Book demagogue but senator joe mccarthy and larry will appear long side john nichols who many ourself know from his various roles at the Capital Times, associate editor, the nation magazine, and progressive. We couldnt be more delighted to be hosting these events for you all spring and summer long here on our crowdcast channel and i want to take moment to say thank you to maddison Public Library and the foundation. Theyre support for online cultural events has been absolutely unwaiverring, they are my gosh, im so excited so see john nichols. Their support for these events has been sluicely unwavering and they have been so dedicated to bringing author events to all of you whether youre watching watn your home or across the country or across the globe. We have seen an incredible uptick in our audience of people from all over and it has just absolutely wonderful to see the response. So thank you to everyone who is here tonight. Everyone who has come to one and to all the sponsors who made sure that these events keep going. Without further adieu id like to bring john and larry to screen and step away myself. Hieveryone. Thank you for joining us. Larry, thank you for coming from massachusetts to be here with us tonight. Great. Larry is on cape cod. As we speak. And we have about 100 people with us, in more may joins us a we go along. As was explained up front, we will take questions. Ill ask larry some questions at the start, and then about halfway in well invite some questions from you folks and wherever you want to take it, were very excited to go there. So let me just say a couple of things up front about larry, and first and for most, he is a journalist and his books are journalism at its very best, and we live in a time when journalism is under attack, not only by political figures but also simply by the economic forces of the moment in which we live, and the challenges we face, and so it is a great honor to be with another journalist and someone who really has practiced the craft in some of the most creative and exciting ways. So thats only a beginning of discussing larrys many talents and contributions. I also mention were talking about a new book that he has put out, demagogue, his book on joe mccarthy the form senator from wisconsin. I do want to emphasize that larry has a canyon cannon of books that are worthy of attention highway biography of Bobby Kennedy was brilliant and really took in the exploration of the kennedy story and kennedys journey to new and exciting places. His biography of satchel page was vital contribution to not just sports history but the history of really the evolution of this country and so many fundamental ways. And finally my favorite of his books is rising from the rails his story of the sleeping carporters and im a huge fan of a. Phillip randolph, and larry just captured that brilliantly. So its my most highly recommended of his books. Were their talk about a brilliant new book, demagogue and i wanted to start out larry by asking you, i notice in some of your eye biographies you had the name of the person, satchel or Bobby Kennedy in the case of joe mccarthy, you chose a word, demagogue. Why was that . So before i answer that question, i want to just say that the john is one of the many people i interviewed for the book and two things stood out. Ones he was the youngest person that i interviewed when i was trying to get a sense of people who really knew the mccarthy era and knew joe mccarthy and the other was he was among the very smartest people i enter view. Any of you who are wisconsin readers know his work from the cap times and from the nation and from all kinds of other places he has published so having somebody who is as tuned in to not just mccarthy but mccarthys context in wisconsin and the nation was extraordinary. And the reason i picked a oneword title that was not mccarthys name was because this is a book that is about americas love affair with bullies from our very earliest days until today. And i felt that the subtitle wool capture the sense it was that front and center in this book was low blow joe mccarthy, but that it was also important to see him in the context. The reason were here talking about him 70 years after his beginnings of his crusade is because he was the archetype for this bully or demagogue figure in American History. Thats a longwinded explanation and i promise to keep my other answer shorter, john. Were actually their hear what you have to say so a little longwinds is okay. Ill keep you on the title. You used the term the long shadow, the life and long shadow of joe mccarthy. Give us a sense of what you mean by that, that long shadow. Is it the impact of what he did or is it really this broader notion of the demagogue . He partly cast the long shadow because of the impact of what he did and not just him as joe mccarthy but the orchestrator of a whole movement, mccarthyism and it is also to say that we just cant stop with his death. We have to look at how he influenced demagogues that came after, whether they be david duke, george wallace, or people who are in our political context today. I want to just say one other thing. The temptation with a lot of the interviews ive been doing on joe mccarthy is to talk but donald trump and this is really a book about joe mart. Donald trumps name is mentioned only in the preface and epilogue and yet his story and the story of other dem goings is there in a way in every page in the book. Im going to join new in trying to avoid a very deach discussion of him but tell very deep discussion of him. When you start putting the book together it was around the start of his president si, one of the it. Actually a week before the election in 2006 2016 i signed up to write a different book, the biography of barack obama and the day after the election i realized we will not know Barack Obamas legacy until after the era of trump is over. And it also became apparent to me the day after the election that what i thought was a story of almost ancient history in america in terms of demagoguery is a story of today, that we have not outgrown this affair, this attraction to bullies and the ways i hoped he had. Lets get