0:00

Personology is a production of I Heart

0:02

Radio. Welcome

0:11

back to part two of Joe McCarthy,

0:13

who has rapidly risen to the role

0:15

of U S. Senator of Wisconsin. Initially

0:18

seen as a moderate Republican, his

0:20

first few years as senator were not especially

0:23

remarkable. He was noted, however,

0:26

for being an excellent orator, but

0:28

his reputation would soon change. I'm

0:31

doctor Gale Salts, and this is Personology.

0:34

My guest again today is journalist and

0:36

author Larry Tye, a New York

0:38

Times bestselling author and author

0:41

of newly released Demagogue,

0:43

The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe

0:45

McCarthy.

0:49

We've sort of talked about the groundwork

0:52

as to why Joe McCarthy

0:55

might have been the right person

0:58

characteriologically to embark

1:01

on what he ultimately did. But

1:04

there was also, you have to say, somewhat

1:06

of a right person at the right time and

1:09

right place. Right. So it

1:11

so happened that in during

1:15

the Cold War Jitters rising

1:18

Uh, the House un American Activities

1:20

Committee becomes a permanent

1:23

House committee having nothing to do with Joe McCarthy

1:25

himself, so

1:28

that the idea of investigating

1:30

communist subterfuge becomes

1:34

a reality in the

1:36

Senate at that time, and

1:38

concerns about the Cold War means

1:40

that the American public is

1:43

very comfortable and ready to buy

1:45

into the concern that

1:48

Communism has to be ferreted out in

1:51

any way possible. So I

1:53

think it goes back to the word opportunists, and there

1:55

are two sides to that word. One is recognizing

1:58

the opportunity and the other is willingness

2:00

to exploit it. The opportunity was there,

2:02

and that we were I don't know what

2:05

kind of language I can use here, but we were scared

2:07

as heck in terms of what was going

2:09

on in the world. There was a real threat off in the Soviet

2:11

Union, and there was a

2:14

real sense in America that we

2:16

could go to nuclear war and kids

2:18

would very shortly be taught on how to

2:20

duck and cover under their desks. That was the

2:22

response if there was a nuclear attack and

2:25

the time was ripe for somebody to come

2:27

along. And John McCarthy brilliantly

2:30

understood that fear, and

2:32

like any good opportunist or

2:34

any good demagogue, knew

2:36

how to play for it, played to it, and he

2:39

played to it not with a realistic

2:41

and sensible and boring

2:44

response He played to it with

2:46

dynamism. He played to it with

2:49

dynamite. He played to it

2:51

by saying things that weren't true, but that

2:54

he knew his listeners would want to hear.

2:56

And he understood that

2:59

just saying that there were maybe

3:01

traders out there, Um,

3:04

if you did it in general terms, wasn't going

3:06

to mean anything. What you had to do was he had to name

3:08

the traders, and you had to count the traders.

3:10

And he knew how to,

3:13

in a wild West kind of

3:15

way, go in and really shake things

3:17

up. You know. He stoked

3:21

general paranoia, right, And of

3:23

course, as the saying goes, just because

3:25

your paranoid doesn't mean you don't have enemies. So

3:28

we did have enemies, and people

3:30

were fearful about that, which

3:33

does tend to ignite

3:36

more paranoia because

3:38

there's always a kernel of seeds

3:40

of truth there. And

3:43

the question, you know, so paranoid

3:46

is a term that went along with

3:48

Joe McCarthy for for many years,

3:51

uh following his death even and

3:54

the question is really whether

3:57

we don't see a lot of evidence of paranoia

4:00

before this time, right, we don't

4:02

see him walking around supposing

4:04

enemies all over the place and being

4:07

paranoid, which is interesting because

4:09

when someone has let's say, paranoid

4:11

personality disorder, you would expect

4:14

to see it much earlier than

4:16

this in their life. Uh, It's it's

4:18

true that a traumatic event can happen that

4:20

can change someone's trajectory and make them

4:22

more paranoid. And it's also

4:24

true, and I think this does become a question

4:27

that substance use and abuse can

4:30

also heighten a person's paranoia.

4:32

And so we do have to wonder whether

4:35

ultimately that comes to bear in

4:37

terms of the degree of paranoia that

4:40

he seems to exhibit. But it does

4:42

seem at this juncture that it's more likely

4:44

that, as you said, he sees an

4:46

opportunity, and he sees

4:48

that the general paranoia

4:51

that can be ignited and inflamed can

4:53

be an avenue for him playing

4:56

the role of rescuer protector

5:00

and therefore holding the power holding

5:02

being the gatekeeper and UM,

5:04

and that's just that is very interesting.

5:07

Whether that ultimately later dovetails

5:10

with his increasing drinking

5:12

and as we'll get to later, the use of other

5:15

substances that may have heightened

5:17

his thoughts around this UM

5:19

is also something worth positing. But

5:22

let's move as you said to UM,

5:25

Really, his launch into McCarthy

5:29

is m like his launch into

5:31

this whole prosecutorial role.

5:34

Yes, so I want to just revisit

5:37

paranoia for one second and

5:39

we can come back to this later. UM.

