good evening, everyone. i'm the director of the wisconsin book festival. thank you so much for being here tonight. we are absolutely delighted to be hosting larry for his book demagogue about senator joseph mccarthy and he will appear this evening alongside john nichols who many of you know from his role at the capital times as associate editor from the nation magazine. we couldn't be more delighted to be hosting these events all

spring and summer long on our crowd cast a channel and i want to take a moment to say thank you to the madison public library and the madison public library foundation. their support for online cultural events has been absolutely unwavering. i'm just so excited to see john nichols. the support for these events has been unwavering and they've been so dedicated to bringing these author events to all of you whether you are watching in your home in madison or across the country or across the globe we have seen an incredible uptick in our audience, people from all over and it's just absolutely wonderful to see the response so thank you to everyone here tonight and all of the sponsors that made sure that these keep going. without further ado i would like to bring you to the screen and

step away myself. >> hello everyone thank you for joining and larry thanks for coming all the way from massachusetts to be here tonight. larry is on cape cod as we speak and we have about 100 people with us and as was explained upfront we will take questions and i will ask larry some questions at the start and then about halfway in we will invite questions from you folks and wherever you want to take it we are excited to go there. let me say a couple of things about larry and first and foremost he is a journalist and his books are journalism at its very best. we live in a time when journalism is under attack not only by political figures but also 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 a journalist into someone who really has practiced the craft and some of the most creative and exciting ways i will also mention we are talking tonight about another book put out, demagogue's book on the former senator from wisconsin but i do want to emphasize larry has books worthy of your attention if you haven't read them already. his biography of bobby kennedy was brilliant and really took the exploration to some new and exciting places. his biography that is a vital contribution to not just the sports history but the history

of. the chairman of the marks on washington in 1963. you chose the word, demagogue. why was that? >> before i answer that question i just want to say that john is one of the many people that i interviewed for this book and two things stood out. one, he was the youngest person i interviewed when i was trying to get a sense of people that knew the mccarthy era and he was

among the smartest people i interviewed. any of you that are wisconsin readers know his work from the times and the nation and all kinds of other places he's published so having somebody as tuned in to not just mccarthy about his contexbut his contextn was extraordinary. the reason i picked a one-word title that wasn't mccarthy's name is because this is a book that is about america's love affair with bullies from the earliest days until today and i felt the subtitle would capture the sense that it was front and center in this book and it was important to see him in the context. the reason we are here talking

about him talking about him after his crusade is because he was the archetype for this figure in american history. that's a long-winded explanation and a promise t i promise to ker answers shorter. a. >> we are here to hear what you have to say. i will keep you right on the title for a second. you used the term the life and long shadow of joe mccarthy. give us a sense of what you mean by that. is it the impact of what he did or is it this broad notion of the demagogue? >> we cast the shadow because of the impact of what he did and not just as joe mccarthy but the orchestrator of the movement, mccarthyism and it's also to say we just can't stop with his death. we have to look how we influence the demagogues that came after him whether it be duke, george

wallace or people who are in the political context today. i want to say one other thing. the temptation with a lot of the interviews i've been doing on mccarthy's to talk about donald trump, and this is really a book about mccarthy. donald trump's name is mentioned in the preface and the epilogue and yet his story and the story of others is there in a way and every page of the book. >> and as long as you brought trump up i'm going to join you and try to avoid a deep discussion of him, but tell me when you started putting this book together it was around the start of his presidency, wasn't it? >> a week before the election i signed up to write a different book and that was the biography of barack obama and the day after the election i realized we wouldn't know the legacy until after the era of trump is over

and it became apparent to me the day after the election what i thought was a story of also ancient history in terms of demagoguery was a story today we have not outgrown this affair, this attraction to bullies in the way that i hoped we had. >> let's get into the book a little bit. one interesting element you take a very casual approach in referring to him to say it has a wonderful narrative throughout, just a great stream going through it. it's a little bit like being, i don't know, maybe sitting out in front of somebody's house with somebody who starts to tell a very long story and it's very

human. i think if you are writing a biography of somebody you have to humanize them and make the reader feel like they are getting into this. if this person's life whether it is somebody you think of by the end of the book as a hero or a villain. the same way bobby kennedy i talked about him generally using the word bobby and that was a conscious decision. it's to try to get in and see him from the inside. i saw that on the one hand, i want to go back actually to a quote that's one of the reasons i had to joe mccarthy in the back of my head ever since i was doing my research and it's a quote from the one person of the 450 people i interviewed for the

