that starts at 8 p.m. eastern. enjoy booktv this week and weekend on c-span2. >> you were watching booktv on c-span2 every week and with the latest nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by america's cable-television companies as a public service and brought you by your public provider. >> good evening, everyone. thank you so much for being here. we are delighted to be hosting larry tye for his book "demagogue: the life and long shadow of senator joe mccarthy" and larry will appear alongside john nichols for many of us know from his serious roles at the

capital times as associate editor of the nation magazine and aggressive. -- progressive. we couldn't be more delighted to be hosting this event all spring and summer long here on our crowd podcast channel and watch it take a moment to say thank you the madison public library and the medicine public library foundation. their support for online cultural events is an absolutely unwavering. they are, oh, my gosh, i'm so excited to see john nichols. their support for these events has been absolutely unwavering and they have been so dedicated to bringing author in advance to all of you with your watching in your home at madison or across the country or across the globe. we've seen an incredible uptick in her audience, people from all over and it is just absolutely wonderful to see the response so thank you and what here's arguing us come to one. and all the responses of major

events keep going. without further do i like to bring john and larry to the screen, and step way myself. >> hello, everyone. thanks for joining us. larry, thanks to come in all the way from massachusetts to be here with us tonight. larry is on cape cod tonight as a speak. we have weathered people with this, someone with joints undergo long and as was explained we will take questions. let me just a couple things upfront about larry. 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 by the economic forces of the moment in which we live and the challenges we face. it is a a great honor to be wih another journalist and someone who really has practiced in some most creative and exciting ways. that's only a beginning of discussing larry's many talents and contributions. i will also mention talking tonight about a new bookies put out, "demagogue" which is -- a new book he has put out -- i do want say larry has books that are worthy of your attention if you have read them already. his biography of bobby kennedy was brilliant and really took the exploration of the kennedy story and journey to some new and exciting places. his biography of satchel paige was a vital contribution to not just sports history but the

history of really the evolution of this country in so many fundamental ways. and finally my favorite of his books his rising from the rails which is his story of the sleeping car porters and then huge fans of adolf randall forcefully put of the sleeping car porters and chairman of the march in washington in 1963. larry capture that brilliantly. we're here tonight to talk about a brilliant new book "demagogue." i wanted to start by asking you, i noticed in some of your other biographies you have the name of the person, satchel paige or bobby kennedy. indicates of joe mccarthy you chose a word, demagogue. why was that? >> before answer the question i want to say that john is one of many people i interviewed for this book, and to think stood up about my interview. one is he was the youngest

person that it in a good i was trying to get a sentient people who really knew the mccarthy era and you john mccarthy, and the other was he was among the very smartest people i interviewed any of you who are wisconsin readers know his work from that capital times and from the nation from all kinds of the places he has published. having somebody who is as tuned into not just mccarthy but mccarthy's context in wisconsin and the nation was extraordinary. the reason i picked the one-word title 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. i felt that the subtitle would capture the sense that it was front and center in this book was low blow joe mccarthy but it was also important to see him

in the context. the reason we're talking about him 70 years after his beginnings of his crusade is because he was the archetype for this bully are demagogue figure in american history. that's a long-winded explanation and a promise keep my other answers shorter. >> we are here to hear what you have to say so all the long winded is okay. i'm going to keep on the title. in the title he used the term the long shadow, the life and long shadow of joe mccarthy. give us the a sense of what yon 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 a long shot because of the impact of what he did and not just him as joe mccarthy but the orchestrator of this whole movement, mccarthyism. it is also to say we just can't

stop with his death. we have to look at how he influenced demagogue the came after whether be david duke, george wallace or people for in a political context today. i i want to say one other thing. the temptation with a lot of the interviews i've been doing on joe mccarthy is to talk about donald trump and this is a book about joe mccarthy. donald trump's name is mentioned only in the preface and an epilogue, and yet his story and the story of other demagogues is there in wait way in every pagn the book. >> as long as you brought trump up on going to join you in trying to avoid faq discussion of him. tell me, when you started putting this book together, it was around the start of his presidency, was in it? >> actually a week before the election in 2016 i signed up to write a different book. that was a biography of the barack obama. the day after the election i realized we will not know barack

