It is not true that by the time McCarthy arrived on the scene, an anti-communist consensus had swept away all communists in government. If it had, he would have had no ammo, as the author of this piece pretends. Instead, the State Department in particular was still a communist subsidiary, and Dean Acheson was a large part of the reason why. He made it his business to protect the chums from his "correct" class, and they in turn made it their business to see asia delivered to communism, along with whatever espionage they could get away with.
In case everybody forgot, on Truman's watch, American citizens deliberately gave atom bombs to Joe Stalin.
Evans is fair to the real anticommunist hawks in the Democratic party, notably Scoop Jackson and JFK. He notes that both worked just fine with McCarthy, despite his alleged hyper-partisanship supposedly ruled way out of bounds. Morever, and again as Evans makes clear, it was far from partisanship to McCarthy, it was policy substance. If it *had* been just politics, he would have soft peddled it once Republicans won the 1952 elections - and there can be little doubt that is exactly what Ike wanted and expected him to do.
For all of them, Truman and Acheson, this author and Ike, McCarthy was just a partisan weapon. But he wasn't that to himself. He went after reds wherever he smelled them - or more accurately, wherever internal bureaucratic fights and the FBI told him they were being coddled by politicos interested only in credit and spin. That meant he crossed Truman yes, it also led him to cross Ike - the definition of non-partisan.
It was the latter than actually destroyed him, by undercutting his own political base on the right. It was as much that internal Republican fight - not now, back in 1954-56 - that let the Dems back into control of congress. I realize modern liberals think control of congress is their birthright, but really it simply isn't and wasn't.
Evans was entirely fair on the subject of Marshall in the book. He even went soft on him, because an objective reading of the record shows he treated security issues like a spin dominated prima donna, and backed off sensible seriousness about it as soon as he got the first whiff of bad liberal press over it.
This article writer pretending it was because the right was isolationist is utter horsefeathers, as is his imaginary asia first charge. The right simply didn't think writing off all of Asia was a good idea - and it wasn't - and Acheson's hamfisted rhetoric in that direction sparked the Korea war and killed tens of thousands of Americans trying to stem the damage. Acheson was not a cold war hero but a walking foreign policy disaster.
The article also claims there was no evidence of any Truman complicity in any of the latter security problems, but this is demonstrably false. Evans has the FBI on the subject and Truman justice is caught, dead to rights, fixing cases to get off communist spies. And why? Because they are concerned about partisan embarrasment. In other words, the hyperpartisanship the author pretends McCarthy was guilty of, was in fact the problem with Truman - and is also his own.
The richest bit, though, is the pretence that McCarthy deserved to be destroyed because he was such a partisan demagogue and he was scoring heavily painting the left as soft on communism, and politics requires restraint in such things and not painting enemies as so evil they can't be tolerated. Um, that is precisely what the left did to McCarthy. And to Nixon, come to that.
They murder the man and then claim it was self defense because after all, they were mortal enemies.
Then there is the spin control aspect of it all. He can't understand why magazines let people even talk about it. I mean, it is supposed to all be beyond the pale Bircherism, and nobody is ever to be allowed to talk about it, unless they agree that the left were wronged saints throughout.
Evans is winning this one going away. If this is all they can say against him - attacking others for being allowed to speak without genuflecting to the sainted Marshall - then he is entirely right in all his main points.
We have lived through what the left does to such moderate and principle men as Bush, and we will never believe their histrionics against men like McCarthy again. Instead of the smear campaign working one more time, it just shows us how little it takes to set them off - any effective attack on their claims to power.
Does Haynes imply "an anti-communist consensus had swept away all communists in government" ?
No, rather that the most significant Soviet espionage networks had been all but destroyed and/or neutralized thanks to defections, American counter-intelligence, the FBI’s full-court press against the CPUSA, and President Truman’s loyalty-security program for government employees.
And here the debate can expand considerably between those who know the history of Soviet espionage, I imagine, as to the importance of the networks and spies eliminated (if any) by those critical of McCarthy.
Evan's book sounds like a worthwhile purchase.
To be fair to Truman and cold war liberals, A-bomb spies were also apprehended and convicted on his watch.