Joseph McCarthy Essay

Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1909 in Grand Chute, Wisconsin. At fourteen he stopped schooling only to return six years later. What normally took four years of high school, he finished in one year. The years 1930 to 1935 were spent in Marquette University where got his law degree. In 1939 he became a circuit court judge in Wisconsin. He was a Marines lieutenant in World War II. He ran for and lost a Senate seat in 1944. In 1946, he tried again and won this time as junior senator from Wisconsin. The first years were lackluster for Senator McCarthy. In 1949 he found issues to ride on like the US Cold War and anti-Communists sentiments. He claimed to have a Communists List including employees of the State Department. While that was in February of 1950, he named the alleged communists in government service for a whole of five years. Due to the strong anti-communist climate, even without evidence to support his accusations, his claims had damaged the careers and ruined the lives of his victims. Winning yet in another election in 1952 he had used his position as chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee to put more government officials and agencies under investigation. He spared no one from his onslaught including President Eisenhower. While hating the senator in private, the President ignored him in public. McCarthy’s downfall came in 1954 when the Army charged him of giving political favors to a consultant, a former army draftee. The Army-McCarthy hearings were held in his own subcommittee. He was found to be irresponsible as well as dishonest by the subcommittee in televised hearings. Unrepentant to the end, he was censured by Senate in 1954. He died at age 47 from liver ailment. The site elaborated on the rise and fall of a man. It helped me understand the complexities in the life of a man whose humble beginnings propelled him to seek out his dreams and the trappings of power brought him down and away from those dreams. Reference CNN Interactive. Com. Knowledge Bank:Profiles. Retrieved April 17, 2008, from http://www. cnn. com/SPECIALS/cold. war/kbank/profiles/mccarthy/