obama's legacy until after the air of trump is over. it also became apparent the day after the election that what i thought was a story of almost ancient history in america in terms of demagoguery, is the story of today, that we've not outgrown this affair, this attraction to bullies in the ways i hope we had. >> let's get into the book a little bit. there's one interesting element of it which is you take a very casual approach to referring to him. i guess the way to sate is, when you read the book which at the wonderful narrative the route, 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 and a couple of lawn chairs by the beach or maybe even at the end of a bar, to somebody starts to tell a

very long story. you kind of come back. it's very human in so many ways and i wonder if you thought to do that? >> i think you to writing a biography of somebody, you have to humanize them and make the reader feel like they are dating into the spirit of this persons life and whether the person is somebody who think of by the end of the book as a hero or a villain that can open. it was a very conscious thing the senate bobby kennedy, i talked about him generally using the word bobby and that was a conscious decision. with this one it is lots of joe's. it is to try to get in and see them from the inside. >> what did you see when you look inside? >> i saw on the one hand, -- i want to go back actually to a quote that was one of the reasons i had joe mccarthy in the back of my head ever since i

see my research on bobby kennedy and it is a a quote from the oe person of the one of the 450 people interviewed for the bobby kennedy book, bobby's widow. she said something about joe mccarthy that he couldn't get out of my head and it was that joe mccarthy might be a monster too much of america, but to bobby and to me, he was just plain good fun. the idea of joe mccarthy as good fun was counterintuitive to me. i felt there was some side of income the sight of him that caused wisconsin to overwhelmingly elect him into make different statewide elections i wanted to understand. i came out of this book feeling like, on the one hand, joe mccarthy became much more a human being as opposed to the caricature that we stayed in our history books that i ever realized. he is somebody i would love to have got out for a beer with and

sat down and really understood all of his charms and all of his ability to convince ethel and bobby kennedy that 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. 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 they gave a more candid sense of that, made in somebody that if you wind up for a beer with them at night that would be fine if you sure sect would want to be in the witness stand when he was grilling you during the day. >> and interesting thing about mccarthy was his ability to joke with the people he was about to attack, or to actually jokingly attacked them. we remember the streets of john patrick under, a longtime political reporter, about with

mccarthy throughout the '40s and throughout the 50s for sure. when hunter would go to events he said, he actually started to hide nine polls at the defense because he knew at mccarthy sign in the crowd, mccarthy would launch into a rather jovial attack on cap times as a prompt of the prairie and an attack on hunter but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be so mean-spirited. would almost be for the joking for the crowd. i think that was very coming for him. >> that suggest two things about mccarthy. one is that he didn't quite understand how brutal he was being. being there with an angry crowd as a journalist being called up by mccarthy was putting hunter at risk, and you think mccarthy didn't quite get that

aspect of it. it also was that joe mccarthy really did see this as a bit of a game. he is to everybody who was there, journalists or politicians he was going after would understand it was again, understand the rules and would be able to go out after we cannot put all behind didn't because after all, it was again. >> i think that comes out in your book in quite a few ways because you do talk about these 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 liberal character. was that merely opportunistic or do you think that's where he

actually started and then evolved into something else? >> you can't talk much about anything with the joe mccarthy and leave out the opportunistic element. was he really the liberal he started as or the ultraconservative that he ended up as, and i think where he started out is we had the most choice. he wasn't sure what could get him elected. when he ran for district attorney he ran not just as a new deal fdr loving democrat but i think if somebody who was fired up enough about that that he really believed that was what was best for the country. that was also his irish roots suggested that the party of fdr was where he belonged. i think the only tiny question his being a democrat and is being a liberal was when he realized he couldn't be elected from the area around appleton daddy grew up, and he was again to do whatever it took to be

elected. probably in the middle of the night when nobody was looking he went and changed changes party registration for republican. as you know the story it wasn't just he became a republican. the opening in the republican party, the progressive wing of the republican party was taken at by robert junior and the opening was the stalwart republican, the most conservative element of the republican party, and if that was open, joe mccarthy is going to take it. if it may change his ideology, he was going to do that. he was going to do, , and he di, whatever it took. i think that was, if there was any scene that ran throughout his life, it was the theme of whatever it took. >> and where the people along the way who helped him to make that change? i'm thinking of the folks i've been appleton, particularly --

