Historians, political scientists, and just plain politicians will probably be pondering the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy to prominence and power for a good many years to come. Even more spectacular, in a way, has been the Wisconsin senator's rapid descent into almost as much political obscurity as a United States senator can ever hope to attain. Harry Truman and Richard Nixon are not exactly noted for their harmony on most issues, but both have labeled McCarthy a political has-been in recent months and agree that his power has virtually evaporated. A.D.A. national chairman Joseph Rauh, Jr. tuned in his sensitive antennae on McCarthy last summer and gave the "all clear" signal to professional libertarians everywhere, assuring them that "the McCarthy era is over."

That statement in itself represents a remarkable transformation of attitude. One needs only to recall that less than three years ago, its author was apparently ready to believe that Senator McCarthy had stored a private arsenal of Lugers, revolvers, and machine guns in the basement of the Senate office building. Whether Rauh feared at the time that Private Schine, the military member of the McCarthy menagerie, might be preparing to lead a march up the Capitol steps did not become entirely clear from the testimony at the recent Hughes perjury trial in New York City. But the trial revealed that responsible and otherwise rational men were willing to attribute both powers and motives to the junior senator from Wisconsin that might make Satan himself a little envious. Nor was the phobia confined to the self-appointed guardians of the liberal tradition. At the height of McCarthy's influence in 1954, articulate members of both parties seemed convinced that the Republic had not been in greater danger since the colors came down at Fort Sumter in 1861.

The Republic has so far survived. And McCarthy, for the moment at least, has become the "forgotten man" of American politics. His decline can actually be plotted statistically, in terms of the politician's private Hooper rating, press and magazine publicity. Dramatic evidence lies even in the monotonous pages of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. In his two-year publicity hey-dey, 1953 and 1954, McCarthy was the subject of no less than 474 articles in major American periodicals, an average of 237 articles for each of the two years. In the last twelve months, he managed to break into magazine print only 33 times, with most of the articles appearing early in 1955 just after the Senate censure. Only one major publication saw fit to write on him at all in the last three months of the year--and that was the evervindictive Nation, whose correspondent pursued the Senator on a speaking tour to Boston to write a piece entitled "Comeback Flop." The news index of the New York Times tells the same story of lack of stories. In 1953 and 1954, McCarthy made the front page of the Times almost as much as the President of the United States. It was a rare day when some newspaper somewhere in the country did not carry a picture of the Senator in one of another of his expressionless poses. In 1955, McCarthy dropped off page one of the Times almost altogether, often to an uncomfortable position at the tail-end of a story on Senator Knowland or Vice-President Nixon.

All in all, 1955 was an aimless and frustrating year for the Senator. The Ford Foundation's Fund for the Republic, the National Labor Relations Board, the United States guided missile program, the Administration's farm policy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Milton Eisenhower and a cherished McCarthy enemy, Harold Stassen, all came in for their share of criticism, but somehow the public and the press failed to sit up and take notice as they had done only a few months before. With his committee chairmanship gone in the Democratic victory in 1954 McCarthy was just another minority member of the Senate Committee on Government Operations; he has never been much disposed to provide newspaper copy for another man's headlines. On the legal front, he lost two important decisions in the acquittal of Corliss Lamont and Leon Kamin on contempt of Congress charges.

Increasingly, McCarthy has taken his one-man show out of the Senate and into the back-country. Speaking invitations and Americanism awards from veterans' groups, Knights of Columbus chapters, and other organizations of public-spirited citizens are always forthcoming when the Senator arrives in the neighborhood. Yet even some of the traditional centers of support appear to have cooled slightly in their enthusiasm for McCarthy, or at least in their outrage at his enemies. In past years, a visit to Boston, for example, was certain to induce an outpouring of loyalty among large elements of the population, much as Antaeus in the Greek myth gained renewed strength by contact with Mother Earth. The Senator's supporters were still vocal enough to cause a mistrial when he came to testify in the Kamin trial, but there seemed to be fewer of them. He spoke to rows of empty seats in Boston late in October, despite the presence on the platform of such stalwarts as Joseph P. Kennedy, James Michael Curley, and Republican State Chairman Elmer C. Nelson. Even in Wisconsin, according to some reports, McCarthy's popularity has diminished, although letter writers to the Milwaukee Journal still insist: "Every loyal citizen of Wisconsin can feel proud to be represented by this courageous patriot." The fact that the patriot has made a point of championing the Wisconsin dairy farmer against the "open war" on farmers of the Eisenhower Administration perhaps helps to account for some of the favorable sentiment he still arouses in the state.

As for the future, it seems safe to say only that McCarthy's prospects are slightly brighter than they were a year ago, while his position in the country at large and in the Republican Party remains far weaker than it was three years ago. An Eisenhower decision not to seek re-election would remove McCarthy's most formidable antagonist within the G.O.P. and would presumably give the right wing a greater voice in party policy. Yet the right wing has a more stable and respected leader in Senator Knowland, and McCarthy might still find himself well to the outside, still looking in.

There remains the possibility that he could ride back to great influence on a wave of popular discontent, if the cold war turns hot again and the United States becomes involved in new difficulties in Asia. In his protest against the present course of American foreign policy, McCarthy has announced: "I shall go to the people" to warn them against the dangers of an accommodation with communism. "I may be too late, but insofar as my abilities and endurance permit," he promises, "I shall see to it that this country does not die without the people of this country being given a chance to save it." But there are other Cassandras besides McCarthy crying out in the land, and it is likely that Senator Knowland, for one, would be a greater beneficiary of widespread public disillusionment with "the spirit of Geneva." In politics, as in boxing, the heavyweights supposedly never come back. Yet it was an exciting brawl while it lasted. And the men who came not to praise McCarthy, but to bury him, have been wrong before.