66
Opinion of the Court
ter of logic, to argue that if Rule 52(b) were implicitly made inapplicable to Rule 11 errors, a defendant who failed to object to Rule 11 errors would have no right of review on direct appeal whatever. A defendant's right to review of error he let pass in silence depends upon the plain-error rule; no plain-error rule, no direct review. Vonn has, then, merely selected one possible interpretation of the supposedly intentional omission of a Rule 52(b) counterpart, even though logic would equally allow another one, not to Vonn's liking.
B
Recognition of the equivocal character of any claimed implication of speaking solely in terms of harmless error forces Vonn to look beyond the text in hope of finding confirmation for his reading as opposed to the one less hospitable to silent defendants. And this effort leads him to claim support in McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459 (1969), and the developments in the wake of that case culminating in the enactment of Rule 11(h). This approach, at least, gets us on the right track, for the one clearly expressed objective of Rule 11(h) was to end the practice, then commonly followed, of reversing automatically for any Rule 11 error, and that practice stemmed from an expansive reading of McCarthy. What that case did, and did not, hold is therefore significant.
When McCarthy was decided, Rule 11 was relatively primitive, requiring without much detail that the trial court personally address a defendant proposing to plead guilty and establish on the record that he was acting voluntarily, with an understanding of the charge and upon a factual basis supporting conviction. Id., at 462.7 When McCarthy stood be-7 Prior to its amendment in 1975, Rule 11 provided, in relevant part: "The court may refuse to accept a plea of guilty, and shall not accept such plea or a plea of nolo contendere without first addressing the defendant personally and determining that the plea is made voluntarily with understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea. . . . The court shall not enter a judgment upon a plea of guilty unless it is satisfied that there is a factual basis for the plea."
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