The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy

If you're a conservative with a lot of liberal friends than you know all about the Great McCarthy Excuse, the leftist argument that essentially runs as follows: "Well, sure, Bill Clinton may have permanently corrupted the American political system and killed innocent civilians in pointless military campaigns designed to keep him from getting impeached, but hey, at least, he wasn't Joe McCarthy!" Nearly fifty years after his disgrace and death, Joe McCarthy remains an all-purpose boogeyman to be trotted out whenever it appears that the Republican Party might be on the verge of making a valid argument. Never mind that McCarthy was a former Democrat and, outside of his anti-communist crusade, was known as a bit of a tax-and-spend liberal. Never mind that conservaitve intellectuals were some of the first denounce him even while such liberal icons as the Kennedy Family continued to support him. Nope, McCarthy is the all-purpose right-wing demon of the leftist imagination and nothing's going to change that. And anything done wrong by a "liberal" will apparently always be justified by the memory of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin.If you're like me, you got wise to the shallowness of that argument early on and soon became rather irritated at the way the name "McCarthy" was used an all-purpose justifyer for any amount of fuzzy-headed thinking. That's what makes William F. Buckley's novel, The Redhunter, such a joy to read. Telling the story of Joe McCarthy's rise and fall, the book never defends the man's excesses (and, indeed, no true conservative would ever defend the trampling of civil liberties seen during the McCarthy era) but at the same time, never makes the mistake of using McCarthy's mistakes to downplay the very real treat that Stalin's Soviet Union and its totalitarian brand of Marxism posed to the world. And, most signifigantly, it is perhaps the first and only book -- fiction and nonfiction -- to actually make an attempt to show Joe McCarthy as a deeply flawed human being as opposed to some mustache-twirling villian from a '30s melodrama.The book tells two parallell and intersecting stories of two young men. The first concerns Joe McCarthy himself. Beginning with his own rise to power from a small-town Wisconsin pig farmer to a member of the U.S. Senate, the book paints a sympathetic but still very critical picture of the man. McCarthy comes across as neither a saint nor an ogre but instead a rather insecure if charismatic man who, paradoxically, dealt with his insecurity by entering politics and trying to get every voter to love him. Once in the Senate, McCarthy proves himself to be less than an intellectual giant and, desperate not to lose the love of the voters, latches onto the anticommunist movement as a way to save his own career. The book makes no secret that McCarthy was often exagerrating when he spoke of his evidence of "communists" in the State Department and it is also unflinching in showing that McCarthy didn't

Buckley's account of the most turbulent era of the 1950s may not be the most unbiased available, but it facilitates introduction to the McCarthyism. The Redhunter is a thoroughly readable novel in that it deals intelligently with an immensely complex topic and manages to successfully convey McCarthy's human traits and idiosycracies at the same time. According to Buckley, McCarthy incessantly muttered, "How'm doing?" to his aides in search of affirmation. Buckley does not purport to provide a traditional historical novel. In this case, though, the embellishment was appeciated. I desired an introduction to McCarthyism, and I was not disappointed.

I grew up in the 50's and went to college in the 60's. I had been led to believe that anything associated with Joe McCarthy was bad and evil. If one ever saw any merit of being frightened of communisim they would be classified as paranoid and having facist leanings. McCarthy had many faults and may have gone too far in his accusations without proof. However, the fact remains that there were communists in our government working against our concept of democracy. I never understood the snickers and laughs that would surface in denouncing communism. McCarthy is held up to be the enemy by most of the journalists. It seems to me that the real enemy were those who supported a concept of taking away peoples right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to the right of assemble, etc. Our freedoms are not to be trifled with. I have been in China, East Germany and the old Soviet Union. I am not a big supporter of Joe McCarty, but the concerns of communists in our government working against us should never be taken lightly. The consequences could be costly. With all this in mind, I thought Buckley gave a sommewhat different presentation of who Joe McCarthy was and I have a feeling that his presentation is more accurate than that portrayed by McCarthy's critics.

You have the title wrong. It 's Redhunter, a novel based on the life of Senator Joe McCarthy.--NOT ...a novel baweed on the life and times of Senator Joe McCarthy. Cordially, William F. Buckley Jr.