come out with the report calling him the hoax, and that november, mccarthy is in maryland, having recite republican to run against him, having gotten his wealthy texas benefactors to back this republican, having lent the republican, a guy named butler, mccarthy's bag of dirty tricks and having beaten an incredible titan of maryland politics, millard tidings, the same we he took down been la follett jr. in wisconsin and that sent a shock wave through the senate. the message was very simple. take on joe mccarthy and be ware the bulldozer. >> yet margaret chase smith did take him on. >> she did. >> and a few others. >> i just have to say a word
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about margaret chase smith because she's a favorite of mine. she was the only woman in the senate, a senator from maine, and she took on joe mccarthy early on even though mccarthy in his classic charming side had promised her that he would put her name up for vice president for whoever got the nomination in 1952, and she had enough conviction that she authored what was called a declaration of conscience condemning mccarthy for his unamerican activities in the way he grilled witnesses and ignored their rights, the way he -- everything about his campaign was offensive to her. she takes to the senate floor find six moderate republicans to sign 'on and mccarthy tried to do to her what he did to mill arizona tidings. fit the mast over in the name caught dubbed her snow white and her seven dwarfs.
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her fellow senators and then took to maine and trade to beat her and smith was strong enough as a candidate that he couldn't beat her but she lost -- ran in a much closer election than she had the time before, and lastly, she was a relatively unexceptional senator and the one thing that we remember about her today and this sort of is suggesting something to enablers of other demagogues one thing we remember i she had the courage to stand up to joe mccarthy at a time when almost nobody was and that should be encouraging to people who find that courage but over the years generally aren't many of them. >> i want to note her speech calling mccarthy out for what was then an incredibly destructive approach and use of his platform, came full circle
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during the brett kavanaugh hearings because when sues can collins voted to confirm brett kavanaugh, you had mitch mcconnell on the floor of the senate comparing susan collins voting for trump's nomination to supreme court to margaret chase smith. >> susan collins was incredibly helpful to me nor book and somebody i interviewed and helpful by long with was wieting my book, agreeing she held the same gavel that joe mccarthy had as chair of the permanent subcommittee on investigations, and she decided after 50-plus years of all of his closed door hearings, being are in clock and key, some decided to make the transcripts public and those gave us a sense of joe mart unhinged knowledge. enwhy interviews her i knew he role model as a senator was margaret chase smith and i said you intending to take this to heart in terms of what you do as a senator it and is very clear that she adores margaret chase
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smith and she sees herself as a model of following in margaret chase smith's footsteps, her opponent in the current senate race, very heated senate raise in maine doesn't do that and everything is using the margaret chase smith model saying rather than looking at her as susan collins role model as saying you have let down margaret chase smith and who she has or not to the voters in maine will decide. >> that was a very political answer, my friend. and -- but i honor your reference there because i think the documents you got from those hearings, the materials that you got access to, was incredible. you brought out a lot of new material as regards joe mccarthy. >> so, i was really lucky to have that material and john you know from knowing be a bit it wasn't because of was charming that i got that material.
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i think that in terms of the wonderful marquette files, the reason they opened them up were two reasons. one is i was enough of a pest that the only way to get rid of me may have been to init and the other was i had an incredibly important ally, greta van susteren, and the tv -- the wonderful tv personality and the marquette people were extraordinary in helping me make sense of those documents, and i think they were a surprised as i was i gasol got the access and sadly rather than them being opened generally they were open nor time i was looking at them and they're now back under at least temporarily under lock and key again. >> you wrote the hell out of them. so you got a lot out of them. >> a lot of comments and i appreciate your saying that. thank you. >> tell me. what was -- in looking at the hearings -- we could go through and good chapter and verse through all of them.