>> a lot of people helped. urban ben van susteren was a vn and probably say just advisor and he helped steer him. the people of the newspaper in appleton helped steer him. he had lots of people who ended up being his enablers, his benefactors and being his guides. he was willing to take advice from anybody who is willing to serve the ends of joe mccarthy. >> and the like that, right? that made him a feeling. >> they love that. urban was an extra in a character and a think from, teammate over the years to everybody from journalists and authors to his children, they suggest that van susteren truly adored mccarthy come here just to mccarthy's flaws and shortcomings as well as anybody

did but that he was a loyal friend and he stuck with him. he never publicly repudiate mccarthy even when his temptation was to do that and even when he is telling his kids and 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 who's entire family was representing the iconic liberal first family of america, the kennedy's. and bobby kennedy remained loyal enough to joe mccarthy that he not only never publicly question but when his brother jack said stay way from mccarthy's funeral in 1957, bobby said thank you jack, that's interesting advice. he flew into appleton with all his republican congressional people, and on the one hand, he went up in the choir loft so no one could see them at the funeral, at the graveside service he stood off to the site

when nobody could see him. after the funeral he begged the journalists who were there not to put his name in those stories and not getting in trouble with his big brother jack. but until the very end and until for the kennedy's, generally and specifically stayed loyal to him as mccarthy despite all this flaws, aspired the kind of enormous loyalty. >> it's notable john kennedy really danced around mccarthy rather than stand at to him. >> so john kennedy had different relationship. bobby was a more straightforward and last plotting guy than john kennedy. john kennedy was always thinking of his next step. i'm convinced the day john kennedy was born he started plotting his presidential campaign. his father was doing that

absolutely but jack picked it up quickly. in 1952 when john kennedy was relatively unknown and unaccomplished congressman from massachusetts running against a very powerful center henry cabot lodge to try to take that seat away from the republicans, pahpa joe kennedy had one big request for joe mccarthy, which was state heck out of massachusetts. joe kennedy had given enough money to joe mccarthy that whatever he asked mccarthy was likely to say yes. joe kennedy was smart enough to know if joe mccarthy came to massachusetts and campaign for the republican lodge, lots of irish catholic voters who love the joe mccarthy whether they were republicans or more likely they were democrats, would do what he said to do. jack kennedy ended up winning the senate seat by just three percentage point in the year of an eisenhower landslide were eisenhower won by nine points.

joe kennedy and jack and you are right. mccarthy staying at the massachusetts insured that jack kennedy won that seat. jack kennedy for the rest of his life had a certain kind of loyalty for mccarthy. when mccarthy was censured, the only senator in the senate at the 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 talking about. >> i thought you're going to take us to the term right there. you are from massachusetts and we have already spoken far too much about massachusetts so let's talk about wisconsin. in that 1946 campaign that brought mccarthy to the ascendant he took on a senator who had come back into the republican party after having been out of it for a dozen years as a leading figure with his

brother in the progressive party. mccarthy was making an opportunistic run. he had the backing of the party establishment but the other senator center was an epic figure in the state and it appears that at least early on he did not take mccarthy seriously. or did not take interesting enough. >> eurojust captured the through line for all mccarthy's campaigns. his opponents took him seriously. tom coleman who was the dean for the stalwart republican in the state never taken seriously and the guy to carry against the fall it. tom coleman street and i'm convinced this captain of the night with some out beating him. he thought gemma cardi b's vehicle is something he didn't accept until he watched mccarthy and he watched mccarthy out and hustle all of

the republican activist and especially young republicans in a way that finally coleman became convinced that this was the guy who was a determine to win that he was a guy he ought to get behind. the way i think that joe mccarthy beat la follette was partly what you are suggesting, that la follette beat himself. it was almost like he was surrendering. i think he was getting older. he had been in office long enough. his health was a great. i'm not convinced he was sure he really wanted another term, or at least not wanted enough to fight hard and to fight dirty like is going have to do to beat a guy like joe mccarthy. mccarthy raise legitimate issues in the campaign like whether la follette 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 are electing somebody but he also

fought dirty and you raise issues like the fact that la follette owned a home in virginia. mccarthy was suggesting that was a mansion and use place la follette really considered home and not wisconsin. and if anybody shouldn't have had to show that they deep roots in the state of wisconsin, it was somebody who's family had given up as much as la follette had and serve the state not just for a long time but really well. but at the time la follette finally came back and started campaigning hard, the campaign was essentially over. mccarthy one by out hustling is opposed by the way la follette realized at the inn. it was very close combat 3000 votes, right. it was a very close election. it was an unlikely election for mccarthy to be able to depose la follette, and it was the toughest election he would ever

faced. the easy thing was beating the democrat after he beat the republican nomination. 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 was earliest days gave an indication that anybody had been paying attention then, he was somebody to be reckoned with. he was throwing bombs before het even was seated in the senate, essentially saying that striking miners, not to think about using a definitely against striking miners. whether he really thought that nobody will ever know but but i don't think he did. he just knew instinctively how to get journalists like you and be to pay attention to him.

