I have a much better recollection of Howdy Doody than I do of U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy.

I was born in 1948, so I was 5 when the communist subversion hearings began in April 1954 with Joe McCarthy front and center making allegations that communists were under every rock and behind every bush in the Land of the Free. Communists were in President Truman’s administration; they were in the State Department; they were in the U.S. Army; and, of course, they were thicker’n fleas on a junkyard dog in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry. So said “McCarthyism.”

Those hearings were carried on television and that’s the reason I have this grainy, fuzzy image of Joe McCarthy. Not because TV reception was poor back then but because I vaguely - vaguely! - remember seeing him on TV once, maybe twice, when I wasn’t watching “The Howdy Doody Show” or “Captain Gallant of the French Foreign Legion.” Remember, I’m 5, and I had this uneasy feeling about what was taking place on the screen. Joe McCarthy seemed dark and threatening to me. Beyond that, I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on or who the man was.

Buster Crabbe as Captain Gallant? Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody? Shoot, I pine for that kind of TV-watching-excitement today. It was clean and innocent and dang if every show that aired didn’t seem like a Emmy-winner back then, which isn’t to say I’m against TV now. (When’s “24” supposed to air again and bring back the greatest American hero who ever lived, Jack Bauer?) But it’s noteworthy for me 60 years later to still have this kind of seminal image of a dark, threatening figure saying things I didn’t understand, yet leaving a heavy, unmistakable impression on a boy who hadn’t, at that point, attended a single day of school.

Sen. Joe McCarthy died a few years after those hearings aired on ABC. By then, he had been discredited for his over-the-top, mean-spirited and calloused approach to public service, society and “patriotism” if you dare call it that. In a sense, he was the guy who taught us more about pulling strings and making puppets of people than Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody did. Joe McCarthy pushed an agenda of “Red Scare” and commie spies but he was also pulling strings to get homosexuals out of government and basically “out” period.

Perhaps in the modern era Joe McCarthy was the foremost practitioner of the art of politics that says, “I’m working on several levels here at the same time. I’m doing one thing, yes, but my true agenda is somewhere else and several moves ahead. Just keep your eye on my right hand and pay no attention to my left.”

America’s political machinery is today spitting out facsimiles, if not clones, of Joe McCarthy. We’re sending people to Washington who are mean-spirited and downright jingoistic in their ideology of serving America and defining patriotism. Think about kids today who might catch a fleeting glimpse of somebody on TV all dark and threatening and snarling out a message not fully understood by an innocent mind that nevertheless picks up on the dangerous and mean-sounding tone. Those kids could carry that grainy, fuzzy image for the next half century or more. It can happen; trust me.

These present day firebrands need to pause and ask themselves how history will remember them for being practitioners of the political arts. I dare say every one of them are thinking along the lines of a legacy like Lincoln’s. A word to the wise: More than a few will leave a legacy like McCarthy’s.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.