5:42

I would say that while Um

5:44

he was often called a paranoid, especially

5:47

in the early days, UM he was anything,

5:49

but he was playing to other people's paranoia.

5:51

But he was seeing things clearly, and

5:54

he knew that he didn't believe in what he

5:56

was saying. I'd love to take your

5:58

listeners to a moment where I think McCarthy

6:01

is m was born, and that moment was in

6:03

February of nineteen fifty. There

6:06

is a tradition in Republican circles

6:08

in America that the one night that

6:10

is best to raise money is

6:13

when you are honoring the birthday

6:15

of the patron saint to the Republican Party, Abe

6:17

Lincoln, And they're famously

6:20

called Lincoln Day dinners. And if

6:22

you're a prominent U. S. Senator, you

6:24

get invited to places like New York and Boston

6:27

and San Francisco and Chicago. If

6:29

you're Joe McCarthy, the consummate backbencher

6:32

who looks like he's on his way to defeat. After

6:35

one term, you get invited to Wheeling,

6:37

West Virginia, which is where he gave the speech. That

6:39

night, he shows up with a briefcase

6:42

with two speeches. One

6:44

of them is a snoozer of a speech

6:47

on national housing policy that

6:49

he actually knew something about, and

6:51

had he picked that speech that night to deliver

6:54

you and I seventy years later, wouldn't

6:56

be paying attention to Joe McCarthy.

6:58

But instead he grabbed the other speech in his briefcase,

7:01

and that is a speech on a subject

7:04

that he knows arguably less about than

7:06

any other member of the U. S. Senate

7:09

in that year of nineteen fifty, and that's a speech

7:11

on the communist threat not

7:14

in the Soviet Union, but behind every

7:16

pillar in the U. S. State Department. So

7:19

he grabs a sheaf of

7:21

papers and he waves it

7:23

around like this in the air, saying,

7:26

I have in my hand the list of two

7:28

hundred and five subversives

7:30

in the State Department, and I

7:32

have the actual names, and I

7:34

know the jobs they have, and

7:37

I'm going to call on the government

7:39

to route these people out. And

7:42

it was a passionate speech, and it

7:44

was a brilliant speech, and it was, as

7:46

his fellow senators would later conclude,

7:49

a fraud in a hoax because a

7:51

he had I don't know what he had in

7:53

his hand. His friends have speculated

7:56

that it could have been that day's

7:58

racing sheet. But what it was

8:00

it wasn't a list of two hundred and five subversives

8:03

in the government. What it probably was

8:06

was a list, a recycled

8:09

list, based on the things that I saw

8:11

in his archives, a recycled

8:13

list of the House on American

8:16

Activities and other early first

8:18

generation Red hunters in

8:20

America. Many of the people

8:23

who we actually had names

8:25

of were people who no longer

8:27

worked for the State Department, or who

8:30

had had a sister or a

8:32

brother in law, or their

8:34

own association with

8:36

left wing activities twenty

8:38

years before. They were not Flaming

8:41

spies. Most of the twenty four Carrot

8:43

spies had been rooted out long

8:46

before Joe McCarthy joined the hunt, most

8:49

of the ones. When we got to see the Russian

8:51

archives, most of the spies who were

8:53

still there, Joe McCarthy wouldn't

8:55

have recognized if he had tripped over them

8:58

in the dark on the way to his speech in

9:00

Wheeling, West Virginia. But what happened

9:02

two days after his speech was he

9:05

was on page one of every

9:07

newspaper in America. He had

9:09

the Truman administration on the defensive,

9:11

and he never turned back. That

9:14

was the moment where he realized this was

9:16

the issue that was going to bring him the limelight.

9:19

And if there was a moment where McCarthy

9:21

ism was given birth, it was in

9:23

front of that audience of mine operators

9:26

and whoever else was there that night who

9:29

didn't recognize what was going on and didn't

9:32

recognize for sure that a

9:34

crusade like we had not seen in

9:37

a long time in America was being born. You

9:40

mentioned, who knows what those papers

9:43

were in his hand, Maybe they were race sheets.

9:45

I should mention that actually Joe

9:48

McCarthy was a gambler. He

9:50

he liked to bet, He bet in all kinds

9:52

of ways, and and that's

9:54

just important to keep in mind. Well clearly

9:57

that that night he bet on himself

10:00

and uh and one and the thrill

10:02

of the wind, whether we're talking about

10:04

horse races or

10:06

his individual political races

10:09

or you know, political moments, the

10:12

reward of that was

10:15

addictive. I'm gonna I'm gonna say addictive

10:18

for Joe McCarthy. He had

10:21

Um. You know, some people from

10:24

a neuro lot and from a neurological point

10:26

of view, are more susceptible to addiction

10:28

than others. There is something about

10:30

their dopamine, the neurotransmitter

10:32

dopamine of reward, that reward

10:35

system that is primed to

10:37

take off and super reward.

