Book Reviews 307

Kennedy, who nearly always views Burr’s proverbial glass as half full while the glasses of his detractors stand half empty, makes asser- tions that are as uncharitable as they are unlikely. It is hardly ten- able, for example, to imply that Jefferson, whom Kennedy writes “was careful not to join publicly in James Monroe’s opposition to” the Constitution, privately opposed its ratification (p. 23). Was it hubris, as Kennedy suggests, that alienated General George Washington from Burr after Burr, his clerk, used family influence in Congress to secure for himself a more appealing assignment, or was it merely the fact that the indecorous major violated his chain-of-command? Did Burr’s conduct, as Jefferson claimed, earn his distrust, or was it, as Kennedy speculates, that Burr introduced Dolley Payne to James Madison, crowding “the intimate space” that characterized the Jef- ferson-Madison “bachelor partnership” (p. 368)? Kennedy deserves praise for reminding us that friendships and vendettas help to shape history. These same forces, as he argues in behalf of Burr, can also distort it. Too bad, therefore, that Kennedy’s attempt to elevate Burr resorts to the tired tactic of depreciating his enemies. This book would be better if instead he had tried to under- stand them. Such an effort would consider the ideological as well as the personal, taking into account a generation of scholarship that should be embellished but not abandoned. ROBERTM. S. MCDONALD,assistant professor of history at the United States Mili- tary Academy, West Point, New York, is writing a book entitled “Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson and the Politics of Personality.”

Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator. By Arthur Herman. (New York Free Press, 1999. Pp. 404. Illustrations, tables, appendices, notes, bibliog- raphy, index. $26.00.) Arthur Herman has a valid complaint. In recent years there has been substantial revision in historical knowledge about com- munists in America. Historians such as John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Allen Weinstein have pointed out, backed by substantial evidence, the truth about American communism-its conspiratorial nature, its duplicity, and its ready acceptance of totalitarianism as an instrument of power. Yet, as Herman asks, “in the midst of all this revision and reevaluation of the period and the issues at stake, what has happened to McCarthy himself? Virtually nothing” (p. 6). There has not been any substantial revision or reinterpretation of Joseph McCarthy’s “real role in the story of cold war anticommu- nism” (ibid.) Herman’s book is the first to explore this role. Herman has two arguments. The first, which he pursues with zeal, is that McCarthy was roundly condemned for the manner of his attacks on communists. His methods-which even Herman sees as 308 Indiana Magazine of History recklesswere not unique to McCarthy . McCarthy’s opponents could engage in similar conduct. To Herman, liberals were hypocrites, as bad in their behavior as the man they decried. Joseph Welch, the famed attorney in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, engaged in less than ideal behavior, Herman discovers, feigning tears before the newsmen after a run-in with McCarthy and later turning to a col- league and stating, “well, how did it go?” (p. 276). Welch’s perfor- mance fit perfectly the emotional climate McCarthy helped create, and one is tempted to say a plague on both houses; however, historians have vilified McCarthy while forgiving the excesses of McCarthy’s opponents. Herman sets the record straight. Herman is less convincing in his main argument, that McCarthy is a crucial figure in the emergence of a populist conservativism that later produced Ronald Reagan: “it may be true . . . that McCarthy failed to set off a populist revolt [was that his intent?] but his ideo- logical heirs did. When Ronald Reagan assumed the leadership of a reconstituted conservative GOP in 1980, it had a distinctly populist appeal” (p. 324). This is patent nonsense. McCarthyism damaged anticommunism in America and hurt the conservative movement’s ability to use it effectively without being labeled extremists Gust examine the visceral reaction to Barry Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964). Only after the failures of Vietnam and of detente did conser- vatives regain the moral high ground on the communist issue, and it still was not easy. There is a difference, as Richard Gid Powers argues, between extremist anticommunists like McCarthy and respon- sible anticommunists like Reagan, the latter intent on defeating com- munism abroad, not searching for reds under beds. Herman, seemingly, agrees: “McCarthy’s disgrace allowed the anti-anticommunists to retake the moral high ground they had lost since the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Hiss case” (p. 312). Exactly. The origins of the current conservative movement’s political successes are not to be found in the downfall of Joe McCarthy, but rather in the tumults of liberal- ism in the 1960s and 1970s. Herman’s book is a well-written and useful account. It shows sym- pathy for a tragic figure, not at all times a bad thing. Herman shows McCarthy to be human, not a monster, and when read in conjunction with William F. Buckley’s fictional account of McCarthy’s life, The Red- hunter (19991, the reader feels a certain empathy for McCarthy, but not for the -ism. GREGORYL. SCHNEIDERis assistant professor of history at Emporia State Universi- ty, Emporia, Kansas. He is the author of Cadres for Conservatiuism: Young Arneri- cans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (1999) and is a student of modern American politics and conservative thought.