Blog No. 185. Trump: Have You No Decency?

One of the most memorable lines in modern American history was spoken to Senator Joseph McCarthy by lawyer Joseph Welch during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. After McCarthy attacked a young lawyer in Welch’s law firm for membership in a progressive lawyers’ association, Welch responded:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

When Welch concluded the exchange with a final rebuke of McCarthy, the spectators burst into applause. That powerful moment was a high point of the hearings that marked the beginning of McCarthy’s political decline.

The question “Have you no decency?” is one that Donald Trump manages to provoke on an almost daily basis in tweets, speeches or comments to the press. It is no coincidence that McCarthy’s senior aide, Roy Cohn, later became not only Donald Trump’s lawyer but mentor in his formative years. While Trump’s reckless attacks can be seen as lineal descendants of Joe McCarthy, Trump has a vastly broader range of targets, and he employs more colorful language than McCarthy did.

The persons and organizations Trump has attacked are too numerous to enumerate, but they include the media, his own Justice Department and FBI, domestic and foreign political figures, entire countries, religions and ethnic groups, entertainers and athletes, and ordinary citizens. Most recently, on Thursday in Montana, Trump delivered a rambling rant that included a small cornucopia of nastiness. He aimed predictably tasteless insults at Montana’s Democratic Senator, Jon Tester, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, the #MeToo Movement and NFL football players.  But he also took swipes at two iconic Republicans, George H.W. Bush and John McCain, both of whom he knew were too ill to respond.

Apart from their being cowardly, the most notable aspect of Trump’s sallies against Bush and McCain was how pointless and gratuitously mean-spirited they were. Neither attack had anything to do with raising money or helping to elect a Republican Senator from Montana. The only thing that Bush and McCain have in common is that both have given their lives to public service and both were war heroes, in glaring contrast to Trump whose record of draft evasion is well known. Trump once even had the consummate gall to make a nauseating comparison between his sex life  during the AIDS epidemic and service of others in Vietnam: “You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam — it’s called the dating game,” Trump said to Stern in a 1993 interview. “Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.”

Trump did not mention either Bush or McCain by name, but in each instance his aim was as obvious as it was inexplicable. In the case of President Bush, Trump chose – out of nowhere and for whatever peculiar reason – to mock Bush’s initiative to promote volunteerism, “A Thousand Points of Light”:

And by the way, you know all of the rhetoric: ‘Thousands points of light.’ What the hell was that?” Trump asked his audience. “What does that mean?” “I know one thing: ‘Make America Great Again’ we understand. ‘Putting America First’ we understand. ‘Thousand points of light?’ I never got that one. What the hell is that? Has anyone figured that out? It was put out by a Republican.”

Senator McCain, on the other hand, was singled out by Trump for his vote against a bill to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act.  As CNN pointed out:

Trump falsely says the Senate was one vote away from repealing and replacing the law. In fact, McCain’s vote last year was on a bill designed to eliminate only specific elements of the law — dubbed “skinny repeal.” Moreover, the measure still needed to survive a House-Senate conference committee and final approval in both chambers, anything but a sure bet.

The Montana crowd cheered Trump and his references to Bush and McCain, prompting Joe Scarborough to observe that the audience must have been made up of 6,500 of “the meanest people.” Some, but relatively few, Republicans spoke out against Trump’s jabs, and even they were mild in their reprimands. Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to George W. Bush, who has been supportive of Trump, wrote on Twitter, “This is so uncalled for. Going after a 94-year-old, former President’s promotion of volunteerism. I don’t mind potus being a fighter. I do mind him being rude.” Senator Lindsey Graham, McCain’s best friend in the Senate, told CNN “I don’t think it’s appropriate. I think it doesn’t help the President. He then added “John McCain is my dear friend. I disagree with him on the health care vote. But I respect his right to make that decision. If anybody has earned the right to vote their mind, it’s John McCain.”

But neither Fleischer nor Graham were any substitute for a Republican standing tall and echoing the words of Joseph Welch, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” And when, if not now, will the GOP find the voice and the courage of a Joseph Welch to confront our modern McCarthy?