Capital times as associate editor of the nation magazine and aggressive. Progressive. We couldnt be more delighted to be hosting this event all spring and summer long here on our crowd podcast channel and watch it take a moment to say thank you the Madison Public Library and the medicine Public Library foundation. Their support for online cultural events is an absolutely unwavering. They are, oh, my gosh, im so excited to see john nichols. Their support for these events has been absolutely unwavering and they have been so dedicated to bringing author in advance to all of you with your watching in your home at madison or across the country or across the globe. Weve seen an incredible uptick in her audience, people from all over and it is just absolutely wonderful to see the response so thank you and what heres arguing us come to one. And all the responses of major events keep going. Without further do i like to bring john and larry to the screen, and step way myself. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Larry, thanks to come in all the way from massachusetts to be here with us tonight. Larry is on cape cod tonight as a speak. We have weathered people with this, someone with joints undergo long and as was explained we will take questions. Let me just a couple things upfront about larry. First and foremost he is a journalist and his books are journalism at its very best. We live in a time when journalism is under attack not only by political figures but by the economic forces of the moment in which we live and the challenges we face. It is a a great honor to be wih another journalist and someone who really has practiced in some most creative and exciting ways. Thats only a beginning of discussing larrys many talents and contributions. I will also mention talking tonight about a new bookies put out, demagogue which is a new book he has put out i do want say larry has books that are worthy of your attention if you have read them already. His biography of Bobby Kennedy was brilliant and really took the exploration of the kennedy story and journey to some new and exciting places. His biography of Satchel Paige was a vital contribution to not just sports history but the history of really the evolution of this country in so many fundamental ways. And finally my favorite of his books his rising from the rails which is his story of the sleeping car porters and then huge fans of adolf randall forcefully put of the sleeping car porters and chairman of the march in washington in 1963. Larry capture that brilliantly. Were here tonight to talk about a brilliant new book demagogue. I wanted to start by asking you, i noticed in some of your other biographies you have the name of the person, Satchel Paige or Bobby Kennedy. Indicates of joe mccarthy you chose a word, demagogue. Why was that . Before answer the question i want to say that john is one of many people i interviewed for this book, and to think stood up about my interview. One is he was the youngest person that it in a good i was trying to get a sentient people who really knew the mccarthy era and you john mccarthy, and the other was he was among the very smartest people i interviewed any of you who are wisconsin readers know his work from that Capital Times and from the nation from all kinds of the places he has published. Having somebody who is as tuned into not just mccarthy but mccarthys context in wisconsin and the nation was extraordinary. The reason i picked the oneword title was not mccarthys name was because this is a book that is about americas love affair with bullies from our very earliest days until today. I felt that the subtitle would capture the sense that it was front and center in this book was low blow joe mccarthy but it was also important to see him in the context. The reason were talking about him 70 years after his beginnings of his crusade is because he was the archetype for this bully are demagogue figure in American History. Thats a longwinded explanation and a promise keep my other answers shorter. We are here to hear what you have to say so all the long winded is okay. Im going to keep on the title. In the title he used the term the long shadow, the life and long shadow of joe mccarthy. Give us the a sense of what yon by that, that long shadow. Is it the impact of what he did or is it really this broader notion of the demagogue . He partly cast a long shot because of the impact of what he did and not just him as joe mccarthy but the orchestrator of this whole movement, mccarthyism. It is also to say we just cant stop with his death. We have to look at how he influenced demagogue the came after whether be david duke, George Wallace or people for in a political context today. I i want to say one other thing. The temptation with a lot of the interviews ive been doing on joe mccarthy is to talk about donald trump and this is a book about joe mccarthy. Donald trumps name is mentioned only in the preface and an epilogue, and yet his story and the story of other demagogues is there in wait way in every pagn the book. As long as you brought trump up on going to join you in trying to avoid faq discussion of him. Tell me, when you started putting this book together, it was around the start of his presidency, was in it . Actually a week before the election in 2016 i signed up to write a different book. That was a biography of the barack obama. The day after the election i realized we will not know Barack Obamas legacy until after the air of trump is over. It also became apparent the day after the election that what i thought was a story of almost ancient history in america in terms of demagoguery, is the story of today, that weve not outgrown this affair, this attraction to bullies in the ways i hope we had. Lets get into the book a little bit. Theres one interesting element of it which is you take a very casual approach to referring to him. I guess the way to sate is, when you read the book which at the wonderful narrative the route, just a great stream going through it, its a little bit like being, i dont know, maybe