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what was the most striking thing you learned from looking at the documents? >> so, the shocking thing to me was normally we expect a politician to be more outrageous when the cameras are there watching what they're doing and that when hey go in closed session, nobody is watching so you can be reasonable. joe mccarthy filmed that script. he was more reasonable in his public hearings and the army mccarthy and other hearings, a sign since he wasn't special hi reasonable there how unhinged he became in the private hearings and i think he dade couple of things. one was any notion of witnesses having any real rights went out the window, and they were presumed get from the start. a second was he held in violation of senate traditions one man hearings, and when the one man joe mccarthy was gone, he turned the hearings over to sophomoric staffers like roy cohen to do the goaling and the violation of people's rights on his behalf and the other thing
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was that i think he used those hearings as a test run for witnesses who would stand up to him and who were eloquent, they didn't show in public hearings for ones who were more easily pressed and who were more easily cave in to him they were the perfect patsies he wanted in the public. so he got to run the wonderful test runs and any sense of any rules and impropriority went out the window because nobody was there to keep him in check. >> and it was incredibly jarring and disturbing moment in american history because not only when he did those public hearings was he doing senate hearings, he ended up on television by and think that's one last thing to bring out. you do a very good job of talking about or helping us understand this intersection of modern media and the demagogue.
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>> so, again, the history book version of what happened to joe mccarthy is that it was a leprechaun like lawyer from boston named joe welch who in the mid oval hearings when mccarthy attached his young associate, welch defend him by saying, senator, have you no sense of decency and that was the moment that tender everything around. would say two thick things. one it that welch was as good an actor as lawyer and he had the line ready to go, knowing that mccarthy would step over the -- any sense of propriety, whether attack his young associate or doing something. so ready to go with the line. and the other is what brought mccarthy down in my mind is the public seeing with day after day of televised testimony that joe mccarthy was not this heroic champion they start out believing, that he was more like the town bully and in the course of those hearings, he went from
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the gallup polls telling us he wars starting out with 50% favorability which meant as a popular public figure in america the only one he trade was dwight eisenhower. by august and end of the hearings pass was down to 34%. ... a great audience here, the question that they most want me to ask you is about roy calling donnaãb >> for anybody doesn't know anybody in the world who
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doesn't know who roy cohn he's a brilliant arrogant record of successfully prosecuting communist that joe mccarthy brought in a 1963 when he ãb roy cohn was his alter ego, roy cohn i think reinforced every bed and stick that joe mccarthy's bones and roy cohn was the first choice that job but if we were doing a what if we would say what if he had hired the second choice because the second choice of a job was bobby kennedy, when joe mccarthy had been a different ã ãwas the one day liberal icon bobby kennedy but roy cohn, we flashforward from roy ãb helping bring down mccarthy by having kicked off all the controversy that gave us the army mccarthy hearings,
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flashforward 50 years, roy cohn is not so young still brilliant and arrogant and a guy name fred trump and a guy named donald trump, when donald trump was entering the cutthroat world of new york real estate his dad and he recognized that he needed somebody to advise him, to instruct him how to get involved with that world. who better than the guy who had learned at the knee of joe mccarthy to command and instruct somebody how to deal with the cutthroat environment? roy cohn passed on mccarthy's lessons to trump and trump has said repeatedly during his presidency when he gets into trouble, i sure wish i had a roy cohn by my side to help me out with this and what i think he is really saying, it would be on pc to say this is, i wish i had a joe mccarthy at my side to tell me how to deal with this. >> that takes us to the second question, you referenced it in your first thoughts about the
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relationship between joe mccarthy and bobby kennedy. you are in the rare circumstance here of having done biographies of both men. let's get in bobby kennedy's head for a moment. figure out how much of bobby kennedy agreed with joe mccarthy, how much did he find him a charming man? >> i want to back off for one second and say one thing if there's anybody young in our viewing audience tonight watch john for the embodiment of how good journalists asked really smart questions and you don't often see it because all you see is the historian and newspaper asteroids but these are really, i've done a lot of these and these are really terrific questions. to go to bobby kennedy and joe mccarthy, they were on exactly the opposite trajectories in terms of the career, bobby kennedy starts out as a not just joe mccarthy staffer but joe mccarthy true believer, he believes joe mccarthy and his cause of anti-communism in the
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cold war era were righteous he started off his life as a cold war democrat but he was a cold war and relatively conservative guy and he's on his way to becoming the iconic liberal figure in modern-day american history, joe mccarthy starts his life as this liberal that bobby kennedy becomes one day and on his way to becoming the iconic cold war conservative and even 70 years later he remains an icon for much of the conservative movement in america. the idea that they intersected was for a single reason that we talked about early on it was because papa joe kennedy said they ought to come together and whatever joe kennedy did ãb whatever joe kennedy asked for, bobby did and what ever ãbhe saw a union i think that joel kennedy, who was a classic realpolitik classic
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machiavellian kind of political figure understood that bobby would get tutored by the master and its ironically the same feeling that i think had fred trump bring in roy cohn years later.they both felt their sons ought to know how to fight in dirty politics, tough politics, they had master tutors teaching them that. a lot of lessons that joe mccarthy taught bobby kennedy, bobby ended up using later on behalf of liberal causes. >> from our questions from the crowd tonight, you will understand that you are in madison wisconsin a town filled with researchers, there are several questions about how you do the research on about. one of them is, at the historical society here in wisconsin did you find materials there that were ãb was there any materials that particularly stood out.