book irreplaceable, a woman named ethel kennedy, his widow and she said something about joe mccarthy i couldn't get out of my head and it was joe mccarthy my to be a monster too much of america, but to bobby and me, he was just plain good fun. the idea of joe mccarthy is good fun was counter intuitive to me. i felt there was some side of him that caused wisconsin to overwhelmingly elect him into two different statewide elections i wanted to understand so i came out of this book feeling like on the one hand, joe mccarthy became much more of a human being as opposed to the caricature we study in our history books than i had ever realized. he is somebody i would have loved to have gone out for a beer with and sat down and really understood all of his charms and ability to convince

ethel and bobby kennedy he was a 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 he became more of a human being. the downside was a lot of the political things he did and his motivation and doing them the more we could see some of the papers that gave the more candid sense of that made him omit somebody if you went out for a beer at night that would be fine but you sure wouldn't be on the witness stand when he was growing you during the day. >> one of the most interesting things about mccarthy was his ability to joke with the people he was about to attack or jokingly attack them. we remember the stories of john patrick hunter longtime political reporter who battled with mccarthy throughout the 40s, throughout the 50s for

sure and plan hunter would go to events he said he started to hide behind the polls at evens because he knew if mccarthy saw him in the crowd he would launch into a rather jovial attack but it wouldn't be so mean-spirited it would almost be for the fun and the joking in the crowd and i think that was very common. >> that suggests two things. one he didn't understand how brutal he was. being there with an angry crowd was putting hunter at risk and i think mccarthy didn't quite get that aspect of it but it also was joe mccarthy did see this as a bit of a game and assumed

everybody who was there, journalist ojournalists or polie was going after what understand that it was a game and understand the rules and they would be able to go after with him and put it all behind them because after all it was a game. >> i think you're right about that and it comes out in your book and quite a few ways because you do talk about these human relationships he had along the way. i don't want to go through the whole narrative of the story because i think people should read the book that i am interested in your thoughts about at the start of his career he was a new deal democra deal t one point or at least relatively liberal character. was that opportunistic or do you think that is where he started and that it evolved into something else? >> you can't talk about much of

anything with joe mccarthy and an opportunistic element. was he the liberal he started as or the ultraconservative he ended up as and i think where he started out is where he hand the most choice. when he ran for the district attorney he ran not just as a new deal fdr loving democrat but i think as somebody who was fired up enough about that if he believed that that was what was best for the country and also his irish roots that suggested the party where he belonged and i think the only time he questioned his being a democrat and liberal is when he realized he couldn't be elected from the area he grew up and he was going to do whatever it took to be elected so some night probably in the middle of the night when no one was looking he changed

his party registration to republican and as you know the story it wasn't just that he became republican, but the opening in the republican party, thparty,the progressive wing ofe republican party was taken up by robert junior and the opening was the stalwart republicans, the most conservative element and if that was the opening joe mccarthy was going to take it if it meant changing his ideology, he was going to do that. he did whatever it took and i think that that was if there was any theme that ran throughout his life, it was the theme whatever it took. >> were there people along the way who helped him make that change? i am thinking of some of the folks in appleton particularly. >> there were a lot of people

who helped him. one was his best friend and advisor and he helped to steer him. the people at the newspaper helped steer him. he helped lots of people who ended up being his enablers, his benefactors and he was willing to take advice from anybody willing to serve the ends of joe mccarthy and they liked that. >> that made him appealing. a. >> i think that from the comments that were made over the years to everybody from journalists to authors to his children, they suggest he truly adored joe mccarthy and understood his flaws and shortcomings as well as anybody did that he was a loyal friend and stuck with him and never publicly repudiated him even

when his temptation was to do that and when he was telling his kids mccarthy had gone off the rails again. i think that was a lot of people had a lot of loyalty to joe mccarthy including somebody whose entire family was representing the iconic liberal first family of america, the kennedys. bobby kennedy remained loyal he not only never publicly questioned him, but when his brother said stay away from mccarthy's funeral in appleton in 57, bobby said thank you, jack, that's interesting advice. he flew in with all of his republican congressional people and on the one hand he went up in the loft so nobody could see him at the funeral, at the graveside service he stood to the side where nobody could see him. after the funeral he begged the journalists who were there not to put his name in the stories

and not get him in trouble with his big brother but until the very end and until today the kennedys generally in the body specifically state a very loyal and mccarthy for all of his flaws he was a guy tha the guy t inspired on a personal level that kind of an enormous loyalty. >> is also notable john kennedy who danced around mccarthy rather than standing up to him. >> john kennedy had a different relationship. bobby was a more straightforward. john kennedy was always thinking of the next step and i'm convinced the day john kennedy was born he started plotting his presidential campaign. his father did that absolutely but jack picked it up quickly. in 1952 when john kennedy was a

relatively unknown and an unaccomplished congressman from massachusetts running against a powerful senator henry cabot lodge to try to take that seat away from the republicans, joe kennedy had one request which was stay the heck out of massachusetts. joe kennedy had given enough money to mccarthy that whatever he asked, mccarthy was likely to say yes. joe kennedy was smart enough to say if he came to massachusetts and campaigned for the republican lodge, lots of irish catholic voters who loved joe mccarthy whether they were republicans or more likely democrats they would do what he said to do. ..