10:40

Whether it's a gambling win, whether

10:42

it's with substance use and addiction

10:44

to alcohol or drugs,

10:47

or whether even it's something like a political

10:49

win. But the thing that gives

10:51

you that dopamine high is just

10:54

irresistible. And that seemed to

10:56

be a really important feature that we see

10:58

in many different ways, the ways

11:00

in which he was I'll almost say a

11:02

slave to his dopamine system,

11:05

um, and how that drove a lot of behaviors

11:07

for him. But upon this win

11:09

this night, as you said, there was

11:11

no turning back. And it's interesting because from

11:14

a concrete point of view, you

11:16

know, is there any

11:18

evidence that he wanted to be president, that

11:20

he wanted to and of the words move

11:22

into into that position of power

11:25

or what was the end goal? So

11:27

there was no end goal, and that to me is one of the fascinating

11:29

things and it is reminiscent of what we see

11:31

maybe going on today. That the goal was to

11:33

get power and hold on to power. It

11:35

was not what you would do with it, whether he ever

11:37

wanted to be president. Every time he

11:39

would deny it to one person, he

11:42

tells somebody else he did. I saw

11:44

a wonderful check that had never

11:46

been cashed to the McCarthy for President

11:48

committee in his um personal

11:51

papers. But I want to just say one

11:53

more thing about the addiction. You talked about it compellingly

11:56

from a mental health point of view. I want

11:58

to say that in later years,

12:01

when McCarthy went after not just communists,

12:03

but he went after gays

12:06

and lesbians in government, he

12:08

said that the reason he was doing that was because

12:11

they're being closeted where

12:14

their sexual orientation made

12:16

them vulnerable to blackmail

12:19

by Soviet operatives. I

12:21

think Joe McCarthy's addictions made

12:24

him vulnerable. His gambling

12:26

addiction is what he was doing with

12:28

his money, his alcohol consumption,

12:30

all of those are things that made

12:33

him more vulnerable than all the people he

12:35

was targeting for their alleged vulnerabilities.

12:38

And it is one more way

12:41

where we see hypocrisy defining

12:44

what he did. But that's another element

12:46

I think of opportunism, well, hypocrisy,

12:48

but what I would call projection,

12:51

right, these things within himself.

12:53

Um, I mean, he was the one

12:56

being the bad guy, He was

12:58

the one lying, He

13:00

was the one destroying other people's

13:02

lives, and he projected all

13:05

of this out and including as

13:07

you said, the addictions and the self

13:09

destructive and and stigmatized

13:12

behaviors that he was committing. All

13:15

of this was projected out. It's

13:18

I'm not the problem. Other people are the

13:20

problem, right. Other people are the spies,

13:22

the bad guys, the self destructive

13:24

guys, the stigmatized guys, and

13:27

and that was a huge part

13:30

of his m O. I guess I'll say that he that

13:32

he needed to project all these things outward and

13:35

he but at the same time, sadly,

13:37

for many other people in this country.

13:39

Again, his moral compass didn't

13:42

seem to make him sympathetic at

13:44

all or empathetic at all in

13:46

terms of destroying other people's

13:48

lives. He was sympathetic

13:51

and empathetic only when he was going out for the drink

13:53

after he had destroyed them during the day, and when he was

13:55

taking him out and being their buddy afterwards.

13:57

He was a bit empathetic. But in

14:00

terms of the randomness of this

14:02

whole um launch of McCarthy

14:04

is um, I want to just it is partly

14:07

fatuous, but I also think it partly

14:09

suggests how random the whole thing was. One of

14:11

the many ways his numbers

14:13

that first week kept changing between

14:16

especially two numbers two communists

14:19

or fifty seven, and the fifty

14:21

seven, it was suggested, could

14:23

have come he was a big Hamburger eater,

14:26

and it suggested that he might have gone

14:28

in and used Hines fifty seven sauce

14:30

and that number stuck in his mind. And

14:33

that wouldn't surprise me because the numbers

14:35

didn't mean much of anything, and it

14:37

could have come from anywhere. Let's

14:39

take a quick break here. We'll be back in

14:42

a moment, bed

14:54

bed bedding. It

14:56

is important for people to understand it

14:59

was not unusual will for him to have a multi

15:01

drink lunch, um to show

15:03

up on the floor after lunch appearing

15:06

drunk, to show up the next

15:08

day in the Senate appearing hungover,

15:11

and um somewhere in

15:13

this time period became

15:16

this really

15:19

unfathomable story that

15:22

it seemed he was probably at some point

15:24

started to use opiates. It may have started because

15:26

he he was prescribed them

15:28

for pain. He had a lot of accidents,

15:30

he broke a bone or or something

15:33

like that. Um it may have started

15:35

because he had terrible hangovers the next day

15:37

and was looking for some relief.

15:39

But UM, the story

15:43

of the secrecy of his

15:45

addiction, the discovery by

15:47

the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

15:50

and his the

15:53

the Federal Bureau of Narcotics being convinced

15:55

that they basically

15:57

had to maintain his habit UH

16:00

to somehow protect the world

16:02

or protect his ongoing crusade

16:04

against communism,

16:07

provided him ongoing

16:10

morphine via a Washington, d c.

