Mark Judge ponders what happened to Bill Kristol – and so do I
Here’s the piece on Kristol by Judge. It’s interesting, although Judge doesn’t really come up with an answer to the question.
But I didn’t expect him to. I’ve long pondered what happened to Kristol, and haven’t really come up with an answer either. Yes, the facile answer is “Trump happened,” but to me that’s no answer at all. Why did Trump’s advent on the scene cause previously sane and thoughtful people to go over to the dark side – that is, supporting the left, which is what Kristol now does? It’s also easy to say that he was always shallow and only in it for notoriety or whatever downputting explanation you can devise, but as Judge writes:
I wrote for the Weekly Standard for the first couple years of its existence in the mid-1990s, and in those days Kristol was a serious yet kind man who saw that the threat of political correctness and academic Marxism was real. One of the first pieces I did for him was about the radicalism that had taken over Georgetown University. That radicalism has now metastasized into wokeness, which has destroyed lives and crushed free speech.
On his Twitter feed recently, Kristol posted a video of Ron DeSantis condemning this neo-Marxism. Kristol’s comment? “This is the way the American conservative movement ends—not with a bang but a whimper.”
I have my own experience with Kristol, too. I met him a couple of times, once at a medium-sized gathering where he gave a talk and then there was a dinner where I happened to sit at the same table of around eight people. We have a mutual friend who had known him for decades and thought highly of him, and this person now can’t explain his change either. I wrote a number of articles for the online Weekly Standard (you can find them here at the Washington Examiner, which seems to have taken over the Weekly Standard’s archives) and he was always kind and smart and seemed quite principled. So I am deeply puzzled by his behavior.
Why do I even care? I care because it is a case of political change, which is a special interest of mine, but also because it surprised me that it was such an extreme change after all those years, as well as change of the more rare right-to-left variety. You can say, “Oh, he never was really a conservative because he was a neocon,” but Kristol certainly appeared to hew to conservative principles in most things except foreign policy for most or perhaps all of his life. Was he also one of the world’s best actors? I don’t think so. And he had plenty of fame and I doubt he was ever hurting for money.
Others say that Kristol and others made their change in order to keep on going to the parties with the in-crowd. But that just seems like weak tea to me, if a person seems to be guided by principle in the first place. And his repudiation of the right was far more global than merely a rejection of Trump himself, which would be more understandable. For Kristol, it has involved a fairly full-fledged embrace of the left at a time when the left has become even more pernicious, dangerous, and powerful.
I think Judge comes closest to an answer when he writes this:
Lacking the experience of life change—Kristol inherited punditry from his dad…
I have long thought it’s incorrect to call Kristol a “neocon.” The claim is based on his truculent and interventionist foreign policy stances, but the reason it doesn’t seem quite right to me is that the original definition of the term (and the one I prefer) is someone who had a political change from left to right. Kristol never had that change; as Judge writes, he inherited his politics – and even his profession – from his father Irving Kristol. And his father was a bona fide neocon, a leftist turned conservative who was described by The Daily Telegraph after his death as “perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the [twentieth] century.” Those are big shoes to fill, to say the least. Irving Kristol died in 2009, before Trump became a large political figure, so we don’t know how he would have felt about him. But Bill always stood in his shadow and perhaps never quite freed himself from his influence. Perhaps this recent anti-Trump pro-left position is the son’s adolescent rebellion, long-delayed.
I admit I have no idea if that’s the case or not. But simple Trump-hatred really doesn’t explain how far Kristol has gone.
Another father/son case is the Podhoretz’s.
John Podhoretz is big time NeverTrump but he didn’t seem to give up all his prior positions like Krystol has.
Also the Goldbergs.
Hmmm…might be something there.
Griffin:
Agreed. But the others are not leftists now, unlike Kristol. They haven’t done 180s.
By the way, the late Norman Podhoretz, John’s father, was a Trump supporter.
[Correction: Norman isn’t late, he’s alive, and not even mega-mega-old. He’s 93. That’s what I get for being in a hurry and not looking it up. I think I was probably thinking of Podhoretz’s wife Midge Decter, who died a year ago and whom I wrote about at the time.]
neo,
Yes, Kristol has moved the furthest of those three and John Podhoretz probably the least and of course some of the things that come from the author of ‘Liberal Fascism’ are truly breathtaking.
Jonah Goldberg is by far the most disappointing for me maybe because he is of my generation and I really liked his writing.
Strange days, indeed, quite peculiar.
I would prefer to think of it is as a “perfect is the enemy of the good” issue.
Perhaps with a “but Trump’s such a narcissist; and SO uncouth…” thrown in…for good measure.
Perhaps…
(Otherwise, I’d probably say something that’s been percolating for some time now, but which I’d likely regret…OTOH, da trut’ is da trut’…which is precisely the problem…sigh….)
Meanwhile, all these super-intelligent, caring, concerned, compassionate clowns are no doubt basking in “Biden”s ghastly perfection…saying to themselves how lucky the country is NOT to have Trump as leader—to have dodged that bullet.
Indeed…basking in PERFECT denial….
