“Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned.”--Transcript of Senate Resolution 301: Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954)
If you ask me, it took them long enough, and the result was akin to the Feds nailing Al Capone on income-tax evasion. But when it was all over, the U.S. Senate had voted on this date in 1954, 67-22, to censure—or, in the language of the resolution, “condemn”—Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. At long last, they had proven there was a limit to what they would tolerate.
After Ralph Flanders (R-Vermont) introduced his resolution to censure McCarthy in late July, 46 counts of misconduct were tallied, then reduced to five broad categories. (Not surviving the initial cut: Flanders’ move to strip the Wisconsin senator of his authority over the Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. Too many senators disliked the idea of anything potentially infringing on their jurisdiction.)
The Senate adopted Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson’s idea of having a bipartisan select committee with vast judicial experience. The six members of the Watkins Committee ended up voting to deplore McCarthy's s actions on three of the five counts but felt that censure was not required.
The committee did feel that two areas required punishment: a) McCarthy’s abusive treatment of the highly decorated Gen. Ralph Zwicker, and b) his bullying of a Senate investigation of their investigators into his conduct. Eventually, the Zwicker count was exchanged for the Watkins count (embodied in the quote above).
In bone-dry language, the Senate was saying that McCarthy did not play well with others—specifically, them. Nothing about his reckless use of the Senate’s investigative powers; nothing about how he hid behind senators’ immunity from libel suits to make broad innuendoes about citizens’ loyalties; nothing about how he spread a wave of terror in American embassies, colleges and universities, and libraries; nothing about how he lowered America’s standing abroad with his antics.
For a long time, many of McCarthy’s Senate colleagues—including, suggests biographer Robert A. Caro, LBJ—feared what he could do. (LBJ’s typically memorable quote on why he didn’t move against McCarthy sooner: “You don’t get in a pissin’ contest with a polecat.” Maybe I should have made that the quote of the day!)
The Senate did not act until the televised Army-McCarthy hearings exposed his conduct for longer than the normal couple-minute news segment, dropping his approval ratings below 30 percent. In that light, you could argue that the censure vote was like someone coming along to pump a suicide victim full of bullets.
But three more outcomes had to follow the censure vote before McCarthy could be consigned to history:
* his fellow senators had to do what they originally had done when they encountered McCarthy in the Senate, before they came to fear him: ostracize him;
* the press had to ignore him; and
* Bibulous “Tailer-Gunner Joe” had to sink into a watery grave in 1957.
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