Joe & the Handmaidens

Now we pray that in all the deliberations here begun Thou wilt save us from pride of opinion, from intolerance and prejudice, and from lightly ascending any throne of judgment.

Last week the U.S. Senate met to consider censure action against Wisconsin's Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and the ascension to judgment's throne was rocky indeed. Within minutes after the chaplain finished his opening prayer, Joe McCarthy was fighting the only way he knows how, with tooth, nail and knee, to make the debate one of the most acrimonious and personally bitter in Senate history.

Sitting next to each other in their regular places on the Republican side of the aisle were McCarthy and Utah's frail, grey Arthur Watkins, chairman of the select committee which recommended censure. Their chairs were only a couple of feet apart, but the space between their shoulders was twice that (each man leaned away from the other), and the distance between their convictions was immeasurable.

Tentacles & Toes. When Republican Leader William Knowland announced that Watkins wanted to make a few routine changes in the printer's copy of the committee report, McCarthy was on his toes, snarling objections. "Highly improper," he cried, although he knew such changes are more the rule than the exception.

Utah's Watkins patiently explained that the proposed changes were typographical, with one brief deletion of an obvious error. Replied McCarthy: "I have found so many obvious errors that I should like to know which one the Senator is deleting." When Watkins tossed a copy of the corrected report on McCarthy's desk, McCarthy whined that he now had to go through 72 pages. "The Senator from Utah has told me that he knows what these errors are," he complained. "Why does he not mark them for me?" South Dakota's mild-mannered Republican Senator Francis Case, a censure committee member, scurried over to Joe's desk, riffled through the pages and slapped the report down so hard that papers went flying. "It's a marked copy," he snorted.

Moments later, the Senate adjourned--after approving the corrections--and McCarthy airily told reporters: "I can see no major changes." Then he ducked off the Senate floor and into the men's room, where he slapped a newsman on the back and announced: "I'm back in shape."

Next day, McCarthy gave the press a speech which he planned (he said) to make to the Senate the following day. It was the usual attempt to equate anti-McCarthyism with pro-Communism--but this was the first time McCarthy had tried that line on such recognized conservatives as the members of the Watkins Committee. Said he: "I would have the American people recognize, and contemplate in dread, the fact that the Communist Party --a relatively small group of deadly conspirators--has now extended its tentacles to that most respected of American bodies, the U.S. Senate; that it has made a committee of the Senate its unwitting handmaiden."

In his long years in politics, Committee Member Ed Johnson has been called many things. But when he heard of McCarthy's statement, Colorado's tough, burly Johnson gruffed: "This is the first time I've ever been called a handmaiden."

Chamber Music. Next morning, Arthur Watkins took the floor to deliver a dry, seven-page explanation of his committee's findings, including the censure recommendation (one of two) for McCarthy's having called New Jersey's Republican Senator Robert Hendrickson a "living miracle without brains or guts." When McCarthy heard the quote, he grinned, went over to slap Hendrickson on the back, and whispered: "Bob, you've got both brains and guts, and I'll put it in writing." But McCarthy would make no public apology.

In beginning his statement, Arthur Watkins referred to his "physical limitations," but said he would answer questions for "as long as I can stand here." Watkins has a spastic stomach condition, left by ulcers, which sometimes causes him to black out after being on his feet for long periods of time. McCarthy knew this--but he promptly made a typical McCarthy charge that Watkins was merely trying to avoid questions. (Over the weekend, McCarthy went to Wisconsin, where he accused Watkins of "cowardly conduct" for demanding that future questions be put in writing.) When McCarthy repeated his old charge that some of the Watkins Committee members were biased against him, Watkins had a quick answer: "The only time it would be possible to get a completely neutral person would be to select one who was deaf, dumb and blind, and was a moron to start with."

The day's session ended with McCarthy deciding he did not have time to deliver his "handmaiden" speech. The Wisconsin Senator's decision pointed up the fact that he was not really trying to impress the Senate, but to grab the headlines and stir dissension. Leaving the Senate floor that afternoon, McCarthy Lawyer Edward Williams was asked by a newsman: "Ed, your boy sure isn't trying to win friends and influence people, is he?" Replied Williams, wearily: "That's one book Joe didn't write."