that was partly by being outrageous pic was partly by offering them without having to say it that he would put them on page one. it was partly by charming them. he was charming. >> he was. before we get into that because that's vital i i want to do one more thing in the 46th election to close the circle. one of the interesting things was mccarthy may well have one the 46 primary because of the rise of modern democratic party because the democratic party in 36 36 after having been on the sidelines for most of the '30s in the '40s and wisconsin had genuine candidates and genuine competition, former mayor of milwaukee come to run for governor. ui primaries for congressional seats and suddenly some of the energy had gone over to this other place. >> i think you're right and nick

lachey story told about that election is mccarthy was elected with the sport of congress and it wasn't just an irony. much more important was the fact there really was a democratic alternative that a lot of progressives who would've been tempted to go with la follette into the republican party and stick with him there ended up instead voting at the democratic primary and that la follette hadn't counted on the democrat offering a real alternative for the first time in an election like that 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. mccarthy himself harassed a a little surprised to get to washington. arise out there and as you say a bomb throw from the start. but very and focus. he didn't find his mark right away. >> he didn't find his mark. you are being kind to him. he gets it at the of 1947 and ai don't think he found his mark

until early 1950. he tried lots of issues. some issues that were legitimate issues like housing for returning servicemen, his fellow soldiers from world war ii, some issues i think were outrageous and they suggested an element of anti-semitism by mccarthy like the sending the protectors of one of the deadliest massacres of u.s. troops during world war ii, the famous melody massacre defending than nazi perpetrators and suggesting the jewish prosecutors couldn't be objective about it because they were jews and after all this was a victors justice. he tried just about everything in terms of an issue to grab onto and it wasn't until february 1950 that he found one that turned out to be magical for him. >> let's talk about that. let's also understand that because he was outrageous and a bit bumbling and because the

democratic party was starting to get its act together when he the attorney general job in in 1948 with fairchild, truly winning the state and 40. mccarthy was getting scared that he might be vulnerable. he wanted to make a name, right? he was looking for something. my sense senses is getting a le desperate to have some focus for his senate career because he was coming up for reelection. >> if you have made it through three years and you're still looking like a backbencher and like apache to take on by any ambitious democrat because you look so weak and ill defined, he was desperate. he was desperate because would've been an embarrassment to lose this battle for reelection and he was desperate because holding onto power, whether or not he knew what he is going to do with that power, was one of the things that was most vital to joe mccarthy. he made it at a very young age to a point i think only in his

wildest dreams he would ever conceive you would make it to and i give having all that taken away made him desperate. which is why who's willing to do anything to find an issue to latch onto. >> one of the great things indie book or that you discovered in your research was he went to wheeling, west virginia, with two speeches. am i right? >> you're exactly right. wheeling, west virginia, or has his staffers called it wheeling west by god virginia, were 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 birthday they celebrate and the use that as a way to rally the party and raise money. if you are a prominent u.s. senator you get invited to places like milwaukee or boston, like washington or new york. when you're a backbencher like joe mccarthy you confided to

wheeling, west virginia. he shows up that night as you suggest with two speeches in his briefcase. one is the snoozer a national housing policy, which is something he knew a bit about and cared about. had he picked that speech to give that night, 70 years later you and i would not be talking about it because he probably would've been the one term senator you were talking about. instead he pulls out of his briefcase a speech that i'm convinced he read for the first time when he was delivering it that night. it was written by journalists and by various staffers who did the editing on it. he holed up in his hand a sheet of paper and as part of his speech he says, i have in my hand a list of 205 spies at the u.s. state department. they are people that truman should've known about as president, , he should've gotten rid of. this is a scary thing.