16:12

Pharmacy and the impact

16:14

of that secret because

16:17

you have to understand that if you think drug

16:20

use and alcohol use or substance

16:23

abuse is stigmatized today, which

16:25

it is a deeply, deeply stigmatized

16:27

and not understood really as an illness, the

16:30

degree to which it was stigmatized in the nineteen

16:32

fifties is UH today

16:35

pales in comparison. So I want to

16:37

push back a little bit. So what you said

16:40

about the morphine addiction,

16:42

the opioid addiction UM was

16:44

reported in the newspapers,

16:46

and it was in an unnamed

16:48

way by the guy who

16:51

ran the drug agency,

16:53

and Slinger was his name. UM.

16:55

He indicated that there was an unnamed

16:58

senior politician who this happened to, when everybody

17:00

presumed and it may have been that he was referring to McCarthy.

17:03

The pushback on that as I want to be

17:05

fair to him. There's enough that we know

17:07

about what he did that

17:10

that would have shown up, I think

17:12

given the way his alcohol addiction did

17:15

in his exhaustive records,

17:17

thousands of pages of records UM

17:20

from Bethesda Naval Hospital. And I didn't

17:22

trust who am I a an old health

17:25

reporter to sit down and try to make

17:27

sense of that and whether there was really any sign of addiction

17:29

there. So I sat down with three doctors,

17:31

one of whom had just stepped down as dean

17:33

of Harvard Medical, A second was the

17:36

editor in chief emeritus of New England

17:38

Journal, and the third was an expert

17:40

on a lot of the areas that McCarthy

17:42

had suffered various medical

17:44

woes. And we actually there were four doctors

17:47

and we sat down and looked through every one of those pages,

17:49

and there was no evidence

17:52

in his medical records. That doesn't mean that he

17:54

wasn't addicted, but it was no evidence

17:56

of that addiction. There was a

18:01

jolting and upsetting set

18:04

of evidence of his alcohol

18:06

addiction, and it was

18:09

there at an early

18:11

stage from the moment that

18:13

he was condemned by his fellow senators.

18:16

That alcohol consumption was

18:18

quantified in the records. And

18:22

the only surprise to me is that he lived as

18:24

long as he did drinking that much

18:26

in the later years. But one of the interesting

18:29

things we now have access

18:31

to all of the nine thousand

18:33

pages of transcripts of McCarthy's closed

18:36

door hearings, two thirds of his

18:38

hearings were behind closed doors. He thought

18:41

that they would never become public, and

18:43

they showed Joe McCarthy unhinged

18:45

when he thought nobody was watching. And one

18:47

of the many interesting things to me in those hearings,

18:50

it wasn't just how he abused the

18:52

rights of witnesses and how

18:55

somebody who appeared before him in

18:57

a private closed

19:00

door session that was used as

19:02

a staging ground to see whether they wanted to bring

19:04

him before the public and if they were too

19:06

good a witness, meaning if they fought back effectively.

19:09

They never showed up in the public hearings. It

19:11

was only the ones that he knew that he could

19:13

get the better of. But another thing,

19:15

and it may be my looking for it, but

19:18

I don't think so. His demeanor

19:20

changed from the morning sessions, where I

19:22

think he was sober, to the afternoon

19:25

sessions, where his fuse became

19:27

shorter. He gave longer diet

19:30

tribes of speeches, and I

19:32

think it was for two reasons. I

19:34

think one, his standard

19:37

lunch was a burger,

19:39

a raw onion, and whiskey,

19:41

and I think he had had enough whiskey at lunch

19:44

that he lost his temper more

19:46

quickly in the afternoon. But the other

19:48

thing that I'm intrigued about from his

19:50

medical records is he had hemorrhoids.

19:52

And it may just have been if you sit

19:54

for two hours, the hemorrhoids are controllable.

19:57

You start looking nasty after four or

19:59

five, have a six hours Okay,

20:02

So that's interesting. Well, certainly

20:05

chronic pain of any sort could

20:07

definitely shorten your fuse, no question about

20:09

it. And we have to

20:11

wonder why he went

20:14

from really being I guess

20:16

we'd have to argue quite successful in

20:18

his pursuits right, in his

20:21

effect and in his acruement of power

20:23

in terms of inflicting

20:26

McCarthy ism on the on the nation

20:29

to to ultimately creating

20:31

his own downfall by going

20:34

for the military, for going going at

20:36

the army. And that seems like

20:38

such a clear,

20:42

uh self destructive maneuver, I

20:44

guess, I'll say, or a very very

20:47

poor decision that

20:49

we have to wonder what what was

20:51

instrumental in that decision for

20:53

him that ultimately brought his downfall.

20:56

So I think what happened to Joe McCarthy is he began

20:59

his crisis sight of McCarthy is um with

21:01

that accidental delivery

21:04

of a speech that he never knew was going to take

21:06

off in that way. And he knew

21:08

in those early days when he was raising

21:11

those charges that he was being an opportunist

21:13

and that he didn't have to believe in the things. I

21:16

think over time, something

21:18

strange happened that he started to believe

21:20

his own rhetoric in early nineteen

21:23

fifty four. By the time he

21:25

took on the military,

21:28

he had failed to see that he was overstepping

21:31

that you could bully people in the

21:33

State Department, you could get away with it at

21:35

the Voice of America, you could get away

21:37

with it in the government printing office because

21:40

nobody particularly knew who those people were

21:42

or cared much about them. But there

21:44

was an institution in America that was

21:46

too big to bully. That was the U.

