As someone from McCarthy’s home state, let me just say that while McCarthy was not wrong in saying there were Communists in government warning us about this, his scattershot, reckless approach made it easy for the powers that be to destroy him and make a characiture out of him. I also don’t think Gabler’s wrong in saying that a style of politics sprung forth from McCarthy (although one could say it predates all the way back to Nxon’s first campaign for Congress in 1946. ) but he should know that when elities operate in backrooms and make policies that could kill young American boys and now girls in battle and some of those people in the room are agents for a foreign power trying to get the U.S. to fight their battles for them, then why should it be so suprising that a populist figure from outside the establishment comes along to turnover the furnitiure inside the Clubhouse and say all little emperors and empresses wear no clothes. McCarthy and McCarthyism was never a vacumn to one’s self. It reflected people’s concerns over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and the tendency for elities to shut out the voices of many of the country’s citizens when that policy is being made. McCarthy may well have been on the wrong side of history, but he was not afraid to, as he put it “call a spade a spade.”