he was doing this at a moment in american history when we were scared to death about the soviet threat. it wasn't just the soviets. we had watched very recently a national china turn intervention watched the atomic spies rosenberg be arrested, tried and convicted. we're about to teach our children that something that younger listeners tonight won't belief, but it was a so-called duck and cover strategy, which is when the atomic bomb comes, you put your hands over your head and your doctor and your desk and you will be okay. that is how petrified we were. joe mccarthy understood those fears better than just about anybody. he understood that rather than just saying there were traitors in our government, if you name and counted the traitors, but that was the cowboy way to capture america's imagination. he also understood something

that i think was the ultimate in cynicism, which is if he delivered a bunch of other speech like that in washington, the journalists who were listening wouldn't know who to call instantaneously at the state department for comment. had he delivered a a speech lie that in the afternoon as a lunch speech, the journalists on a deadline which at that plenty of time to call their washington colleagues and find who to call for comment. he delivered the speech at night. he delivered it with only two back reports are really mattered in the audience, one from the local wheeling newspaper and one, the local ap reporter. what happened afterwards was just what mccarthy greened up. within two days he was on page one of every newspaper in america and he never turned back. this was the birth of joe mccarthy in terms of being associate with the anti-communist issue and this was the birth i think that night of mccarthyism.

>> i would agree with you and also the other interesting part about it was it was the seat of the pants. the number changed all the time. >> it changed and it went back and forth a bunch of numbers but the two nike can back most of the 205 we think is what he said in wheeling, and in his personal and professional papers, this wonderful stash of materials at marquette university, there were a bunch of different numbers in the various versions of the speech. there were 205 and i was crossed out at the other number he kept coming back to was 57. without making light of it, one of the places where you got the number 57 was, he he loved hamburgers and stakes and a suggested maybe on the way to his dinner he stopped at a restaurant, ford heinz 57 sauce on and that never captured his imagination. i don't believe it. on the other hand, i think given

how much was the number 205 was, it, it could've come from anywhere because they were not 205 names in his sheaf of papers and there were not 205 spies we know of to this day at the state department. >> this is where it gets interesting because as you say it something that could've been easily checked out, easily challenged. the numbers were not steady. the reality didn't line up with what he was saying. and yet in relatively short order he was sharing national hearings and speaking to the whole country -- chairing -- being paid an immense amount of attention. at least for a time a lot of people at should've gotten in his way or something down didn't. the media as well as the political class gave him a lot of space in which to operate.

>> on one hand i want to agree with you and say not just because you are here but one of the all newspapers that was right on joe mccarthy from almost the very beginning was your capital times. a lot of people took it on the chin by being right in the way he attacked them. the truth is that even when people called out at the beginning it looked like he had a free ride that he was called out very early on by a sender from maryland. he had a special committee to investigate mccarthy. he didn't mince words when he called mccarthy a fraud and a hoax. what happened to him since the lesson to anybody who would be tempted to likewise call him out. that november, he delivers a speech, mccarthy delivers his famous speech in february 1950. that spring the committee come up with a report calling him the hoax and that november

mccarthy is in maryland having recruited a 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 tighten of maryland politics, the same way he took down bob la follette june in wisconsin and that sent a shockwave through the senate. the message was very simple. take on joe mccarthy and beware of the bulldozer. >> and yet smith did taken on. >> she did. >> and a few others. >> i i just have say a word abot margaret smith because she's a favorite of mine. she was the only woman in the senate, the senator from maine and margaret chase smith took on joe mccarthy only on an even though mccarthy in his classic

charming side had promised margaret chase smith would put her name up for vice president for whoever got the nomination in 1952. margaret chase smith had enough conviction that she often what was called a declaration of conscience condemning mccarthy forced un-american activities in the way he grilled witnesses and ignored the rights, the way, everything about his campaign was offensive to her. she finds six moderate republicans to sign onto her tongue and mccarthy tried to do to her what he did to try to. first he was the master of the name-calling and he dubbed her snow white and her seven dwarfs come her fellow senators. then he took to maine and try to beat her. smith was strong enough as a candidate that he couldn't beat her she lost gumshoe rant on a much close election then she had