21:48

S. Army. That was also the

21:50

moment when he did that,

21:53

that not just the army eventually

21:55

developed a backbone and taking him on,

21:57

but our commander in chief, the one

22:00

person in America more popular than Joe McCarthy,

22:03

This former war hero Dwight

22:05

Eisenhower, finally understood

22:08

that the army was something he wasn't

22:10

going to let McCarthy get away with bullying.

22:13

He understood that McCarthy was overstepping,

22:16

and Joe McCarthy went

22:18

one step further. Had he not done

22:21

that, he could have gone on for years.

22:23

But I also think what happened. We look

22:26

at his poll numbers and

22:28

when he took on the Army, the

22:31

U. S. Senate, his old sub committee ended

22:33

up running what was the most famous set

22:35

of hearings ever run. They were called

22:37

the Army McCarthy Hearings. At the start

22:39

of those hearings, Joe McCarthy was at a full

22:42

fifty percent popularity. The

22:44

gallop Poles said one in every two Americans

22:47

thought he was doing a great job. By

22:49

the end of those hearings in the summer

22:51

of nineteen fifty four, his numbers

22:53

had gone from fifty down

22:56

to thirty. And

22:58

anybody who's old enough to member those

23:00

hearings remembers one magical

23:02

moment where a very smart, Harvard

23:05

trained lawyer from Boston named

23:07

Joe Welch stood up and said

23:09

when McCarthy went after Welch's

23:12

young associate and said that he had been affiliated

23:15

with a left wing legal group, Joe

23:17

Welch famously said, Senator,

23:20

have you no decency? Well,

23:22

the truth is that was not the magical

23:24

moment, and the truth is Joe Welch

23:26

had been waiting during the entire hearings.

23:29

He was a performer as well as a lawyer.

23:31

He had concocted that line and

23:33

he was waiting for a magical moment to deliver

23:35

it. He picked a great moment. But

23:38

the moment only worked because

23:40

I think Americans had been watching this guy,

23:43

who they thought was their hero, look

23:45

more like the schoolyard bully on

23:47

public television, and

23:50

they wanted to ask, Senator, have

23:52

you no decency? And so that

23:54

line crystallized the question

23:56

America had on its mind. It

23:59

showed the power of television to

24:01

take a guy who was a

24:03

schoolyard bully and make

24:06

him look that way to the American

24:08

public. And my book

24:10

begins with the line, this is a

24:12

book about America's love affair with bullies.

24:15

But I also think that American

24:17

knows when a bully is really

24:20

going too far and it will part

24:22

company. So I

24:25

wrote a book in part about one of the darkest

24:27

chapters in American history.

24:29

But I think there is ultimately a

24:32

very uplifting message of this book

24:34

and the book. The message

24:37

is in American history

24:40

with our uniquely American strain

24:42

of demagogues, from Huey

24:44

Long and the Jew

24:46

baiting radio preacher Father

24:49

Charles Coglin to Joe McCarthy

24:52

and Donald Trump. The

24:55

lesson is that give a demagogue

24:57

enough rope and they will hang themselves. And

24:59

is part of the hanging that the

25:02

overreach for power, the

25:04

displaying who you really are

25:06

inside, and people finally being able

25:08

to grasp that. What what is

25:10

the lesson that we

25:13

can we can learn today about

25:15

ultimately? You know,

25:18

is it the doer or the dewey that ultimately

25:20

catches on to the demagoguery.

25:23

Great question, It's both. I believe

25:25

two things about the American people. I believe

25:27

we are more naive and susceptible

25:30

to bullying into demagoguery

25:33

than we think about ourselves, because

25:35

we've shown it repeatedly, you know, George

25:38

Wallace, the lots of people who

25:41

we've bought into. But

25:43

I think in the end it

25:46

is partly demagogues doing themselves

25:48

in and it's partly America coming to its

25:50

senses. And I believe and I

25:52

pray that throughout

25:55

every phase of history, including

25:57

today, that in the Americans

26:01

recognize bullies. And

26:03

I think that we saw the

26:06

first effective pushback

26:09

against some of the bullying that Donald Trump

26:12

does come from the

26:14

US military. It came from

26:16

when he did over the last

26:19

month things staging

26:22

um, the photo opportunity outside

26:24

the White House, across the street from the park and

26:27

clearing people so we had a path to get

26:29

there. UM. The

26:31

commanders in chief of

26:34

the various arms services, I'm sorry, the heads

26:36

of the various armed services, UM,

26:38

Defense secretaries, UM,

26:41

the heads of joint chiefs of staff passed

26:43

in present. When the military

26:45

is bullied, they stand up and say that institution

26:48

you can't touch. And I

26:51

think that I think Donald Trump is a

26:53

very smart politician, and he probably

26:55

learned a lesson there. But I also

26:57

think that he has

27:00

almost to the letter, followed

27:02

the Joe McCarthy playbook in

27:04

the last three and a half years. And

27:07

it is not a playbook that I'm as

27:09

an author writing about Joe McCarthy, and I say,

27:11

jeez, he's using that playbook because I

27:13

want to sell books. Um,

27:16

nobody minds selling books. But it's also a

27:18

playbook that had a flesh and blood

27:20

through line in the name of

27:22

a smart, arrogant lawyer

27:25

named Roy Cone, who was Joe

27:27

McCarthy's protege and Donald Trump's tutor,

27:30

and he showed Trump

27:32

all the things that a politician

27:34

can learn from a guy like Joe McCarthy.