. >> and mccarthy obviously had

the backing of the party establishment but and epic figure in the state and it appears that at least early on he did not take mccarthy seriously enough. so you just captured through the campaigns and his campaign seldom took him seriously, tone - - tom coleman who was the dean of the star republicans never took him seriously as the guy and tom coleman's dream was somehow beating lafollette so that joe mccarthy call to do it is something that he didn't except that he watched mccarthy father can activist

that he was so determined to him and he was the guy he had to get behind the desk behind i think he is getting older and been an opportunist long enough sure she wanted another return and to fight dirty like he had to do to music i like joe mccarthy he raise legitimate issues like whether that had been captured by the public and establishment and he still have the business in wisconsin and then also fought dirty so that he had a home in

virginia and was a mansion and that was all it considered home, not wisconsin and anybody shouldn't have had to show that have deep roots in the state of wisconsin, was something his family he had given up as much better time that he came back and started to campaign hard it was essentially over and one by our hustling his opponent. >> it will is very close, a very close election and unlike the election for mccarthy and it was the toughest selection

so conditions of washington showing up as one of the biggest surprises were least qualified new senator to take a seat like that but also from his earliest days to give an indication that nobody had been thing attention, he was somebody to be reckoned with best-selling bombs even before seated in the senate and then to think about a death penalty with a thought that nobody knows i think he did. he just knew instinctively everybody being outrageous and to say it and put them on page

one and it was partly by a charming them. for mccarthy may have won the 46 primary because of the rise of the democratic party because the democratic party actually and 46 had been on the sidelines had genuine candidates and genuine competition and code run for governor and macquarie was a good candidate in primaries congressional seats and then that energy. >> you are exactly why the clichéd story is mccarthy is elected purpose of congress

and much more important was the fact there was a democratic alternative that would have been attempted to go to the republican party and stick with him there in a democratic very and then to offer a real alternative for the first time. that was just one more miscalculation on his part as a kingmaker that may have been otherwise. >>. >> but it's very and focused he didn't find his mark right away. >> you are being kind to him he gets there at the start of 47 he didn't find his mark until early 50. he tried a lot of issues some more legitimate way cozying

returning our servicemen over some issues i think were outrageous suggesting an element of anti- semitism like defending the perpetrators and defending the nazi perpetrators that the jewish prosecutors could not be objective and this was a victors justice. he tried just about everything with an issue to grab onto and not until february 1950 he found one that turned out to be a magical. >> because he was outrageous and bumbling and because the democratic party trying to get its act together with the attorney general's job but

mccarthy was starting to get scared he may be vulnerable wanting to make a name and to go so far and then to have desperate focused because he was coming up for reelection. >> if you made it three years still looking to take time by any ambitious democrats because you look so weak and ill-defined that would abandon and embarrassment to lose the battle for reelection and because holding onto power that was vital to joe mccarthy making it had a very young age only in his wildest dreams would he concede he would make it to which is wh why.

>> so one of the great things that you discover in your research going to west virginia. >> you are exactly right so as his staff as called it we are talking about february 1950 on the one day of the year when republicans all across the country do the same thing on abraham lincoln's birthday they celebrate as a way to rally the party and raise money. you are a prominent us senator you get invited to places like milwaukee or boston or washington or new york. mccarthy gets invited to west virginia. he shows up at night with two speeches in his briefcase one

is a snoozer on national housing policy what she knew about and cared about and if the part that speech to give that night 70 years later we were not be talking about him because he would have been a one term senator. instead he pulls out of his briefcase a speech i'm convinced he would the first time while delivering it that night written by a journalist and various staffers who did the editing. he pulls up in his hand a sheaf of papers and as part of the speech he has a list of 205 names at the state department names truman should have known about got rid of and this is a scary thing. he did this at a moment in

american history where we were scared to death about the soviet threat. we had watched recently nationalist china turned into red china and the spies rosenberg. arrested, tried, and convicted. we were about to teach our children that something younger listeners tonight will not believe but is so-called duck and cover strategy. when the atomic bomb comes to put your hands over your head you duck under the desk and be okay. that is how petrified we were. joe mccarthy understood those fears better than just about anybody. he understood rather than just sitting there are traitors in the government that was the cowboy a way to capture america's imagination.

