Joseph R. McCarthy

Wisconsin senator whose communist-hunting career ended in the Senate's formal censure.

Overview

A wartime marine and circuit judge, McCarthy was elected in 1946 and in February 1950 charged in a Wheeling speech that the State Department was full of communists, riding the claim to national power. From 1950 to 1954 his subcommittee hearings accused officials, the army, and eventually the Eisenhower administration, blending genuine security lapses with recklessness that destroyed careers. The army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, televised daily, turned opinion decisively, and in December 1954 the Senate censured him for conduct unbecoming. He died in 1957 at 48, his name becoming the term for the era he defined.