into the book. One interesting element which is that you take very casual approach to referring to him, i guess the way to say is when you read the book which has a wonderful narrative throughout, great stream going through it, its a little bit like being i dont know maybe sitting out in front of somebodys house in a couple of lawn chairs or by the beach or at the end of of a bar and somebody starts to tell a very long story, and you kind of come back its very human in so many ways. I wonder if you sought to do that. If youre writing a biography of somebody, you have to humanize them and you have to make a reader feel like they are getting into the spirit of the persons life and whether the person is member who you think of by the end of the book as a hero or villain they ought to know them. So a very conscious thing. The same way Bobby Kennedy dish talked about him generally using the word bobby and that was a conscious decision. With this one it is lots of joes and its not just its from to try to get in and see him from the inside. What did you see when you look inside . I want to go back to a quiet that is one reason i have had joe mccarthy in the back of hi head ever since i was doing my research on Bobby Kennedy. A quote from the one person of the 450 people that i interviewed for the beeny kennedy book that was irreplaceable, woman namedthing kennedy, bobbies widow she said something about joe mccarthy i couldnt get out of my head it and was that joe mccarthy might be a monster to much of america but to bobby and to me he was just plain good fun. And the idea of joe mccarthy as good fun was counterintuitive to me and there was some side of him that caused wisconsin to overwhelmingly elect him in two different statewide elections that i wanted to understand. And so i came out of this book feel like joe mccarthy became much more of a human being as opposed to caricature we study in our history books then realize. Somebody i would love to have gone out for a beer with and sat down and really understood all of his charms and all of his ability to convince the ethel and Bobby Kennedy he was great guy to spend time with. On the other hand the documents i looked at made him seem even more sinister than the history books did. So the upside was that he became more of a human being. The downside was that a lot of the political things he did and motivation in doing them the more we could see the papers that gave a more candid sense of that made him somebody that if you went out for a beer with him at night that would be fine bit sure as heck wouldnt want to be on the witness stand when he basilling you during the day. One of the most things about mccarthy was his ability to joke with the people he about to attack or jokingly attack them, and the cap times we remember the stories of john patrick hunter, longtime political reporter, who battled with mccarthy throughout the 40s and 50s for sure, and when hunt were go to event head started to hide behind polls at the poles because he knew if mccarthy saw him in the crowd, mccarthy would launch into a rather jovial attack on the cap times as the pravda of the prairie and an attack on hunter but wouldnt be so mean spirit. Almost be for the fun and the joking and the crowd. And i think that was very common with him. Guest i think that suggests two things. One is he didnt quite under how brutal he was being, and being there with an angry crowd as a journalist being called out by mccarthy was putting hunter at risk and i think that mccarthy didnt quite get that aspect of it but also was that joe mccarthy really did see this as a bit of a game and assumed that everybody who was there journalists or politicians would understand that it was a game, they would understand the rules and they would be able to go out after with him and put it all behind them because after all it was a game. I think youre right. That comes out in your book in quite a few ways because you do talk but the human relationships that he had along the way. I dont want to take us through the whole narrative of mccarthys story because i think people should read the book, but i am interested in your thoughts about at the start of his career. He was a new deal democrat at one point or at least relatively liberal character. That was that merely opportunistic or do you think thats where he actually started and then evolved into Something Else . Guest so, you cant talk about much of anything with joe mccarthy in leave out the opportunistic element. Was he really the lib rallying he started at or the ultra conservative that the end up as . I think where he started out is where he had the most choice. He wasnt sure what would get him elected. When re ran for District Attorney he hand just as a new deal fdr loving democrat but i think as somebody who was fired up enough about that he really believed that was what was best for the country, also his irish roots, suggested that the party of fdr is where he belongs and i think the only time he questioned his being a democrat and his bag liberal was when he realized he couldnt be elected from the area around appleton he grew up and he was game to do whatever it took to be elected, and so some night probably in the middle of the night when nobody was leak went and changed his Party Registration to republican and as you know the store, wasnt just that he became a republican. The opening in the Republican Party, the progressive wing of to Republican Party was taken up by robert and the opening was the stalwart republicans, the most conservative of the Republican Party and he would take it and if it meant change his ideology he would do whatever is took and that if if was anything that ran throughout his life, it was the theme of whatever it took. Host were there people who helped him make the change . Im thinking of the folks up in appleton, particularly ben sunday stern and others. A lot of people who helped him. Under bran van susteren was his best friend and sagest adviser and helped steer him. The people at the newspaper in appleton, the post crescent helped steer him. He had lots of people who ended up being his enablers, his benefactors and being his guides and