27:37

And Trump was a very able student. Let's

27:39

take a quick break here. We'll be back in

27:41

a moment. Be

27:52

beddy, beddy, beddy.

27:56

It certainly was Joe McCarthy's

27:58

end, so to speak. Senate did

28:01

go on to censure him. Um,

28:03

he did lose his power. He became

28:06

sort of a nonentity at that point.

28:09

He did marry. He married actually this she

28:12

was his assistant essentially, and

28:15

uh and his teammate and very

28:17

involved in supporting

28:20

his work, um, supporting

28:22

his ideology, and as

28:24

you point out, kept his letters

28:27

and all the records and everything was

28:31

part of keeping those private following

28:34

his death to protect I

28:36

suspect his reputation. She

28:38

was highly invested, but

28:41

it wasn't. It was only I guess a couple

28:43

of years after the incident

28:47

that you described where he

28:50

is, and then he has censured that he

28:53

he becomes increasingly ill, he's

28:55

hospitalized more often. It seems

28:57

like a little of this and a little of that. No one's

28:59

ever clear on a exactly what it is, but

29:02

um, he is all. He dies in

29:06

at the age of forty eight, really

29:08

quite young. But um,

29:11

the doctors say it's hepatitis, a non

29:14

infectious hepatitis of undetermined

29:16

ideology. And that's

29:18

fascinating because of course it

29:21

seems very clear from all the medical records

29:23

that it is alcoholic hepatitis. And

29:27

it's fascinating that even at that time,

29:30

given the stigma, there's this effort to hide

29:33

what he dies from. So

29:35

appatitis was part of what was induced

29:37

by his alcoholism, but that's not the

29:40

part of the alcoholism that killed him, and

29:42

the doctors had to have been it

29:45

was only Um. It wasn't that

29:47

long ago. It was the nineteen fifties, and they

29:49

understood alcoholism and the effects,

29:52

and they understood what was happening to him. And

29:54

I think there were two reasons

29:56

that they told a fib about

29:59

what he died of. That the coroner listed acute

30:02

hepatitis rather than alcoholism

30:04

is the cause of death, and that the

30:06

press repeated that, and that that's what's gone down

30:08

in history. And I think one reason

30:11

was because they were trying to protect

30:14

Um, the family, But I think that

30:16

UM and alcoholism they thought

30:18

as being an embarrassment. I

30:21

think the other reason was what you said that

30:24

Um, it was the ultimate

30:26

stigma then and maybe now,

30:28

to die of an addiction, to die of something that

30:31

it looks like people could

30:33

turn and say, geez, he did that to himself,

30:35

rather than he had a real disease, and alcoholism

30:38

was a legitimate disease as

30:40

we know today. But I'm not sure

30:43

that if a politician died of

30:46

what Joe McCarthy did today that would

30:48

be any more candid. And it,

30:51

to me was one of the many tragedies

30:54

of his life that this guy who,

30:56

in Bobby Kennedy's words, had been taken

30:58

at a toboggan to the top the hill, was

31:02

going blind down the hill, and he was

31:04

so excited by the ride that the fact he

31:06

was going to crash and hurt himself at the

31:08

bottom, I think never occurred to him. From

31:11

the day that he was censured by the Senate, his

31:14

political life was over, and I would

31:16

argue that his life generally was over. The only

31:18

good things he had in his life really

31:20

from that time on were an incredibly

31:23

smart and loyal wife, Jane,

31:26

and an infant daughter that they adopted

31:28

at the very end. And it

31:31

was too late, and it was too late to pull him out

31:33

of what I think may have been a

31:35

depression. Um. I think if he

31:38

had any condition, any diagnosable

31:40

condition, and I'm no psychiatrists,

31:42

um it may have been a bipolar

31:45

disease or what they call then manic depression,

31:47

because he had such Mannock highs

31:49

and he had such extraordinary lows,

31:52

and it looked a bit classic

31:54

like that, But there were very few

31:57

highs after his censure

31:59

by this in it at the end of nineteen four

32:02

and it was really

32:05

sad what happened to him, and we had it documented

32:08

in a way that I'm not sure, anybody, even

32:10

public figures like McCarthy, had

32:13

the last two days of his life documented.

32:15

There was a medical orderly sitting with him,

32:18

taking down every rant and rave

32:20

that McCarthy uttered, taking down

32:23

every word. His nurse or doctor said,

32:25

so when we come along all

32:28

this time later, And there were all these conspiracy

32:30

theories that Joe McCarthy was murdered, that he

32:33

died of some fantastic cause. Well,

32:36

unless that orderly was lying about

32:38

everything that happened in those last two days, he

32:41

didn't die of any conspiracy. He

32:43

died of something hugely tragic,

32:45

which was the d T S and

32:48

alcohol poisoning and a fever

32:50

that spiked too. I think it was a hundred and seven.

