Candidate Eisenhower Caves in to Joe McCarthy
Republican candidate for President Dwight Eisenhower met with Senator Joe McCarthy on this day over Ike’s plan to support his friend and wartime colleague Gen. George C. Marshall in an upcoming campaign speech in Milwaukee. Eisenhower caved in to pressure from McCarthy and deleted his remarks about Marshall.
McCarthy had viciously attacked Marshall, accusing him of supporting the international Communist conspiracy, in a major speech on June 14, 1951. Marshall, of course, was one of the great heroes of World War II as Army Chief of Staff, and after the war was the author of the Marshall Plan that helped to revive a devastated Europe. Eisenhower was furious about the attack and planned to defend his old friend, but he caved in to pressure from McCarthy. Republican Party leaders and deleted a comment about Marshall in his speech on the next day.
Although Eisenhower loathed McCarthy and his reckless anti-Communist tactics, he never once criticized him by names publicly.The closest Eisenhower came to criticizing McCarthy occurred in a graduation speech at Dartmouth College on June 14, 1953, when he told the audience “Don’t Join the Bookburners,” a clear reference to two of Senator McCarthy’s aides. But Eisenhower quickly backed away from the statement.
The Senate, on December 2, 1954, finally censured McCarthy for his conduct.
Read the original draft of Ike’s speech with the paragraph marked for deletion:zing
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/mccarthyism.htmlLearn more about Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism: David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy so Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (1983)
View pictures of McCarthy’s funeral at the Appleton, Wisconsin, Public Library: http://apl.org/community/hist/mccarthy/photographs/funeral
Learn more about McCarthyism: http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/joseph-mccarthy