sitting out in front of somebodys house and a couple of lawn chairs by the beach or maybe even at the end of a bar, to somebody starts to tell a very long story. You kind of come back. Its very human in so many ways and i wonder if you thought to do that . I think you to writing a biography of somebody, you have to humanize them and make the reader feel like they are dating into the spirit of this persons life and whether the person is somebody who think of by the end of the book as a hero or a villain that can open. It was a very conscious thing the senate Bobby Kennedy, i talked about him generally using the word bobby and that was a conscious decision. With this one it is lots of joes. It is to try to get in and see them from the inside. What did you see when you look inside . I saw on the one hand, i want to go back actually to a quote that was one of the reasons i had joe mccarthy in the back of my head ever since i see my research on Bobby Kennedy and it is a a quote from the oe person of the one of the 450 people interviewed for the Bobby Kennedy book, bobbys widow. She said something about joe mccarthy that he couldnt get out of my head and it was that joe mccarthy might be a monster too much of america, but to bobby and to me, he was just plain good fun. The idea of joe mccarthy as good fun was counterintuitive to me. I felt there was some side of income the sight of him that caused wisconsin to overwhelmingly elect him into make different statewide elections i wanted to understand. I came out of this book feeling like, on the one hand, joe mccarthy became much more a human being as opposed to the caricature that we stayed in our history books that i ever realized. He is somebody i would love to have got out for a beer with and sat down and really understood all of his charms and all of his ability to convince ethel and Bobby Kennedy that he was a great guy to spend time with. On the other hand, the documents i looked at made him seem even more sinister than the history books did. The upside was he became more of a human being. The downside was a lot of the political things he did and his motivation and doing them, the more we could see some of the papers they gave a more candid sense of that, made in somebody that if you wind up for a beer with them at night that would be fine if you sure sect would want to be in the witness stand when he was grilling you during the day. And interesting thing about mccarthy was his ability to joke with the people he was about to attack, or to actually jokingly attacked them. We remember the streets of john patrick under, a longtime political reporter, about with mccarthy throughout the 40s and throughout the 50s for sure. When hunter would go to events he said, he actually started to hide nine polls at the defense because he knew at mccarthy sign in the crowd, mccarthy would launch into a rather jovial attack on cap times as a prompt of the prairie and an attack on hunter but it wouldnt be, it wouldnt be so meanspirited. Would almost be for the joking for the crowd. I think that was very coming for him. That suggest two things about mccarthy. One is that he didnt quite understand how brutal he was being. Being there with an angry crowd as a journalist being called up by mccarthy was putting hunter at risk, and you think mccarthy didnt quite get that aspect of it. It also was that joe mccarthy really did see this as a bit of a game. He is to everybody who was there, journalists or politicians he was going after would understand it was again, understand the rules and would be able to go out after we cannot put all behind didnt because after all, it was again. I think that comes out in your book in quite a few ways because you do talk about these human relationships that he had along the way. I dont want to take us through the whole narrative of mccarthys story because i think people should read the book but i am interested in your thoughts about at the start of his career. He was a new deal democrat at one point or at least relatively liberal character. Was that merely opportunistic or do you think thats where he actually started and then evolved into Something Else . You cant talk much about anything with the joe mccarthy and leave out the opportunistic element. Was he really the liberal he started as or the ultraconservative that he ended up as, and i think where he started out is we had the most choice. He wasnt sure what could get him elected. When he ran for District Attorney he ran not just as a new deal fdr loving democrat but i think if somebody who was fired up enough about that that he really believed that was what was best for the country. That was also his irish roots suggested that the party of fdr was where he belonged. I think the only tiny question his being a democrat and is being a liberal was when he realized he couldnt be elected from the area around appleton daddy grew up, and he was again to do whatever it took to be elected. Probably in the middle of the night when nobody was looking he went and changed changes Party Registration for republican. As you know the story it wasnt just he became a republican. The opening in the Republican Party, the progressive wing of the Republican Party was taken at by robert junior and the opening was the stalwart republican, the most conservative element of the Republican Party, and if that was open, joe mccarthy is going to take it. If it may change his ideology, he was going to do that. He was going to do, and he di, whatever it took. I think that was, if there was any scene that ran throughout his life, it was the theme of whatever it took. And where the people along the way who helped him to make that change . Im thinking of the folks ive been appleton, particularly a lot of people helped. Urban Ben Van Susteren was a vn and probably say just advisor and he helped steer him. The people of the newspaper in appleton helped steer him. He had lots of people who ended up being his enablers, his benefactors and being his guides. He was willing to take advice from anybody who is willing