the time before. lastly, i went to say that margaret chase smith is, , she s relatively unexceptional senator. the one thing we remember about her today, and this sort of it suggesting something to enablers of other demagogues. the one thing remember about her if she had the courage to stand up to joe mccarthy at a time when almost nobody was. that should be encouraging to people who find that courage. over the years generally there are not that many of them. >> as we speak of the long shadow before going to question some folks i did want to note that margaret chase smith speech calling mccarthy out for what was then an incredibly destructive approach and use of his platform came full circle during the brett kavanaugh hearings. when susan collins voted to confirm brett kavanaugh, you had mitch mcconnell on the floor of the senate comparing susan

collins supporting donald trump's nomination for the supreme court to margaret chase smith. >> so susan collins was somebody was incredibly helpful to me for the book and somebody who i interviewed and she was helpful long before his writing my book agreeing she held the same gavel joe mccarthy as chair of the permit subcommittee on investigations. she decided after 50 plus years of volunteers closed-door hearings being under lock and key, she decide to make those transcripts public. those give us a sense of joe mccarthy. when interviewed her i knew that a role model as center was margaret chase smith and they said are you intending to take this to heart entrance of what you do as a sender? it is very clear that she adores margaret chase smith and she sees herself as a model of following in smith's footsteps, her opponent in the current

senate race, very soon heated race in maine doesn't do that and the relay is using this margaret chase smith model as saying rather than looking at her as susan collins role model, saying you let down margaret chase smith whether she has not the voters will decide this election. >> that was very political answer, my friend. 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. >> i was really lucky to have that material, and john, you know from knowing me a bit that it wasn't because i was charming that i got the material. i think in terms of the wonderful marquette files the reason to open them up were two reasons. one is i was enough of the past still a way to get rid of me

maybe and open it. it is either incredibly important ally who was greta van susteren, bourbons daughter -- bourbons daughter and little tv personality. the market people were extraordinary in helping me make sense of those documents and ai think they were as surprised as i was that a copy access, and sally rather than the open generally they were open for the time i was looking at them and they are now back under at least temporarily under lock and key again. >> you wrote the hell out of it. you got a lot out of it. >> i appreciate you saying that. >> tell me before go to questions what was, look at the drinks i know we could go through chapter and verse through all of them. what was the most striking thing you learn from looking at those documents? >> the shocking thing to me was normally we expect a politician to be more outrageous when the

cameras are there watching what they are doing. when they go in close session nobody is watching so you can be reasonable. joe mccarthy flipped that script. he was more reasonable in his public hearings, which is a sign since he wasn't especially reasonable of how unhinged he became in the private hearings. he did a couple things. one was in the notion of witnesses having any real rights when out the window and they were presumed guilty from the start. a second was he held in violation of senate tradition one man hearings. when the one man joe mccarthy was gone, he turned the hearings over to sophomoric staffers to do the grilling and the violation people's rights on his behalf. the other thing was he used those hearings as a test run for witnesses who would stand up to in and who were eloquent. it didn't show up in public

hearings. the ones who are more easily pressed and he would more easily caved in to him, they the perfect patsies he wanted in the public. he got to run these wonderful test runs and any sense of any rules and propriety when out the window because nobody was there to keep him in check. >> and it was an incredible 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 and that's the lesson want to bring out is as i read your book, you do a very good job of talking about are helping us to understand this intersection of modern media and the demagogue. >> so again a history book version of what happened to joe mccarthy is that it was leprechaun like lawyer from boston named joe welt who in the middle of hearings when

mccarthy attacked welches young associate, he said have you no sense of decency? that was a moment turned everything around. i would say two quick things about that. why ms. welch was as good an actor as it was a lawyer and he had that line ready to go knowing mccarthy would step over any sense of propriety whether it was attacking his young associate or doing something. he was made to go with that line. line. the other is what brought mccarthy down, in my mind, is the public scene with day after day of televised testimony that joe mccarthy was not this heroic champion that they started out believing, that he was more like the town bully. in the course of those hearings he went from the gallup polls telling us he was starting out with a 50% favorability, which meant as a popular public figure in america the only one he trailed was dwight eisenhower. by august and the end of the

hearings he was down to 34%, and that is when his fellow senators develop a backbone and were wilg to take him on. i demagogue looks great when the up at 50%. they start looking vulnerable when their number stayed and enablers stop enabling. >> let's talk about enablers and let's go to the questions from some of her great audience. the question that they most want me to ask you is about roy cohen. and particularly what is mccarthy's relationship with roy cohen tell us about our current president because of course this is the intersection? >> for anybody who doesn't know, anybody in the world who does know roy cohen come he was a brilliant and arrogant young lawyer with a record successfully prosecuting communists that joe mccarthy brought in in 1953 when he took