Corridor Clamor. Joe was not without friends, however, and the next day they began arriving in Washington. From McCarthy's own Wisconsin came a pitiful little caravan (which had been stalled for a night in Kenosha with an ailing engine coil) consisting of two cars and a truck. From New York came a trainload of Mc-Carthyites headed by Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, director of the American Jewish League Against Communism, whose slogan is: "Strike terror into the hearts of Flanders and Malenkov." One man wore a white suit and brandished a butterfly net, aping Joe's suggestion that Vermont's Senator Ralph Flanders, who started the censure movement, should be caught with a net.

The group waved such placards as WHY DID ALGER HISS WANT TRIAL IN VERMONT? DO YOU KNOW SENATOR FLANDERS? This referred to the fact that Flanders' brother's wife's sister's divorced husband was a brother of Alger Hiss's wife. Then McCarthy followers milled around the Capitol and Senate Office Building most of the day. Once when McCarthy strode down a Capitol corridor, a grandmotherly woman darted out, touched him, and dashed away shrieking: "I touched him!"

McCarthy's fans saw him on one of his better days. Senator Case, looking and speaking like Mr. Peepers about to propose marriage to Nancy Remington, offered Joe a way out. A raft of apologies for past actions, suggested Case, might result in McCarthy's not being censured. Joe ignored the offer, but he did speak politely to Case (who, thus encouraged, later said he would support a "constructive" substitute to the censure motion).

That night the McCarthy faithful--some 3,500 of them--gathered for a rally in what one of them referred to as the "so-called Constitutional Hall." Tickets were labeled "Admit One Anti-Communist." On hand were South Dakota's Republican Senator Karl Mundt, the hapless chairman of the Army-McCarthy hearings; John Maragon, convicted five-percenter, sporting an "I'm for Joe" button; Columnist Westbrook Pegler; and New York's ex-Congressman Ham Fish and Montana's ex-Senator Burton K. Wheeler, relics of another age. Throughout the rally, the vice commander of the Wall Street American Legion auxiliary proudly clutched an autographed picture of Roy Cohn.

Finally, Joe himself, accompanied by wife Jean, made a "surprise"' appearance. The place went wild. On the speaker's platform, McCarthy waxed emotional, flourishing a white handkerchief in front of his nose. There was some doubt as to whether he was weeping or merely flushing his bad sinuses, but the gesture was the signal for many of the women to burst into tears.

Slush & Slime. All week long pro-McCarthy Senators, e.g., Illinois' Everett Dirksen and New Hampshire's Styles Bridges, worked in the back rooms, trying to write a compromise resolution which would slap Joe's wrist but stop short of censure. Helping them was California's Senator William Knowland, who seems to think that his majority-leadership post makes him a Fanny Fixit, obliged to rush to the aid of all Republicans, regardless of what those Republicans may stand for.

But McCarthy himself was not cooperating with the compromise effort; martyrdom was too inviting.

While they maneuvered, the debate roared on. Kansas' conservative Republican Senator Frank Carlson, no conspirator, rose to object to any McCarthy "defense which makes its point by attacking either the intelligence or the sincere intentions of the committee." Although the Democratic strategy was to keep quiet and enjoy a Republican v. Republican fight, one of the week's strongest speeches came from Mississippi's Democratic Senator John Stennis, a former judge and a highly respected member of the Watkins Committee.

The Wisconsin Senator's conduct "must be condemned," said Stennis. He called McCarthy's handmaiden speech "a continuation of the slush and slime." It was, he said, "another spot on the escutcheon of the Senate, another splash and splatter." Many more words would be uttered before the debate ended, but quiet John Stennis focused the issue clearly when he said that unless the Senate cen sures McCarthy "something big and fine will have gone from this chamber . . . something wrong will have entered and been accepted."

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