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>> they were wonderful materials the historical society and i don't want to say too much about that because there is a piece due out soon that i just of the last edits last night. i can't remember, i'm terrible our names but the name of the wisconsin historical society magazine, what is it called? wisconsin history. >> i think you are pretty much there. >> whatever it is, some of that material will be in there but let me just say to understand the context of wisconsin politics, the staff at the historical society and the documents were almost as good as sitting down with john and dave. i'm an idiot for massachusetts knowing something about the kennedy but nothing about wisconsin politics. anything i got right i would attribute to people like johnson anything i got wrong about wisconsin politics is on me but the historical society
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was really wonderful to me. the idea of having two sets of archives like the marquette northwest hs as an author historian is a dream. >> i know the mccarthy of material the historical society are particularly well done. registered an article for the magazine that you are writing for on dan hoehn and the rise of the modern democratic party which intersected with a lot of this and it's an incredibly valuable resource. >> can i say one more quick thing in terms of the understanding the history of mccarthy in wisconsin, one thing that authors depend on is that they can learn from all the biographers who come before them and there's lots of great biographers and mccarthy and the idea people like thomas reeves left his papers to the historical society, let the interviews of people who are long gone like irvin van susteren who i would never get
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to, rather than just saying you can just read what i quoted and that's the only thing worth hearing from somebody like france asked her reeves left his actual notes from his interviews and we all have a responsibility to do that so we can build every new biography has a bit more arterial and yet it's rare for people to do that and i was really lucky people like reeves did it and it was sitting there at the wisconsin historical society for me to tap. >> that's very true and very appropriate. this relates to some questions we're getting from other folks, it is brave, that's not an over complement the win way or the other but it's kinda brave to take on somebody who's had a lot of books written about them, you have to assume you can write something more that you can add. >> to phrase the question it probably ought to be phrased as wide of the world need the
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101st biography of joe mccarthy, partly you've got chutzpah and you assume you will say something different, partly it was that the story seemed timely for the reasons we been talking about in terms of being a story not just of our history but of today and partly it was, i almost walk the plank and fell off of it and exactly a week after i told my publisher and my wife that i was not going to get access to the marquette archives and to all the papers from the bethesda naval hospital that i was counting on to understand mccarthy's health situation, which i think was critical to what ended up happening to him, in both cases exactly a week after i said it wasn't going to happen, i was shocked that it happened. it was lucky for me that it happened.when i have a book breaking a new ground? who knows, i did have the transcripts of the closed-door hearings they been out for a
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while but nobody had taken a really deep dive on them but i was a pain in the neck so people ended up, for reasons whatever saying yes on those but the authors favorite interview in the new york times the other day, i'm wondering whether you think as much as you move the ball down the field and as much of the book add to our understanding of mccarthy that it would be getting the attention that it is if we had if barack obama was still president of the united states or if there was a different person in the white house. >> good question, short answer no, longer answer, i wouldn't have written the book if there were different person in the white house but.
