This is taken from a McCarthy bio. Obviously, I am not the only one who did not look favorably on McCarthy.
McCarthy became an anti-Communist crusader in 1950. He won re-election two years later and assumed chairmanship of the Senate's Government Operations Committee. Through its investigative subcommittee, McCarthy looked for Communists in government. Other senators became dissatisfied with what they considered McCarthy's crude tactics and reckless accusations. In 1954, his colleagues censured him for disregarding Senate customs. Three years later, while still in office, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis at the age of 48.
The Senate has censured nine of its members since 1789, McCarthy being the fourth. Censure means a formal statement of disapproval. It carries no official penalty.>
Plenty of folks believed the smears against McCarthy, you can find 10 'bios' that trash him without breaking a sweat.
The problem with them all is that McCarthy was at least mostly right, and wasn't allowed to go far enough - into the media and academia. The embedded communists in both destroyed McCarthy the power of the a new technology - television. One of the world's first broadcast media lynchings, now a standard tool of left.
McCarthy wasn't crazy, he just wasn't as clever as the KGB.
Reckless? Not in my opinon - where are all the defamation suits?
Read "TREASON", by Ann Coulter. All you know about McCarthy has come from biased, anti-McCarthy folks and you've bought the lies as whole cloth.