“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” as the song puts it. The same definition applies to courage as well.
Sometimes, the same act has different costs for two different people. Challenging President Lyndon B. Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in 1968 was both cheap and easy for Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a little-known politician (and poet) from Minnesota. He lived in the shadow of Hubert Humphrey. He had no future ambitions and nothing to lose but his time.
On the other hand, it was very costly for Robert F. Kennedy to compete in the same race. He carried the weight of his dead brother’s legacy — plus the hopes of the people who had worked in a Kennedy White House and hoped to work in one again. He had originally planned to run in 1972 when Johnson’s term would end, but McCarthy’s challenge to Johnson had scuttled his plans. He faced a difficult choice: run and risk losing to McCarthy or Johnson or stay out and perhaps see McCarthy succeed in his place.
McCarthy could lose and still call it a victory. Kennedy had to beat both of them or call it a loss. No wonder he tallied while McCarthy jumped into the water: Having started with nothing, McCarthy would come out enhanced no matter what happened. Kennedy, bearing too many burdens, faced the prospect of losing it all.
In 1954, when Margaret Chase Smith made her Declaration of Conscience address to the Senate against the conduct of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (unrelated to Eugene McCarthy and from a different state), she too was acclaimed for her courage. But in reality, she was in little danger. There were few “Tail-Gunner Joe” fans in her venue, and she was a legend in her home state of Maine.
Her colleagues to the south, just over the border in Massachusetts, were not quite so lucky. Although Joseph McCarthy was a Republican from Wisconsin, the biggest concentration of McCarthyism support in the entire country was in the working class and working-class precincts of south Boston, where sitting Democratic Sen. John Kennedy had gotten his start. As a result, whatever they thought, neither John Kennedy, his colleague and friend Leverett Saltonstall, nor any other member of the state delegation dared say a word against the Wisconsin senator for the duration of their public careers.
In fact, of the four presidents who were in public office in the mid-1950s (Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Johnson, and Richard Nixon), not one ever said a cross word in public about Joseph McCarthy for the extent of their public careers. This contextualizes the complaints brought against Republican public figures regarding President Trump by Democratic politicians critiquing their courage today.
Which brings us, of course, to Mitt Romney and his vote to convict Trump.
Similarly to Margaret Chase Smith and Eugene McCarthy, Romney has, by most people’s standards, not much to lose. He’s 74 already, and his next Senate election is four years away. He has all the cash and car elevators a person can want. He’s also a hero to half of the country.
What does he care now if Trump doesn’t like him? He’ll live.