It appears, for whatever reason, Kristol was always a ‘hawk’ in favor of U.S. involvement in any and all conflicts. Trump’s ‘peace thru strength’ approach seems to have angered him. The question is ~ What is it about ‘war’ that appeals to him?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kristol
correction, they say podhoretz sr is still alive,
I remember one piece of his in 1990 was lamentations, I believe this was before the oslo accords when he felt israel would be ultimately betrayed,
An interesting, hard-hitting interview with the NOT-Kristol—the fearless Tulsi Gabbard with her eyes wide open. (Of course she was burned badly by the very machine, whose “methodology” she knows so well and is not afraid of calling out.)
“Tulsi Gabbard warns RFK Jr. that Democratic Party will use ‘baseless lies’ and smears against him”—
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tulsi-gabbard-warns-rfk-jr-democratic-party-use-baseless-lies-smears-against
somewhere along the line, kristol forgot war was the last option not the first, then he doubled down during the so called Arab Spring, that took the lead anti islamist
allies off the board, Egypt Tunisia and Libya,
Long indeed is the list of such ghastly pseudo-conservatives (most of whom are shamelessly eager for fame and profit on CNN and MSNBC), including J Rubin and Max Boot (perhaps the two most egregious of all), as well as Charlie Sykes, Mona Charen, David French and, most recently, Alyssa Farah Griffin.
one might think his complaint is more about this country today,
https://www.commentary.org/articles/norman-podhoretz/israel-a-lamentation-from-the-future/
Neo ! Norman Podhoretz is alive and kicking (maybe not kicking – but alive).
Norman’s spouse (John’s mother) Midge Decter passed away in 2022.
John – although a neocon – is positioned to the left of his pop – but both father and son are Republicans.
Even more extraordinary than the fact that Irving Kristol was Bill’s father, is that Gertrude Himmelfarb, who wrote a lot of brilliant books, was his mother.
Of all the never-Trumpers, this is the one that has most completely bewildered me. (Although Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter as John’s parents are a total puzzlement, too, if I try to figure out John.)
Four brilliant parents. And both sons are talented, so it isn’t the turning-away of mediocre kids as sometimes happens.
Quo Vadis??
Brilliant, as in “four brilliant parents”, does not equal four good parents. Parenting requires time and devotion to duty, and the brilliant ones often end up as lousy parents. Lousy parents leave warped children to find their own ways. See Bill Kristol.
Rockefeller Republicrats have always been snobby. People like Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan or Trump have never been their kind.
Cicero, how true. I was thinking more in terms of intellectual depth. Brilliant parents often produce addicts, losers, etc. as children, but both John Podhoretz and Bill Kristol wrote quite intelligently before turning into something entirely different. That’s what I was referring to.
It’s the change they both underwent from their parents’ erudition and powerful ideas to which I am calling attention, not the sons’ lived lives.
They once followed their parents brilliance. I’m trying to understand how one can see the truth so clearly and then turn away and be stupid. Yes, it happens. I just wonder why in these two cases.
Bill Kristol is the one that puzzles me the most, because of the breadth of his apostasy.
take alyssa farah, i didn’t realize that her father was joe farah, who was tormented into an aneurism by mueller’s henchmen, I wouldn’t have known that except for paul sperry,
I read commentary as much as national review in my college days and one strikes how unrecognizable the former is now,
truly look what chris buckley (david burge had a nice riff about him) did to his parents reputation when they couldn’t defend themselves,
Arrogance and self importance. That explains Kristol’s behavior since Trump. Same with George Will. They have not suddenly become leftists. But they (correctly) understand Trump’s GOP (or DeSantis’s) has no place for them. Their influence among conservatives outside the Beltway is zero. No one cares about anything they say or think. No one.
Were they humble, they would simply ride off into the sunset. At 71 and 82, they certainly could. But no! Their arrogance and self importance will not permit it. Their irrational, ridiculously absurd goal: destroy Trump, crush all of his supporters, smash any populist element in the GOP and…somehow….whatever is left will restore them to the prominence they absolutely deserve.
Barring that…burn it all down in petty vengeance. At least they have a tiny amount of relevance among the left, as token conservatives parroting leftist talking points so a few delusional NYTimes readers can convince themselves their lefty opinions are ‘bipartisan’
When The Weekly Standard folded- when conservatives stopped buying Kristol’s and his like-minded “conservatives” BS- they were forced to find another paycheck. Kristol, Goldberg, and French decided whoring themselves to big money Leftists was worth it. In short, they never had any principles that couldn’t be bought.
I will plug for Judge- I regularly read his essays on The Stream. A variety of topics covered and always interesting.
JackWayne on June 8, 2023 at 5:39 pm said:
Rockefeller Republicrats have always been snobby. People like Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan or Trump have never been their kind.
This may be a big part of the answer.
the problem is kristol front paged the steel dossier, in fact helped finance the early iterations, poo pooed the nunes critique which ended all too correct
I remember it was about 93, when the times magazine, had a front pager on young conservative thinkers and writers, only laura ingraham, in the trademark leopard skirt has remained sane from that crew, david brock was among the worst,
It would be unfortunate if Kristol was, indeed, restricted in his life choices by his father’s place, obvious place, in the world.