to serve the ends of joe mccarthy. And the like that, right . That made him a feeling. They love that. Urban was an extra in a character and a think from, teammate over the years to everybody from journalists and authors to his children, they suggest that van susteren truly adored mccarthy come here just to mccarthys flaws and shortcomings as well as anybody did but that he was a loyal friend and he stuck with him. He never publicly repudiate mccarthy even when his temptation was to do that and even when he is telling his kids and mccarthy had gone off the rails again. I think that was a lot of people had a lot of loyalty to joe mccarthy, including somebody whos entire family was representing the iconic liberal first family of america, the kennedys. And Bobby Kennedy remained loyal enough to joe mccarthy that he not only never publicly question but when his brother jack said stay way from mccarthys funeral in 1957, bobby said thank you jack, thats interesting advice. He flew into appleton with all his republican congressional people, and on the one hand, he went up in the choir loft so no one could see them at the funeral, at the Graveside Service he stood off to the site when nobody could see him. After the funeral he begged the journalists who were there not to put his name in those stories and not getting in trouble with his big brother jack. But until the very end and until for the kennedys, generally and specifically stayed loyal to him as mccarthy despite all this flaws, aspired the kind of enormous loyalty. Its notable john kennedy really danced around mccarthy rather than stand at to him. So john kennedy had different relationship. Bobby was a more straightforward and last plotting guy than john kennedy. John kennedy was always thinking of his next step. Im convinced the day john kennedy was born he started plotting his president ial campaign. His father was doing that absolutely but jack picked it up quickly. In 1952 when john kennedy was relatively unknown and unaccomplished congressman from massachusetts running against a very powerful center Henry Cabot Lodge to try to take that seat away from the republicans, pahpa joe kennedy had one big request for joe mccarthy, which was state heck out of massachusetts. Joe kennedy had given enough money to joe mccarthy that whatever he asked mccarthy was likely to say yes. Joe kennedy was smart enough to know if joe mccarthy came to massachusetts and campaign for the republican lodge, lots of Irish Catholic voters who love the joe mccarthy whether they were republicans or more likely they were democrats, would do what he said to do. Jack kennedy ended up winning the senate seat by just three percentage point in the year of an eisenhower landslide were eisenhower won by nine points. Joe kennedy and jack and you are right. Mccarthy staying at the massachusetts insured that jack kennedy won that seat. Jack kennedy for the rest of his life had a certain kind of loyalty for mccarthy. When mccarthy was censured, the only senator in the senate at the time who not only didnt show up and vote, but who we dont know how they would have voted was jack kennedy. Not exactly the kind of profile in courage that jack kennedy was famous for talking about. I thought youre going to take us to the term right there. You are from massachusetts and we have already spoken far too much about massachusetts so lets talk about wisconsin. In that 1946 campaign that brought mccarthy to the ascendant he took on a senator who had come back into the Republican Party after having been out of it for a dozen years as a leading figure with his brother in the progressive party. Mccarthy was making an opportunistic run. He had the backing of the Party Establishment but the other senator center was an epic figure in the state and it appears that at least early on he did not take mccarthy seriously. Or did not take interesting enough. Eurojust captured the through line for all mccarthys campaigns. His opponents took him seriously. Tom coleman who was the dean for the stalwart republican in the state never taken seriously and the guy to carry against the fall it. Tom Coleman Street and im convinced this captain of the night with some out beating him. He thought gemma cardi bs vehicle is something he didnt accept until he watched mccarthy and he watched mccarthy out and hustle all of the republican activist and especially young republicans in a way that finally coleman became convinced that this was the guy who was a determine to win that he was a guy he ought to get behind. The way i think that joe mccarthy beat la follette was partly what you are suggesting, that la follette beat himself. It was almost like he was surrendering. I think he was getting older. He had been in office long enough. His health was a great. Im not convinced he was sure he really wanted another term, or at least not wanted enough to fight hard and to fight dirty like is going have to do to beat a guy like joe mccarthy. Mccarthy raise legitimate issues in the Campaign Like whether la follette had been captured by the republican establishment, whether he still had the kind of rootedness in wisconsin that voters in any state want to see when they are electing somebody but he also fought dirty and you raise issues like the fact that la follette owned a home in virginia. Mccarthy was suggesting that was a mansion and use place la follette really considered home and not wisconsin. And if anybody shouldnt have had to show that they deep roots in the state of wisconsin, it was somebody whos family had given up as much as la follette had and serve the state not just for a long time but really well. But at the time la follette finally came back and started campaigning hard, the campaign was essentially over. Mccarthy one by out hustling is opposed by the way la follette realized at the inn. It was very close combat 3000 votes, right. It was a very close election. It was an unlikely election for mccarthy to be able to depose la follette, and it was the toughest election he would ever faced. The easy thing was beati