over the permanent subcommittee on investigations. roy cohn was his alter ego. roy cohn was the first choice for that job but if we were doing a what if we would sit what if he hired the second choice because the second choice was bobby kennedy. with joe mccarthy had been a different joe mccarthy if rather than roy cohn whispering in his ear it was the one day liberal icon bobby kennedy? what roy cohn we flash forward from roy cohn being mccarthy's enabler, roy cohn helping bring down mccarthy having kicked off a lot of the controversy that gave us the army mccarthy hearings. we flash floored 50 years. -- forward to he still brilliant and arrogant. a guy named fred trump and a guy named donald trump, donald trump was entering the cutthroat world of new york real estate. his dad and he recognize i

deleted somebody to advise him, to instruct him how to get involved with that world. and who better than the guy who learned at the knee of joe mccarthy to come in and instructs them him had to do we cut throat and private? 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. what i think usually saying, only i wish i had a joe mccarthy at my side to tell me how to deal with this. >> that takes us to a second question. you referenced it in your first one, about the relationship between joe mccarthy and bobby kennedy. you are in the rare circumstance here of having done altarpiece of both men. let's get in bobby kennedy said for a minute here and figure out

how much of bobby kennedy agree with joe mccarthy, how much did he just find in a charming man? >> i want to back up for one second and say one thing. if there's anybody young in our viewing audience tonight, watch john for the embodiment of our good journalist asks really smart questions. you don't often see because all you see is the story and the newspaper afterwards but these are really, i've done a lot of things and these are really terrific questions. to go to bobby kennedy and joe mccarthy. they were on exactly the opposite trajectories in terms of their careers. abi kennedy starts out as not just a joe mccarthy staff are but a joe mccarthy true believer. he believes joe mccarthy and his cause of anti-communism in the cold war era were righteous picky started out his life as a cold war, he was a democrat but he was a cold war in a relatively conservative guy. he's on his way to becoming the

icons liberal figure in modern-day american history. joe mccarthy started out his life as this liberal that bobby kennedy comes with it and he's on his way to becoming the iconic cold war conservative and even 70 70 years later he remas an icon through much of the conservative movement in america. the idea that intersected was for for a single reason we talked about earlier on. it was because poppa joe kennedy said that ought to come together. together. whatever joe kennedy did whatever joe kennedy asked for, bobby did. whatever joe kennedy asked joe mccarthy four, joe mccarthy did. i think joe kennedy who was a classic realpolitik, classic machiavellian kind of political figure understood bobby would get 200 the master. it's ironically the same feeling i think fred trump bring in roy cohn years later, they both felt

that their sons ought to know how to fight in dirty politics, tough politics, whatever you want to call it, and they had master tutor to teaching the a lot of lessons mccarthy todd kennedy, bobby kennedy ended up using lid behalf of liberal causes. >> and we have from her questions from the crowd tonight, you'll understand you in madison, wisconsin, a town filled with researchers. there are several questions about how you did the research on the book. very interesting. one of them is at the historical side in wisconsin did you find materials that were of interest to you as regards all this and more that any materials in particular that stood out? >> there were wonderful mentors at the historical society i don't want to say too much about that because there's a piece due out soon i just did the last edits on last night. i can't remember, i'm terrible

on names but the name of the wisconsin historical society magazine, what is it called? wisconsin history? >> i think you are pretty much there. >> 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 siu full. people, i'm an idiot for massachusetts comes in knowing something about the kennedy's and nothing that wisconsin politics. anything i got right of which you to people like john anything i got wrong about wisconsin politics is on me. the historic society was really wonderful to me. the idea of having two sets of archives like the market and like w ace s is an author and historians dream. >> i know mccarthy materials

of historic society are particularly well done because i just did an article for the magazine you are writing for on dan ho and the rise of the modern democratic party which intersected with a lot of this. it's an incredibly valuable resource. >> i just want to say one more quick thing in terms of understanding the history of mccarthy and wisconsin. one thing office depend on is they can learn from all the biographers have come before them. as lots of great biographies of mccarthy. the idea people like thomas reeves left his papers to the historical society, but the interviews of people who are long gone like urban van susteren who would i would never get to, rather than just saying you can read what i quoted and that the only thing worth, reads, left his note from his interviews. we all have a responsibility to do that so we can build every