he also understood something the ultimate cynicism so if he delivered a bombshell of a speech like that the journalist to were listening what have known who to call instantaneously and then to anyone with a local ap reporter and afterwords on every newspaper in america and never turned back and this was the birth the joe mccarthy and that was the birth the mccarthyism. >> i would agree but the other interesting part is it really

was by the seat-of-the-pants.

and the reality didn't line up with what we were saying in relatively short order and then to speak to the poor country to be engaged in the immense amount of attention and then a lot of people have should have gotten in his way, . the media as well as the political class gave him a lot of space in which to operate.

>> want to agree with you but one of the only newspapers that were right on joe mccarthy from the beginning, was your capital times. a lot of people took it on the chin to be right the way he attacked them, but the truth is even when people called him out in the beginning it look like he had a free ride called out very early on by a senator from maryland. he did mention the word and what happened and to send a lesson to call them out. so he delivers a speech that spring and mccarthyism and maryland and is one of the

texas benefactors and a guy named tyler who has his bag a dirty tricks and bringing those politics the same way he took down in wisconsin the message was very simple to take on joe mccarthy and beware of the bulldozer. >> i have to say what about margaret chase smith the only woman in the senate and taking on joe mccarthy even on - - early on with his charming side to promise margaret chase

smith who ever got the nomination in 1952. so margaret chase smith had enough connections she authored a declaration of conscience and was about his campaign was offensive to her she takes to the senate and find six moderate republicans to sign on and mccarthy tried to do to her and master of name-calling and then smith was strong enough and to run on a much closer election than before.

and with margaret chase smith she was an unexceptional senator and the one thing we remember about her today and to those other demagogues what we remember and she had the courage to stand up to joe mccarthy at a time when nobody was. that should be encouraging year years. >> as we speak of the long shadow. >> and to note that the speech to call out mccarthy for and incredibly destructive approach came full circle during the by kavanaugh hearings because susan collins voted to confirm but cap not mitch mcconnell was on the floor of the senate comparing collins to support the trump nomination to the supreme court.

>> she was incredibly helpful to me for the book as i interviewed and and held the same the gavel and she decided after 50 plus years and that gave us the joe mccarthy so i know her well model was margaret chase smith and it is clear she adores margaret chase smith her apartment and the senate race in maine doesn't do that and then to

say because susan collins role model says you have that down margaret chase smith. and the voters will vote on the selection. >> so the documents that you have got from those hearings and the materials you have access t to. >> we were lucky to have that material and you know it wasn't because i got that material recently opened a up and i had an incredibly important ally with urban

ancestry his daughter and the tv personality and those that were helping me to make sense of those documents and they were as surprised as i was in them to be open and generally the open to the time now back under lock and key again. >> you what the hell out of the them. >> so tell me be your questions come in looking at the hearing hearings, what was the most striking thing of those documents? >> the shocking thing to me was normally we expect a politician to be more outrageous when the cameras watching what they are doing

and in closed session nobody is watching you can be reasonable. he was more reasonable in his public hearings and how unhinged he became and then any rights to go out the window and presumed guilty and the second was held the violation senate tradition with the one man joe mccarthy was gone those like grade call and to do the billing and jesus is a test run and essential up in public hearings they were the parties

that he wanted he would do these test runs and nobody was there to keep them in check. >> it was incredibly jarring and disturbing moment in american history not only and then ended up on television so that you do a very good job of the helping us to understand this intersection of modern media and the democrats. >> again the history book version of joe mccarthy is there was a lawyer from boston named joe welch who when mccarthy attacked the associates welch defended him

to say senator have you no sense of decency? that's a moment it turned everything around. two quick things. welch welch was as good of an actor as a lawyer knowing that mccarthy would step over any sense of propriety and then the other were brought mccarthy down in my mind day after day televised testimony that joe mccarthy was not the champion more like the town bully. with a 50 percent favorability is a popular figure in america when he trailed was dwight eisenhower by the end of the hearings he was down at 34 percent willing to take him

on a demagogue takes great one - - looks great and starts looking vulnerable and the enabler stop enabling. >> so let's talk about enablers.