32:53

And we know that you

32:55

bring up bipolar disorder, and

32:57

of course all these things were saying,

33:00

you know, it's impossible, even though I am a

33:02

psychiatrist at a psychoanalyst, for me to diagnose

33:04

someone I've never met and based

33:07

only on retrospective information. But

33:09

one would expect that if you

33:12

did have bipolar disorder, first

33:14

of all, the hypomania

33:17

romania might put you in a position

33:19

to be exactly the kind of expansive

33:22

thinker and grandiose character

33:25

and highly creative and verbal

33:28

verbally able person that Joe

33:30

McCarthy by all accounts appeared. But

33:33

we don't have documented

33:35

periods of inability

33:38

to function at least until the

33:40

very end there, you know, after he was censured,

33:43

but earlier in his life. There

33:45

there are no reported periods of a

33:48

deep depression such that one's functionality

33:50

is impaired and one basically can't

33:52

get out of bed and you know, really performed

33:55

that he seems to be much

33:57

more on the side of driven uh

33:59

and and and doing that

34:02

being said, um, there

34:04

there are people who have bipolar

34:07

disorder who have very little in the way of depression,

34:09

much more in the in the vein of hypomania

34:12

and mania. Um. But I would

34:14

have to tell you that if you

34:16

saw someone like this today in your office,

34:19

it would be impossible to really make

34:21

an accurate diagnosis until you had

34:23

treated their substance abuse, because unfortunately,

34:26

the substance abuse can make people appear

34:29

all of those hypomanic things

34:31

you know, grandiose, aid able and um

34:35

and also depressed, because the reality

34:37

is alcohol is a depressant and

34:40

it actually makes many people

34:42

feel both disinhibited in

34:44

terms of their verbal capacities and so on,

34:47

but also feel at times

34:49

in terms of their mood, very depressed or

34:51

fluctuating in mood. And so it's

34:54

it's very hard to separate those things. And yet

34:56

there's tremendous what we call comorbidity.

34:58

Right, people who experience one

35:01

are very likely to experience the other. If

35:03

you are bipolar, you're probably more

35:05

likely to unfortunately suffer

35:08

from substance addiction, UM

35:11

or any other mood disorder or

35:13

I guess we could also argue in the case of Joe

35:15

McCarthy, you know how much

35:17

of this was a potential personality

35:20

disorder in other words, that characterologically

35:22

all along there were patterns of behavior

35:25

that were that worked for him

35:27

in certain ways but really didn't

35:29

in others, and particularly anti

35:32

social characteristics. A

35:35

man who enjoyed breaking

35:37

the rules, I mean, he liked

35:39

taking risks, he liked breaking

35:41

the rules. He seemed to be devoid

35:43

of empathy for others, truly if

35:46

they making them suffer was not something

35:48

that pained him. UM and

35:51

these sort of You know, if he didn't

35:53

happen to have gone into government where

35:56

he could be spared the

35:58

punishments. He is somebody

36:00

who if he'd gone into different directions, might

36:02

have found himself really on the wrong side of

36:04

the law and often punished.

36:08

The only place I would take exception to what you

36:10

said is he did find himself from the

36:12

wrong side of the law, but he was protected because

36:14

he was in the Senate, and he did.

36:17

I think that he liabeled

36:20

lots of people. He did all kinds of things. There

36:22

was a hint in the medical

36:25

records from his time in the

36:27

military that when

36:29

he went into the medical

36:31

facilities in the South Pacific,

36:34

that doctors wrote different

36:37

things. And I don't know whether they were being coy

36:40

in not being more explicit, or they didn't

36:42

know or what it was, but

36:44

they suggested maybe he's

36:47

um suffering from some sort

36:50

of serious depression or fatigue,

36:52

or maybe he's just lazy and doesn't want

36:54

to go back out. But there was a hint

36:57

that something was going on. But

36:59

I think that probably if there was anything

37:01

they would have kept out of the medical records,

37:04

it was um a

37:06

stigmatized yes depression

37:08

or any mental illness. And I wish

37:10

that I could have interviewed his doctors

37:13

from back in the nineteen fifties, because I think

37:15

they knew more than they were letting on. They

37:17

were extraordinarily explicit about

37:20

everything, um in terms of his

37:22

physical symptoms and the

37:26

just hinting at things in terms of mental

37:28

issues. I think some of the clear sense

37:31

I had of what motivated him

37:33

was an unpublished memoir that

37:35

his wife Jean wrote, called The Joe

37:38

McCarthy. I knew she

37:40

never published it for understandable reasons

37:42

why she left it behind in his papers.

