Larry Tye answers questions about Demagogue
What inspired you to write about Joe McCarthy and why does this story matter today?
Days before the 2016 election I signed up to write a bio of Barack Obama. The day after I realized that we won’t know Obama’s legacy until long after the Era of Trump.
My pal Don Ritchie, historian emeritus of the U.S. Senate, had been telling me for years there was not just an opportunity but a need for a new biography of Senator Joe McCarthy. But I was convinced that even a ground-breaking biography of the Red-baiter from Wisconsin was a chapter of American history too painful to revisit, one with little relevance to a republic that had outgrown his appeals to xenophobia. After the 2016 election, nobody needs reminding that this is the story of today and of us.
You say ground-breaking, did you actually have new materials and break new ground?
The senator’s family gave me first and exclusive access to his professional and personal papers, which were under lock and key for 60 years. The Armed Services gave me his military and medical records. And I took the first deep dive into 9,000 pages of transcripts of his closed-door hearings.
Now that we at last have access to the full sweep of the records, we can see that Senator McCarthy’s rise and reign also go a long way toward explaining the astonishing ascension of President Donald J. Trump. While some seek comfort in the belief that Trump’s election was an aberration, the truth is that he is the latest in a bipartisan queue of fanatics and hate-peddlers who have tapped into America’s deepest insecurities. In lieu of solutions, demagogues point fingers. Attacked, they aim a wrecking ball at their assailants. If the news is bad, they blame the newsmen. McCarthy was neither the first nor the last, but he was the archetype.
Why should every Esplanade resident buy multiple copies of your book?
Because, as gut-wrenching as their tales are, McCarthy and his fellow firebrands offer a heartening message at a moment when we are desperate for one: every one of the autocrats I explore – James Michael Curley and George Wallace, Radio Priest Charles Coughlin and Low Blow Joe McCarthy – fell even faster than they rose, once America saw through them and reclaimed its better self. Given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.
Pre-publication reviews of Demagogue
“In an age when we see the resurrection of Senator Joe McCarthy’s tactics — exaggeration and lies, guilt by association, the smearing of political opponents, and above all the acquiescence of enablers who know better — Larry Tye’s Demagogue is a gripping, essential read. Drawing on records newly unsealed after sixty years, Tye explains how McCarthy’s fear-mongering caught fire, offering timely insight into the rise of bullies and what is required to defeat them.”
—Samantha Power, former US ambassador to the United Nations and New York Times bestselling author of The Education of an Idealist
“Larry Tye’s Demagogue nails the defining biography of Joe McCarthy. I grew up a Cold War kid watching it all on television. I thought I knew it all, but Tye makes it real. To understand Donald Trump, you have to understand Joe McCarthy first, and Tye’s your guide.”
—John Kerry, former US Secretary of State
“Tye has written a fabulous, can't-put-down examination of one of the most dangerous politicians in American history. But Demagogue is more than a biography—it's a warning of the peril we are facing.”
— William Cohen, former US Secretary of Defense
“Joe McCarthy showed us how dangerous a demagogue could be to our democracy without being president. As the demagogue now in the Oval Office--mentored personally by McCarthy's unscrupulous disciple Roy Cohn--asserts monarchical authority, it has never been more urgent to have Larry Tye's definitive answers to the questions: How did Joe McCarthy get power in America? And how was he brought down?"
—Daniel Ellsberg, nuclear defense analyst and author of The Doomsday Machine
“Tye takes us, step by step, as one of America’s most dangerous right-wing populists learns how to use fear and deception to vault his way into power and threaten our country’s most basic rights. The lessons for today are all too clear.”
—Steven Levitsky, coauthor of How Democracies Die
“This well-crafted, deeply researched, study of Joseph McCarthy and ‘McCarthyism’ reveals the awful consequences of demagoguery in America, and its toll on our democracy. In writing the definitive account of Senator Joe McCarthy, longtime journalist Larry Tye has provided more than untold history, but also an essential primer for the times of Trump, as America experiences another authoritarian personality who has gained an outsized hold on the Republican Party. We cannot ignore the lessons revealed in Larry Tye’s narrative.”
—John W. Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel
“Larry Tye's deeply reported Demagogue accomplishes two essential tasks at once. As first-rate biographies do, it lifts Joe McCarthy from stereotype to vivid flesh, while also using the past to illuminate the present.”
— David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father
“Fueled by a trove of newly uncovered documents, Demagogue charts the legacy of Joe McCarthy, reviled master of the political smear, through the malign tutelage of McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn and directly to Donald J. Trump. A must-read.”
—Richard Ben-Veniste, assistant Watergate special prosecutor and author of The Emperor’s New Clothes
“Larry Tye's razor smart and riveting account is a timely, and dismaying, reminder of how hard it is for American politics to turn on a demagogue who exploits our fears. Joe McCarthy left few profiles in political courage in his wake.”
— Tim Naftali, former director of the Nixon Presidential Library and coauthor of Impeachment: An American History
“There couldn’t be a more fitting time for Larry Tye to revisit the history of Senator Joe McCarthy. Based on new archival findings, Demagogue tells the story of one of the notorious senators in congressional history, a legislator who destroyed lives, shattered reputations, and damaged institutions until he eventually did himself in.”
— Julian Zelizer, author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.