Commentary: Trump's critics could learn from Joe Welch, who confronted Joseph McCarthy

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

That vivid imprecation, one of the most telling in American history, was uttered by a crusty Boston lawyer named Joe Welch to Joseph McCarthy, the inflammatory Republican senator from Wisconsin. Many observers credit the denunciation with ending the senator’s treacherous campaign of lies and accusations.

I thought of it as I listened to clips of Donald Trump, JD Vance, Eric Trump and Lara Trump speaking at a repeat rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination of the presidential candidate in July. On top of their other lies, half-truths and incendiary rhetoric, Donald Trump and his gang suggested Democrats may well be behind the assassination attempt. The accusation wildly contradicts what’s come out about the alleged shooter — a troubled young man with a confused agenda.

For almost a decade now, Trump’s critics have confronted him with arguments, logic, fact checks and outrage, all to no effect on him and seemingly none on his followers and enablers. Maybe those of us appalled by the Trump phenomenon have been overthinking our response. Perhaps drawing from history and going the Welch route would finally register.

In 1954, when Welch called out McCarthy, the senator had already put in four opportunistic years terrorizing people and institutions with wild claims of communist connections. His demagoguery thrilled many Americans and was largely tolerated by Republican leadership. Eventually, McCarthy turned his hot air on the Army, which led to congressional hearings on the matter.

Welch represented the Army. The elderly lawyer had the credentials of a Brahmin, with a Harvard Law degree and years at a prestigious Boston firm. But he had grown up in rural Iowa and featured a sharp wit. The hearings were televised, so Americans had real-time exposure to McCarthy and his aide Roy Cohn — later a mentor to Donald Trump.

The critical exchange came toward the end. When Welch vigorously cross-examined Cohn about a purported list of subversives, McCarthy interrupted and gassed on about a young lawyer in Welch’s law firm who’d once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, which had been linked to the Communist Party. Welch listened impassively. When his chance to speak came, he expressed his dismay at the senator’s “reckless cruelty.” The young man had a brilliant career ahead of him, Welch said, and he would continue to serve in the law firm.

McCarthy tried to press on with his attack, and Welch, in a tone of disgust and exhaustion, delivered his “Have you left no sense of decency” pronouncement. McCarthy’s insidious crusade was finished. The exchange, widely available on YouTube, remains riveting television.

As a standard for behavior, “decency” sets a rather low bar, but a simple and significant one. Anyone lacking decency has moved beyond the bounds of acceptable human practice. They should be shunned, censured, treated as an outcast. Such a person is not worthy of anyone’s respect.

If a Welch cast that aspersion on Trump, the candidate would no doubt respond as McCarthy did, stammering and spouting more hurtful nonsense. But the resounding impact of the curse fell on McCarthy only tangentially — it struck the sensibilities of the American people and ultimately Republican leadership. The Senate censured McCarthy, and he quickly descended into alcoholism and early death.

Is there an American today with the earned stature of a Welch who could hand down a decency indictment of Trump that would have a similar repercussion? Perhaps not in our polarized environment. But I wonder if it’s time to lower the heat on our opposition to Trump — to avoid the analytical criticism and simply step back and acknowledge the quite human reflection that he is a man without decency.

Like McCarthy, Trump would be impervious. But the ripples might wash up against his many Republican defenders and enablers in the corridors of power. At long last, do they have no sense of decency?

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Richard Babcock, former editor of Chicago magazine, is a novelist.

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