37:45

I think what happens to people when

37:47

they leave hundreds or

37:49

thousands of boxes of papers is nobody

37:52

has the energy to go through and see what's there and what's

37:54

not, and they throw it all there and say we're

37:56

putting it into an archives and nobody's going to see

37:58

it for a very long time. And

38:01

I think some of the greatest insights into who

38:03

Joe McCarthy was were not his

38:05

insights, because I don't think he was the kind of guy who

38:07

would ever sit down and offer any really candid

38:10

sense of himself. But

38:12

she just in observing who he was, even

38:15

though she adored him. Um, she was

38:17

smarter than he was, as smart as I

38:19

think he was. Um, she was his

38:21

biggest booster. She was

38:24

a true, true believer in

38:26

the cause of McCarthy ism um,

38:29

which they would have defined as patriotism

38:31

and all Americanism. Joe McCarthy

38:34

never objected to the term McCarthy ism, He

38:36

just offered his own definition for it. But

38:39

in the end, um, we are

38:41

grateful to them because they left behind

38:43

such a record of who he was

38:46

and what he did and why he mattered

38:49

and he mattered. There was a reason my

38:51

book had a one word title of demagogue,

38:54

and that is because while this is a biography

38:57

of Joe McCarthy, it is also a

38:59

biography of this strain

39:01

of bullying that didn't end

39:04

with him and didn't begin with him, But we

39:06

can use his life as a way of understanding

39:09

and battling back against it.

39:12

And I would add to that, there's

39:14

a concept in my field called

39:16

folliado, the delusion of two,

39:19

and sometimes we see that literally in

39:22

individuals. Two people come together and

39:24

they're in this delusional world that no

39:26

one else can understand because it's not real,

39:28

it's psychotic, and but they both believe

39:31

it and they share this delusion. In Joe

39:33

McCarthy's time, he created

39:36

this belief system right between

39:38

himself and the public at large,

39:41

and they both had to buy into

39:43

it for him to continue

39:46

the delusion, if you

39:48

will, or the belief system that he had

39:50

going his own McCarthy ism. When

39:53

one person breaks out of that, it

39:55

ends the folia due essentially, And

39:58

so can we learn from

40:00

that historically that that

40:02

can occur, that that a that a person

40:05

can propagate a belief system that a

40:07

whole community can buy into,

40:11

even if it's not accurate, even

40:13

if it's not correct. And I

40:15

hope that we all can learn that

40:18

somebody who can gain that kind of charismatic

40:21

power of a

40:23

cult leader of sorts uh, can

40:26

can propagate some really

40:28

delusional thoughts that we can all

40:30

buy into. So I love

40:32

that idea that they propagate the thoughts,

40:34

but that becomes scarier

40:37

still when there are two of them doing it and

40:39

they're reinforcing one another. And there was a very

40:42

smart physicist from

40:44

Harvard named Ramsey who McCarthy

40:47

invited to his house. Ramsey had

40:50

been on meet the Press, I think it was,

40:52

and it had been trying to take

40:55

on um some of the things that McCarthy

40:57

had said in one of his hearings and was being try

41:00

by the press, and McCarthy felt badly enough

41:02

for him that he and his wife invited Ramsey

41:04

to come to a dinner party that night at his house.

41:06

And Ramsey was a smart guy who would go on to

41:09

win a Nobel Prize in physics. And

41:11

Ramsey said, at the end of that night, Joe

41:13

McCarthy alone didn't scare me.

41:15

He was not dangerous. But when you added Jean McCarthy,

41:18

this incredibly smart, incredibly

41:21

reinforcing person, sort of taking

41:23

all of his worst instincts and feeding it

41:25

back, that really scared me. And

41:27

that could have become a dictatorship. And I

41:29

would suggest that there was another duo

41:33

in the McCarthy era that did

41:35

the same thing before Jean, or

41:38

during the time the gene was there doing it at home,

41:41

there was a guy, Roy Cone, who we talked about, who

41:43

was doing it at work. And Roy Kone was exceedingly

41:46

smart, exceedingly arrogant, a

41:48

moral and he also

41:51

encouraged all the worst instincts

41:53

in Joe McCarthy. And I want to just say

41:55

one last thing about that, which is, if

41:58

roy Cone hadn't gotten the job as

42:00

chief council, which really meant chief

42:02

of staff, the second in line

42:05

for that job was a guy named Bobby

42:07

Kennedy. And what would Joe McCarthy

42:09

have been like? And we can only imagine

42:12

if it had been Bobby Kennedy there instead

42:14

of Roy Cohne helping set

42:17

the path on where Joe McCarthy was going. Well,

42:19

sadly we will we will never know, but it

42:22

is important for us to think about today. Who

42:25

are the duos? Who do we give

42:27

our power to? Right? Who do we give

42:29

over to and and thereby

42:32

join their their system, join their belief

42:35

system. Well,

42:43

that wraps things up for this episode. Thanks

42:45

for joining me today. If you're interested

42:48

in more information about Joe McCarthy, check

42:50

out Larry Tis book Demagogue, or

42:52

for more on the concepts of personology,

42:55

you can also check out my book The Power

42:57

of Different The Link between Disorder and Genie

43:00

Us. Also make

43:02

sure to follow me on Twitter at doctor Gayl

43:04

Saltz or at Personalogy m

43:06

D Until next time. Personology

43:11

is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive

43:13

producers are Doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler

43:16

Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan

43:18

Fagan. The Associate producer is Lowell

43:21

Berlanti. Editing music and mixing

43:23

by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts

43:25

from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio

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