and to pass on mccarthy's lesson to trump and then he has said repeatedly during his presidency and then set i hope he was by my side and to say wish i had a joe mccarthy to tell me how to deal with this. >> that takes us to a second question with joe mccarthy or bobby kennedy in a rare circumstance here let's get inside bobby kennedy's head and figure out is he just a

charming man? >> backup for one second if there is anybody young man our viewing audience tonight, watch john for the embodiment have a journalist asks really smart questions you don't often see it because i've done a lot of these and these are two of the questions kennedy and mccarthy were on these trajectories in terms of their career kennedy starts out as a true believer and believes coming out with anti- communism in the cold war era starting off as a cold war with democrats and on his way for the iconic liberal figure in modern-day american history.

so mccarthy is a liberal that bobby kennedy becomes one day and on his way to become the iconic and the idea they intersected was papa joe kennedy with other kennedy asked for bobby did and whatever he asked mccarthy did and he saw a union i think kennedy with a real asset to one - - polacek machiavellian character that french to bring in and they should fight tough

politics there is a lot of lessons that joe mccarthy taught kennedy on behalf of the liberal causes. >> from our questions from the crowd here tonight you understand in a town filled with researchers and how you did research on the book. so at the historical society in wisconsin do my materials there that are of interest to you? do my materials there that are of interest to you? so of the magazine wisconsin

history and then to understand the context i was concerned politics it was almost as good. and i'm an idiot for massachusetts with the kennedys but nothing about wisconsin and politics and anything i got right out of tribute to john is on me and then to have two sets of archives as an author and a historians dreams. >> and it's also well done and

the rise of the modern democratic party and it's an incredibly valuable resource. >> one more quick thing the understanding the history in wisconsin the authors depend on they can learn from other biographers. and rather than just anyone like van susteren we national notes from his interviews they have a bit new material and i

was lucky that the wisconsin historical society and that is a complement and it is brave to take on somebody who had a lot of books written about them. >> you have to assume you can write something more. >> you are to play to face the question it ought to be which is why did the world need the 1t paragraph you joe mccarthy? and that the story seem timely but of today and i told my

publisher my wife i would not have access to the marquette archives and all the papers from the bethesda naval hospital i was counting on to understand mccarthy's health situation in both cases after he said it wouldn't happen i was shocked that it happened. and is lucky for me. who knows nobody had taken and a dive. >> but this book is getting a lot of attention went down.

>> and i'm wondering if you think that they would be getting the attention that it is if barack obama was still president on the united states. if there was a different person in the white house. >> short answer no especially on a historic figure that we have seen so much of in the past. >> so now as we circle around to the end, the question about the impact and the book long shadow and targeting a lot of

african-americans and the red scare those who had been and the involved in the civil rights movement do you think mccarthyism slow down or had an impact on the rise of civil rights the greatest impact is the anti-communist movement and the way that he did as much to anti-communist as he did but there were the other movements that mccarthy jumped in on that he may have been an anti- semi and clearly a gay

basher and one of the orchestrator's the other is the whole issue of race and on the wrong side and that mccarthyism and bob i everybody that they don't like because joe mccarthy had a wide net and as a racist or anti- gay or anti- somatic but he was willing as an opportunist and ironically more than anything with anti- elitist and anti- wall street

to prevent those sympathies and i think he was populist. populism has a lot of upside do it. he was a demagogue. >> i will make the interviewer's mistake of one last question instead of leaving on the perfect point you have been so many. >> and my reward to myself and my publishers to have three long years with joe mccarthy and the subtitle does a better job how duke ellington

transformed america and i think there are not to be better people you could spend time with as an incredibly uplifting story changing that racial horizon in many ways to the civil rights movement. >> what a way to clean up was dealing with the mccarthy thing. [laughter] >> this is been fabulous we have had wonderful crowd all the other place we went to remind people the history that we have both written for and coming out very soon and with that we will turn it back to our host.

>> very quickly i want to thank john who was a terrific interlocutor tonight and also to be wonderful to assemble this program. >>. >> i'm only here to say thank you thank you both so much this is wonderful with the type of conversation i appreciate you being here in the middle of the beautiful evening to watch this thank you as well and also to mention at the madison institute and always wonderful to work with.

>> and also i want to mention where he is only here because the only get to do this to buy the book so right now during quarantine and that there is a local bookstore as well. >> i want to support your bookstore and make an offer nobody would find attractive. putting in your book order if you want to personalize your signed, normally we would do a book signing indicate that when you plan your order i will send the bookplate personalize to you and then i will just say one last thank you to read who is an extraordinary person who is

not on the screen today but supportive of me in the bobby kennedy book and an extraordinary guy. thank you all