Another very short section, with really only two entries in it.
--Legacies--
In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected on a populist platform; one of the planks was, to put it delicately, making proper use of the lands in the south and west, which the inhabitants were letting go to waste. To put it less delicately, Jackson wanted all the damn redskinned savages off American land, so good white folks could farm it, and sadly for the natives, his view was very common, especially among the people who had the power to enact these changes. The Trail of Tears was Jackson's work more than any other's, and he was the first one to do anything more than propose a policy of handling them, with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. A couple of years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that the state government did not have the power to impose its own laws in Cherokee territory; when Chief Justice Marshall rendered the verdict, Jackson is reported to have said (but probably did not, though he did hold the sentiment) "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." No, assbag, that's your job. The way the U.S. and state governments dealt with non-whites is one of the deepest and darkest stains on our national character.
No book on American electoral politics would be complete without a description of Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who served in the Senate from 1947 to his death from hepatitis in 1957. Initially, in 1944, while on active duty (which you're not allowed to do), Joe ran against the incumbent Republican Alexander Wiley in the primary, but lost. He then tended to his elected position as circuit court judge, but that reelection was easily disposed of, and he soon turned his eye towards garnering the nomination for Wisconsin's other Senate seat, held by Robert LaFollette, Jr., a three-term incumbent who had just returned to the Republican Party after over a decade in the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and had more or less inherited his seat from his father, Robert M. LaFollette, Sr., who himself had served nineteen years and run for President in 1924. "Tail-gunner Joe", as some of his fellow soldiers called him, embarked on a shrewd campaign of lying his ass off about everything he or LaFollette had ever done, and managed to win the primary narrowly, which was the real contest, as Wisconsin was not kind to Democrats at that point.
Having entered the Senate, McCarthy began his career quietly, not making much noise apart from his rabid anti-communism rhetoric, until early 1950, when he gave a speech about Communists in the State Department, with a line that has widely been quoted, mostly in parody: "I have here a list of 207 (or 58, or 87, or 125, the number kept changing; later it was discovered that he'd been holding a damn laundry list) registered Communists employed in the State Department!" With that speech, McCarthy ushered in the worst years of the Second Red Scare, and jump-started his own ascent to power. McCarthy's initial charges were discussed by the Tydings Committee, and ultimately dismissed on party line votes; the matter was far from over, however, and McCarthy continued to rant about Communists hiding under Grandma's afghan, which the public ate up, given the state of Communist countries around the world. In the 1950 midterm elections, McCarthy involved himself heavily in races in other states (which was, and still is, a faux pas; elected officials almost always campaign in areas in their current or former constituency, but don't cross state lines); every Republican he campaigned for won, and the results were in general a great boon to Republicans in general and McCarthy's influence in particular.
In 1952, McCarthy was reelected easily with 54% of the vote, but did worse than every other Republican running statewide, none of whom had gotten less than 60% of the vote. McCarthy and Eisenhower had not been very friendly before the election, and soon McCarthy was openly attacking him, claiming that was "soft on Communism", the same attack he used on everybody, ever. Eisenhower, however, refused to engage with McCarthy, partially because he felt McCarthy was beneath his dignity as President and he didn't want to give credence to "Tailgunner Joe"'s rhetoric, and partially because he didn't want to risk alienating McCarthy's many supporters across the country. At the beginning of the 88th Congress, McCarthy was granted the chairmanship of the Committee on Government Operations, in an attempt to control the damage he was doing — unfortunately, that Committee included the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and he gleefully made it his bitch, putting everybody he could get his hands on under the microscope. He started on the Army, ending his honeymoon early to do so, which must have made him very popular at his house ("Oh yeah, I'm sure there are lots of Communists in the damn Army! I'm sure you'll find them on the couch, too, because you're going to be staying there for a very long time, mister!" [Note: I don't actually have any idea how his wife responded, but I'm betting she wasn't happy, though she also opposed Communism vigorously.]), and thereby took on more than he could chew. McCarthy went around making wild accusations, as was his wont, and the Army backed down a bit, but then counter-attacked, accusing McCarthy of trying to get plum assignments for his former aide, David Schine, then serving in the Army.
Thus began the Army-McCarthy hearings, which McCarthy naturally was not allowed to chair, though it fell under his committee's jurisdiction. They went back and forth quite a bit for weeks, but in the process exposed McCarthy's nastiness, where before people had only seen his opposition to an ideology that they were afraid was threatening America. Finally, when McCarthy suggested that a former aide of the Army's chief legal advisor was a Communist, Joseph Welch replied, in another sentence that has long been quoted and slightly misquoted: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" Naturally, McCarthy still wouldn't shut the fuck up, but the audience applauded, and Chairman Karl Mundt (R-SD) called a recess. At this point, his power was broken, and though he remained ranting in the Senate three more years, his colleagues officially censured him, and he started drinking. He died in May 1957 of acute hepatitis, resulting from years of alcoholism, and his seat was contested in the primary by a moderate Republican, who beat the conservative Republican, but still lost to Democrat William Proxmire, who served out the last year and change of McCarthy's term and five of his own; his seat is now held by timid Blue Dog Herb Kohl.
His legacy is preserved in the word McCarthyism, whose meaning is obvious if you've paid the slightest bit of attention to the previous eight hundred words; unfortunately, the modern Republican Party seems inspired by his spirit, especially Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (what is it about Great Lakes states?), though the details have changed slightly: instead of "Communist sympathizer" people are now called anything from "terrorist sympathizer" to "communofascist". (Amusingly enough, Bachmann's district is next to Keith Ellison's, the first Muslim elected to Congress.