Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
The image of Richard Nixon waving his arms as he boarded a helicopter leaving the White house for the last time as president on August 9, 1974, remains etched in generational memories. The solemnness of Gerald and Betty Ford waving goodbye to the disgraced 37th president next to David Eisenhower consoling Julie Nixon was in direct contrast to the jubilation of millions celebrating his departure. No more Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady, Helen Gahagan Douglas, no more links to the un-American House Un-American Activities Committee, no more Watergate. Good riddance Milhouse, Pat, Roy Cohn, Bebe Rebozo, H.R. Haldeman and all that. Basta.
There are those moments like Nixon’s waving that define an era. Joseph N. Welch’s challenging Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings on June 9, 1954, was another such moment. Welch asked: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” he questioned the Wisconsin senator on national television. Welch pricked the balloon of McCarthy and his anti-Communist hearings. Welch’s simple questions captured all that was wrong with McCarthy and his hysterical witch hunt. Welch, a partner in the Boston white-shoe law firm Hale and Dorr, cut through the anti-Communist frenzy by questioning McCarthy’s “sense of decency.”
What do Nixon’s resignation and Welch’s questions have in common? Both represent unspoken norms. In the Welch case, the American…