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>> let me ask you as we circle around to the end, about the impact and mccarthy, a big fan of the use long shadow in your one of the things joe mccarthy did in going after communist and fellow travelers and people he accused he targeted a lot of african-americans and particularly not just him but the whole red scare targeted people like who had been involved in a civil rights movement, do you think that mccarthy is slow down or had an impact on the rise of civil rights and the rise of civil rights movements in the country? >> having mccarthy is in the greatest impact as the one we know him for, which is the anti-communist movement.i
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think by the way he did so much damage due to anti-communist or maybe more as he did to communist up there was another movement main important movements today that mccarthy jumped in on and did some really despicable things there is there is evidence he might've an anti-semite, he was clearly an orchestrator of what was called the lavender scale, and the whole issue of race and he was on the wrong side i think mccarthyism when used broadly today by everybody to slur people they don't like it should've widened up to the casket because joe mccarthy had a wide net and i think i don't know whether at his heart he was a racist or anti-gay or really anti-somatic but i think he was willing as an
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opportunist to played anything he thought would work, what he was i think maybe ironically more than anything was anti-elitist and anti-his notion of what elites work him he was anti-east coast and anti-west coast and anti-wall street and that was playing to a lot of populist sympathies but perverting a lot of populist sympathies, i think joe mccarthy the reason i use the word demagogue rather than populist as i don't think he was a populist, to me populism has lots of upside to it, he was a demagogue and there's not a whole lot of upside to being a demagogue or bully. >> it's an awfully good place to circle around to come i will make the interviewer's mistake of asking one last question rather than letting you leave on a perfect point. that is to ask you, you've written so many powerful books, are you working on something else now? >> i am, i'm going to tell you
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briefly, i have two soon of a deadline and my reward to myself and my publisher's remark to me for having spent three long years with joe mccarthy and it's about called the jaz zmen how duke ellington satchmo armstrong and count basie transformed america and i think they are on ãbthere aren't three better people he could spend time with. there is is an incredibly uplifting story about how they changed the racial horizon of america and set the table in many ways for the civil rights movement. >> walked away to clean up the having dealt with mccarthy thing. [laughter] >> thank you. >> larry tye this has been fabulous, we got to ask quite a few questions from folks, we had a wonderful crowd of about 100 tonight. i want to thank book festival
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folks, the library folks, all the other people that helped put this together, want to remind people it is in fact the wisconsin magazine of history you and i both written for and that you will have an article coming out very soon. with that we will turn it back to our host. >> can i just say really quickly, i want to thank john, who was a terrific interlocutor tonight. [applause] i want to thank connor who was really wonderful and assembling this program and having to deal with my incense in emails over the last month, thank you. >> really, larry, you are not among even the most people send email today. [laughter] i'm only here to say thank you to john and larry, thank you both so much for this is absolutely wonderful, exactly the kind of conversation this book festival exists to have forto all of you gathering
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around the country to watch this, thank you as well.i want to mention partners at the medicine institute many of you found out about this through them, they are always wonderful to work with, >> fred and maryland both with us. >> i also want to mention our bookselling partners, larry is only here because he wrote this book and we really get to do this because you buy the book. if you have the means right now during quarantine please click the buttons at the bottom, the green button at the bottom. i'm sure larry has a local bookstore as well. >> i want to support your bookstore and i want to make an offer that maybe nobody would find attractive but when you put in your book order if you want it personalized, if you want it signed, we would normally be doing a book
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signing just indicate that i will send a signature play personalized to you and i'm sure the bookstore has no problem letting you know that, i want to say one last thank you which is to fred who was an extraordinary person who we don't see up on the screen today but he was supportive of me and the bobby kennedy book and in this one and he's an extraordinary guy, thank you all
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recently counterinsurgency expert david kilcullen traces the threats america has faced through the soviet union, he explains the title of his book he can quote the dragons on the snakes". >> the title comes from jim woolsey president clinton cia director.
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>> i don't know if the chairman. >> thank you for pointing that out. >> an incredible press and guy, if you read his testimony when he was going through his confirmation hearing in 1993 he was asked, the cold war just ended, what you think will be the threat environment america needs to face in the first cold war period, he said we slain a large dragon, talking about the soviet union, now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of. he goes on to lay out this incredibly detailed vision of weak states, failing states, and nonstate actors, which i'm calling snakes. and suggests that peer and near peer state adversaries won't be a big deal for the immediate future. all i'm suggesting is that we've had a period of about nearly 30 years since his
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testimony where adversaries have adapted and evolved and i'm trying to sort of trace the history of how that happened and where they are now. >> to watch the rest of this event is our website booktv.org, search for david kilcullen or the title of his book "the dragons on the snakes" using the box at the top of the page. >> welcome to csis online, the way we bring you events is changing but we will still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our true acropolis ideas lab all on your time live or on-demand. this in csis online. we are going to go ahead and get started now, folks are still arriving, which is fine. we want to get started because we've got a fantastic

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