new biography has a bit more material. and yet it is rare for people to do that. i was really lucky that people like reeves did it and it was sitting there at the wisconsin historical society for me. >> that is very true, very appropriate. that gets to another question and relates to some of the ones were getting from folks. .. you are too like polite to phrase the question, why did the world need another biography to joe mccarthy and assume you will say something different, partly it was a

story seen as timely for the reasons we've been talking about in terms of not just our history but today and i almost walked the plank and fill off of it. exactly a week after i told my publisher and my wife i would not get to the market archives and all the papers from the bethesda naval hospital i was counting on to understand mccarthy's health situation which was critical to what ended up happening. in both cases after i said it wasn't going to happen i was shocked that it happened it was lucky for me it happened. was i breaking any new ground? who knows? i had the transcripts of the closed-door hearings. no one had taken a deep dive on them. i was a pain in the neck, people ended up for reasons,

saying yes. >> this book is getting a lot of attention, the author's favorite interview in the new york times the other day and i am wondering if you think much as you move the ball down the field and it did add to understanding mccarthy, it would be getting the attention that it is 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 know. longer answer i wouldn't have written the book if there were a different person in the white house, but it is partly a matter of timing on any book especially on a historic figure that we have seen so much of in the past. >> as we circle around to the end a question about the impact

of mccarthy, i am a big fan of using the term long shadow in your subtitle, what joe mccarthy did going after 5 communists and fellow travelers and people he accused was he targeted a lot of african-americans, not just him but the whole red scare, who had been involved in a nation civil rights movement. do you think mccarthyism slowed down, the rise of civil rights in this country? >> the anti-communist movement, i think there were 3 other movements that mccarthy jumped

in on and did despicable things. clearly a gay bacher and orchestrator's of what was called - on the wrong side of that and mccarthyism, to slur the people they don't like, joe mccarthy, i don't know whether he was a racist or anti-gay or anti-semitic, to play to anything he thought was going to work, ironically more than

anything anti-elitist in his notion of anti-east coast, playing to a lot of populist sympathies. joe mccarthy is the word demagogue rather than the word populist. i don't think he was a populist. populism have lots of upside to it. he was a demagogue and there's not a lot of upside to being a demagogue or a bully. >> an awfully good place to circle around to. i will make the interviewer's mistake of asking a last question on a particular point. you have written so many books. are you working on something else now? >> i am and the title of it, too soon a deadline for the next book and my reward to myself and my publishers award to me, and it is a book called

jasmine, the subtitle explains what it is. the subtitle is how duke ellington, count basie, transformed america. three better people you could spend time with and there's is an incredibly uplifting story how they changed the racial horizon and set the table for the civil rights movement. >> what a way to clean it up. >> this has been fabulous. we have to ask questions from folks. i want to thank the book festival folks, library folks, all the people that helped put it together. wisconsin magazine that you and

i have written for, you will have an article you will come out with very soon and with that we will turn it back to our host. >> i want to thank john who was a terrific interlocutor, connor was wonderful, dealing with my incessant emails. >> most people sending an email today. i am only here to say thank you to john or larry. thank you, absolutely wonderful, i appreciate you making time in the middle of july, and to all of you gathering all over the country, thank you as well.

partners at the madison institute, they are wonderful to work with. >> fred and marilyn. >> i want to mention our bookselling partners, larry is only here because he wrote this book, you buy the book, you have the means during quarantine, click the button at the bottom. i am sure larry has a local bookstore as well. >> i want to support your bookstore and make an offer, when you put in your book order, if you want it signed, in decades when you put in your order, i am sure the bookstore

has no problem letting you know that and one last thing, an extraordinary person we don't see on screen but was supportive of me in the bobby kennedy book, an extraordinary guy, thank you all. >> we are featuring booktv programs available every weekend on c-span2. we focus on covert operations. former fbi special agent talks about the early years of the us war on terror. chris whipple talk to former cia directors to provide an inside look at the intelligence organizations operations. the great secret looks at the sinking of 17 allied ships in italy in december of 1943. start at 8:00 pm eastern, enjoy booktv this weekend every weekend on c-span2.