he was willing to take advice from anybody who was willing to serve the ends of joe mccarthy. They like that. That made him appealing. They loved. They think van susteren was an extraordinary character and from comments he made over the years everybody from journalists to authors to his children, they suggest that van susteren truly adored joe mccarthy, that he understood mccarthys flaws and shortcomings, as well as anybody did, but that he was loyal friend and he stuck with him and never publicly repute pewsated mccarthy, even when his temptation was to do that and even when he was telling his kids that mccarthy had gone off the rails again, and i think that was a lot of people had a lot of loyalty to joe mccarthy, including somebody whose spire family was representing the iconic liberal first family of america, the kennedys, and Bobby Kennedy remained loyal enough to joe mccarthy that he not only never publicly questioned him but when his brother, jack, said stay away from mccarthys funeral in appleton in 1957, bobby said, thank you, jack, thats interesting advice. He flew interest appleton with republican congressional people and on the one hand he went up in the choir loft so nobody could see him at the funeral tempgraphside service he stood off to the side where nobody could see him. After the funeral, he begged the journalists who were there not to put his name in those stories and not get him in trouble with his big brother jack, but until the very end, and until today, for ethel, the kennedys generally and bobby specifically stayed very loyal to him as mccarthy for all of his flaws was guy who inspired on a personal level that kind of enormous loyalty. Its notable that john kennedy danced around mccarthy rather than standings up to him. John kennedy has different relationship. Bobby was a more straightforward, less plotting guy that john kennedy. John kennedy was always thinking of his next step, im convinced the day that john kennedy was born, he started plotting his president ial campaign, and his father did that absolutely but jack picked it up quickly and in 1952 Ken John Kennedy was a relatively unknown and unaccomplished congressman from massachusetts, running against the very powerful Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to try to take the seat away from at the republicans and lodge, he Papa Joe Kennedy had one big request for joe mccarthy which was stay the heck out of massachusetts. Joe kennedy hat given enough money to joe mccarthy that whatever he asked mccarthy was likely to say yes. Joe kennedy was smart enough to know that if joe mccarthy came to massachusetts, and campaigned for the republican lodge, lots of Irish Catholic voters who loved joe mccarthy whether they were republican order more likely democrats, would do what he said to do, and jack kennedy ended up winning that senate seat by just three Percentage Points in year of an eisenhower landslide where eisen power won we nine. I think joe kennedy and jack kennedy were wright. Mccarthy staying out of massachusetts ensured that jack kennedy won the seat and jack kennedy for the res of his life had a certain kind of loyalty for mccarthy. When mccarthy was censured the only senator in the senate at that time who not only didnt show up and vote but who we dont know how they would have voted, was jack kennedy, not exactly the kind of profile in courage that jack kennedy was famous for talk about. So, youre from massachusetts. And you we have already spoken far too much but massachusetts so lets talk but wisconsin. In the 1946 campaign that product mccarthy to the u. S. Senate he took on senator Robert Follett junior who came backbar the Republican Party of having been out for a dozen years as a leading figure with his brother in the progressive party. Mccarthy obviously was making an on continuistic run. But follett was an epic figure in the state and he it appears that at least early on, la follett did not take mccarthy seriously or did not take him seriously enough. You captured what the through line for all after mccarthys campaigns hitches opponents seldom took him seriously. Tom coleman, the dean of the stalwart republicans in the state, never took him seriously as the guy to carry their cudgel against la follett. Tom colemans dream was somehow beating la follett. Joe mccarthy would be his vehicle for doing it, is something he didnt accept until he watched mccarthy and watched mccarthy go out and hustle the all of the republican activist and especially young republicans, in a way that finally coleman became convinced this was the guy who was so determined to win that he was the guy he ought to get behind. The way i think that joe mccarthy beat la follett was partly what you were suggesting that la follett beat himself. He was almost like he was surrendering. I think he was getting older, he had been in office long enough, his health wasnt great, and im not convinced he was sure he really wanted another term or at least not wanted it enough to fight hard and to fight dirty like he would have to do to bet a guy like joe mccarthy. So mccarthy raised legitimate issues in the Campaign Like whether la follett had been captured by the republican establishment, whether he still had the kind of rootedness in wisconsin that voters in any state want to see when theyre elect somebody and also fought dirty and raised issues like the fact that la follett owned a home in virginia and mccarthy was suggesting that was a mansion and a place that la follett considered home and not wisconsin, and if anybody shouldnt have had to show that they had deep root friday in the state of wisconsin it was somebody whose family had given up as much as la folletts had and served the state really well and for a long time but a time la follett came back and start campaigning hard, the campaign was essentially over and mccarthy won by outhustling his opponent. Very close actually about 3,000 votes, right. It was a very close election. It was an unlikely election for mccarthy to be able to oppose la follett and it was the toughest election he would ever face. The easy thing was bating the drat after you beat la follett and the republican nomi