THE YALE LAW JOURNAL AMERICAN DEMAGOGUES, TWENTIETH CENTURY.
[Vol. 64
By Reinhard H. Luthin,
with an introduction by Allan Nevins. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1954. Pp. xi, 368. $5.00. By Michael Straight. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1954. Pp. 282. $3.50.
TRIAL BY TELEVISION.
THESE tWo books from the same publisher may well be read together. Indeed the final demagogue portrayed by Mr. Luthin is Joseph McCarthy. Mr. Straight's book takes up in detail the crowning achievement of the Senator's demagoguery and comes as an appropriate sequel to the former volume. Both books are easy to read and factually accurate. The first contains an elaborate bibliography on its subjects; the second is graced with a number of revealing caricatures of the dramatis personae of the Army-McCarthy hearings by Robert Osborn. Both rate high on the scale of intellectual integrity and good reporting. At the same time, it must be said that both writers express freely their opinions on the events and persons they write about; they mix fact and comment generously. In other words, both books are "slanted" -honestly "slanted," in the sense that the facts upon which opinion is based are accurately stated, but nevertheless written from a point of view which is hostile to the principal personalities involved. Neither Luthin nor Straight makes any attempt to conceal his attitude, and, since the facts are neither misstated nor distorted, the reader may make his own judgment whether the authors have defamed the men they write about or themselves. Of the eleven demagogues discussed by Luthin, five are furnished by the South (Long, Bilbo, Talmadge, and the two Fergusons), one by the Southwest (Murray), three by the East (Hague, Curley, and Marcantonio), and two by the Middle West (Thompson and McCarthy). Of course, in the first half of this century the nation produced many others who could stand toe to toe with this team and match demagogueries-Tom Hefflin, Cotton-Ed Smith, Gerald L. K. Smith, Father Coughlin, to name a few who come first to mind. But the author's list is as good as any, and his selections, individually and collectively, disclose about all of the trade equipment. The list represents just about every evil in American political life: lying, cheating, corruption, quackery, melodrama, ham-acting, buffoonery, and the degradation of political processes. Once in a while it will appear that one of these characters does something decent. This tends to confuse people. Long built good roads and new schools -some of them way up in the bayous and in the hinterland of Louisiana as well as in the southern part where most of the votes were. And there was considerable similarity between Marcantonio's political speeches and his voting record. It may be recalled that Mussolini made the trains run on time. This was good for travelers, but it turned out, on the whole, to be a lousy way to run a railroad. Such items are negligible in the demagogue's balance sheet and should be disregarded. It is even urged sometimes by people who should know better that McCarthy alerted the nation to the dangers of Communism. This, of course, is sheer nonsense. He didn't even invent McCarthyism. He