SENATOR JOSEPH “JOE” MCCARTHY

CHARACTER SKETCH DETAIL

45, crusading, hard drinking, blustery junior senator from Wisconsin whose political overreach made his name synonymous with fear mongering and demagoguery. 

McCarthy has built the foundation for his political house on alliances with unscrupulous and unreliable partners. And it's coming back to haunt him. At the Army-McCarthy hearings, he’s paid the price for allowing his chief counsel Roy Cohn, to drag them both down in Roy’s personal fight with the Army. Soon, Joe’s world will start closing in on him. And only time will tell what McCarthy’s reaction will be when backed into a corner.

What does Joe believe? That there are bastards everywhere. Political challengers. Grandstanding press hacks. Supposed colleagues. Liberals. Communists. Bastards, all of them and you’d better believe there are more — in our government, in our churches, in our schools, in our neighborhoods. Remember who’s been fighting to root them out. Don’t let Joe go, lest you be overrun.

Joe McCarthy isn’t as much a stalwart anti-communist as he is a true believer in schoolyard bully grievances and thuggish politics. Communists just happen to be his latest foil, and in recent years decrying their infiltration has suddenly become the most expedient way to amass political power.

But seemingly overnight, Joe finds himself on the reverse side of government inquiry as he faces official censure by his Senate colleagues. He’s fired his closest political confidant, Roy Cohn, for picking an unwinnable fight with the Army in McCarthy's name. Friends and confidants are suddenly scarce as the booze and his own brand of brooding paranoia have gotten the better of him. And now Harvey Matusow, Joe's former drinking buddy and campaign spokesman, threatens to accelerate Joe's precipitous fall by exposing the unseemly inner workings of McCarthy's world. If Joe is going to rescue his political career, he must find a way to fight back, bastards be damned.

BIO NOTES

Few politicians in American history evoke as viscerally negative a reaction as that associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy.  “McCarthyism” today stands for that toxic stew of accusation, suspicion and fear that can poison political processes and destroy lives.  And for good reason. 

Between the start of his Senate career in 1947 and his death ten years later, Sen. Joseph McCarthy seized on and exploited the nation’s growing fear of Soviet Russia and turned it into a potent political and societal weapon.  Though many other public figures fueled the climate of accusation and recrimination that typified the infamous “blacklists” and congressional inquisitions that began “are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”, McCarthy and the Senate subcommittee bearing his name were that climate’s most visible and brazen proponents. 

And, though McCarthy himself suffered a downfall in 1954 when some of his (and his sidekick Roy Cohn’s) more outlandish behavior came under scrutiny, the tactics he perfected lived on in American political culture whenever a threat - real or perceived - tempted leaders to strike fear into the hearts of Americans for political gain.