State’s reps in Congress must show more courage

We readers had ample reminders recently of the good old days of the Cold War. On Thursday, Oct. 1, John Brummett started us off by connecting Donald Trump to Joe McCarthy and his days of the “Red Scare,” the “Lavender Scare” and “un-American activities.” On Oct. 2, the Soviet ball got another shove from Steve Womack who, repeating the party talking points, called the impeachment process “Soviet-style.” Beneath all of this was Donald Trump’s behavior, accused of using our tax dollars to leverage Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden. We citizens get to decide if we want our tax dollars used in this way, and whether that behavior, if proven, merits impeachment.

The mention of the Soviets sets up another connection. Sen. McCarthy hit his popularity peak in 1952 and 1953, looking for Commies in the government, perhaps the original Deep State accusations. The Senate censured him in 1954 for bringing disrepute on the Senate. Senate archives state that his supporters “did not attempt to defend his actions but focused instead on procedural concerns.” Our job as citizens is to look at the behavior of the president and ask if, as in 2016, our 2020 election is threatened. Let’s not get side-tracked by procedural arguments and words like “Soviet-style,” especially if the phone call with Ukraine was “perfect.”

John F. Kennedy was in the Senate with Joe McCarthy. McCarthy was a friend of Kennedy’s father and had dated two of Kennedy’s sisters. JFK, absent from the Senate with a bad back when the McCarthy censure vote was taken, avoided a public position on McCarthy’s behavior. After the publication of his book Profiles in Courage, JFK’s colleagues wished he had shown less profile and more courage in the McCarthy censure.

That is my hope for the Arkansas delegation … less profile and more courage.

SHEILA GALLAGHER

Rogers