If You Liked Joseph McCarthy, You'll Love Steve King...

OK. I’ve known Congressman Steve King was a little loopy ever since he first ran for his Fifth District seat. In a way, however, it was almost a source of entertainment for me to “brag” to my staunchly Republican family in Pennsylvania that while their city was being run by godless, latte-sipping, Volvo-driving leftist democrats, MY congressman was increasingly positioning himself only slightly to the left of such right-wing dictators as Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

But then came King’s recent vote against the aid package for survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and I thought to myself, “Why the sudden, belated interest in fiscal responsibility?” Couldn’t he have chosen to take a stand earlier, such as over unrestrained spending on Bush’s Iraq Quagmire, or perhaps the bloated Federal Highway Bill of 2005? Just what was King hoping for, except perhaps to score some cheap political points with the extreme right-wing at the expense of America’s poorest and most downtrodden citizens?

Unfortunately, cheap political points seem to be his obsession these days, as witnessed by his recent, and hopelessly pointless, fight to deny formal congressional approval to the naming of a post office in Berkeley, California after a longtime advocate for peace, civil rights, and the elderly. While confidently asserting on the House floor that the ailing, 94 year-old’s record somehow “sets her apart from … the most consistent of American values,” in true Orwellian style King saw no need to detail any specific, verifiable charges against the granddaughter of former slaves. One wonders what about peace, civil rights, and the welfare of the elderly so offended King that he saw need to meddle what was basically a local California affair, anyway.

But what really got me thinking that somebody ought to check Congressman King’s medications ASAP were his characterizations, during subsequent debate, of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy as “a hero for America” and former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as “a giant.” The alcoholic, bullying, congenitally dishonest McCarthy destroyed countless reputations and careers on the flimsiest of pretexts with his fabrications about purported Communist agents throughout government and industry in early 1950s America. Yet for all of McCarthy’s bluster and dire warnings, his lengthy investigations convicted nary an actual Communist. Is it any wonder the Senator’s name subsequently came to characterize a baseless witch-hunt, as in “McCarthyism?” As for the spying, autocratic, bigoted Hoover, we know that throughout his career he abused his power and the law in pursuing personal vendettas against prominent Americans (typically Democrats) he disliked (such as bugging Martin Luther King Jr.’s hotel rooms or leaking compromising information on Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential campaign).

What next from King? Waxing nostalgic about how Mussolini kept the trains in Italy running on time? God forbid Steve King should want to emulate McCarthy and Hoover! Isn’t being an ignorant yahoo satisfying enough for him?

Peace!
Historian