Joseph McCarthy - Ongoing Debate

Ongoing Debate

In the view of a few conservative latter-day authors, such as commentators William Norman Grigg and Medford Stanton Evans, McCarthy's place in history should be reevaluated. Many scholars, including some generally regarded as conservative, have opposed these views.

Other authors and historians, including Arthur Herman, assert that new evidence—in the form of Venona decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before McCarthy's subcommittee—has partially vindicated McCarthy by showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct and that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected.

After reviewing evidence from Venona and other sources, historian John Earl Haynes concluded that, of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts. He suggested that a majority of those on the lists could legitimately have been considered security risks, but that a substantial minority could not.

These viewpoints are considered revisionist by many scholars. Challenging efforts aimed at the "rehabilitation" of McCarthy, Haynes argues that McCarthy's attempts to "make anti-communism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping. William Bennett, former Reagan Administration Secretary of Education, summed up this perspective in his 2007 book America: The Last Best Hope:

The cause of anti-communism, which united millions of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy ... McCarthy addressed a real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to love ... Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet subversion of American institutions.