Now we pray that in all the deliberations here begun Thou wilt save us from pride of opinion, from intolerance and prejudice, and from lightly ascending any throne of judgment.
Last week the U.S. Senate met to consider censure action against Wisconsin's Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and the ascension to judgment's throne was rocky indeed. Within minutes after the chaplain finished his opening prayer, Joe McCarthy was fighting the only way he knows how, with tooth, nail and knee, to make the debate one of the most acrimonious and personally bitter in Senate history.
Sitting next to each other in their regular places on the Republican side of the aisle were McCarthy and Utah's frail, grey Arthur Watkins, chairman of the select committee which recommended censure. Their chairs were only a couple of feet apart, but the space between their shoulders was twice that (each man leaned away from the other), and the distance between their convictions was immeasurable.
Tentacles & Toes. When Republican Leader William Knowland announced that Watkins wanted to make a few routine changes in the printer's copy of the committee report, McCarthy was on his toes, snarling objections. "Highly improper," he cried, although he knew such changes are more the rule than the exception.
Utah's Watkins patiently explained that the proposed changes were typographical, with one brief deletion of an obvious error. Replied McCarthy: "I have found so many obvious errors that I should like to know which one the Senator is deleting." When Watkins tossed a copy of the corrected report on McCarthy's desk, McCarthy whined that he now had to go through 72 pages. "The Senator from Utah has told me that he knows what these errors are," he complained. "Why does he not mark them for me?" South Dakota's mild-mannered Republican Senator Francis Case, a censure committee member, scurried over to Joe's desk, riffled through the pages and slapped the report down so hard that papers went flying. "It's a marked copy," he snorted.
Moments later, the Senate adjourned—after approving the corrections—and McCarthy airily told reporters: "I can see no major changes." Then he ducked off the Senate floor and into the men's room, where he slapped a newsman on the back and announced: "I'm back in shape."
Next day, McCarthy gave the press a speech which he planned (he said) to make to the Senate the following day. It was the usual attempt to equate anti-McCarthyism with pro-Communism—but this was the first time McCarthy had tried that line on such recognized conservatives as the members of the Watkins Committee. Said he: "I would have the American people recognize, and contemplate in dread, the fact that the Communist Party —a relatively small group of deadly conspirators—has now extended its tentacles to that most respected of American bodies, the U.S. Senate; that it has made a committee of the Senate its unwitting handmaiden."
In his long years in politics, Committee Member Ed Johnson has been called many things. But when he heard of McCarthy's statement, Colorado's tough, burly Johnson gruffed: "This is the first time I've ever been called a handmaiden."