As we rapidly tumble toward the 2024 election, I thought it might be best to frame the presidential choice in terms of two figures who did not live to see the 21st century but who are key to understanding Donald Trump’s approach to life, and Kamala Harris’ approach to democracy. They respectively are the malicious lawyer Roy Cohn, and the anti-blacklisting hero John Henry Faulk.

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In a moment of dissatisfaction with his first Attorney General, Donald Trump reportedly cried out “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Cohn was Trump’s mentor, fixer and legal mouthpiece in the 1970s and 1980s, but Cohn first came to public attention as the chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy, the demagogue who prompted the Red Scare and blacklisting.

Cohn, who ruined the lives of people by threatening to reveal their homosexuality, died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, shortly after being disbarred for attempting to defraud a dying client.

John Henry Faulk led a very different, more noble and more courageous, life. Faulk was a Texas storyteller with a knack for accents, character voices, and homespun messages. After leaving the Army in 1946, he began a successful radio show at WCBS. In 1955, he and Charles Collingwood and Orson Bean won leadership roles in the union American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Their approach was simple, concentrate on jobs and security; drop cooperation with AWARE, a for-profit group selling to advertisers and networks “clearance” of people. The effect could be job-destroying information about real or believed communist sympathies.

AWARE’s reprisal was to blacklist Faulk. He had the courage to sue the group, learning that one of his “communist” activities was attending a dinner at the Astor Hotel in 1946 with a prominent communist. It turns out the dinner was a one-year birthday party for the United Nations Security Council, and the prominent communist was the Soviet Representative. The other claims were just as flawed or outright false. The harrowing details of the blacklisting can be found in the book Fear on Trial. The book climaxes when the jury returns, and asks the judge if it can award more than the million dollars Faulk requested.

The trial was stalled for five years by AWARE lawyers, including Roy Cohn. The large jury verdict was reduced on appeal, and by other costs. Faulk spent much of the rest of his life as a roving ambassador and guest speaker for freedom and civil liberties. I met him briefly during this period and was astounded by his joy and energy, and our mutual respect for Faulk is how columnist Molly Ivins and I became friends. Faulk died in his hometown of Austin in 1990.

Stephen Whitfield, an American Studies professor at Brandeis University, made clear the Trump-Cohn-McCarthy triumvirate. He wrote, “The two most notorious demagogues in recent American political history (1945–2019) are linked through the unscrupulous lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who worked for them both. His career suggests an entree into a biographical effort to compare Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and President Donald J. Trump, both of whom demonstrated an aptitude for arousing popular fears and animosities and for sowing discord and divisiveness. Both were mendacious.” Whitfield added that Trump, unlike McCarthy, added a toxic mix of bigotry and nativism.

Now, I admit the connection between Kamala Harris and John Henry Faulk is more tenuous, but can be found in the joy, humor, and freedom themes Harris is bringing to the current campaign. It fits well the closing lines from the late Molly Ivins in a column she wrote about Faulk. She implored, “So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”