It’s one thing to absorb a father’s view of…say…honor. But it’s done by observing. It’s one thing to pick up how to treat women….ditto.
But to find your place only in being your father is unfortunate.
Still, the personal issue, possibly tragedy, aside, why is Kristol important? Nobody who isn’t already a believer in whatever line he’s pushing bothers.
including J Rubin
She has always been nuts, even when she was writing for PJ Media and I wondered why. I didn’t find her “switch” surprising, it was almost expected. Nor did I care, not my problem. “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg was the big surprise for me. In defense of those conservatives, Trump isn’t particularly conservative and certainly has his share of personal defects and executive failings. OTOH, he wasn’t Hillary and he certainly stirred the pot and exposed the utter corruption of the DOJ, the FBI, the State Department, and various assorted government agencies. Whether bringing things to open conflict was good or bad will depend on who wins the long war we are now engaged in.
The theory of the “Shadow” self (see Jung, Freud, et. al) may be useful in explaining and understanding Kristol and his ilk.
Kristol saw the handwriting on the wall and assessed that conservatism has become mostly MAGA (populist) for the foreseeable future. He and other heretofore conservatives (the Bush, Romney, Ryan, etc faction) have been anti populist all along, but some of them hope for a RINO resurgence.
Biden and Obama before him are anti populist Democrats, as are most Democrat elites. Populist Democrats are mostly too emotionally invested in irrational MAGA hatred to realize their party leadership is against them. Anti populism will likely maintain a stranglehold on the Democrat party for years to come.
Hence Kristol’s seeming 180 to embrace Democrat anti populism.
well nihilism is the sine qua non, of prog politics,
I think the people arguing for snobbery and anti-populism above are on the right track, though I think “snobbery” is too strong a word. But these guys are all well-off extremely urban types, all NYC I think. And I don’t think they’ve ever been comfortable with or even in touch with the crude conservative masses out here in the provinces. Trump, and even more his rallies, were an eruption of the raw middle-class American id, and sophisticated people were horrified, somewhat independently of their politics. And some of those were on the right, at least where fairly abstract questions like support for capitalism, defense, etc. were concerned.
These had always been very distant from the masses, and tended to keep social conservatives at arm’s length. I was very much struck, quite a few years ago, by a Jonah Goldberg column in which he described driving across the country. There was a scene where he was pulled over by a cop in some place like North Dakota, and it reminded me very much of the scene in Annie Hall where the Woody Allen character goes to visit the family of his midwestern WASP family.
I should add that I’ve read almost nothing by any of these people since Trump happened and in most cases am not sure exactly how far they’ve gone in their flight from Trumpism and the Trumpist rubes. Max Boot, I know, is just on the left, period, now, as is, I gather, Jennifer Rubin. They come to my attention because they’re so egregious.
I think I’d chalk it up to playing a role but not actually having strong convictions. I think that politics is a great deal closer to show business than a lot of us think, and there’s a lot of people, elected officials, pundits, who are playing roles.
I never met any of those people, but Jennifer Rubin made an abrupt 180 into conservatism and then made an abrupt 180 out of it. She went to Berkeley and was a labor lawyer in Hollywood for 20 years before becoming a conservative pundit. She does not appear to have been a Republican before 2005:
Steve Hulett, who says he knew Rubin well from 2000 to 2005 when he was president of the Animation Guild, a labor union representing animation and visual effects artists, says her politics were those of a mainstream California Democrat right through the 2004 election. “She talked like a straight-ahead Hollywood liberal,” Hulett told Media Matters. “We used to chew the fat all the time in her office and over at lunch at Café del Sol near Dreamworks. She supported Kerry in 2004 and worked closely with [Jeffrey] Katzenberg, who is a big time Democratic donor. I didn’t know what to think when she moved east and started blogging like mad as a conservative. I don’t know if it’s a marketing pose, or if she really believes it, or what. But it is odd.”
Stipulating populism as a major RINO and Dem elite aversion, why do they hate it (and the working class) so much? The Bushes give an impression of patronizing snobbishness and drastic misperceptions of working people. Obama’s straw men clearly exhibited that syndrome.
“why do they hate it (and the working class) so much?”
The thing I’m arguing for isn’t hate. More a matter of cultural disdain for tacky people waving American flags and starting sentences with “God told me…”
And let me make clear that I don’t think this is an all-inclusive explanation, just that it’s a significant factor. I can think of a couple of more-or-less Republican people whom I know personally who just had a gut-level disgust for Trump that had nothing specifically to do with his policies.
It only makes sense to me if I accept that these people are managing the product, and that product is their public personae. It is a fungible good, with a brand value that has to be maintained. The market base is built and expanded just like any other commodity, and when tough times hit, you have to change the marketing strategies. Adapt or die.
When one considers the whole cottage industry that follows behind these talking heads, after their news & opinion network gigs – the book signings, the lectures, the package cruises, etc etc – you can see how a living can be eked out.
Trump’s just announced his indictment, by the way.
I wrote an addendum here noting that Norman Podhoretz is still very much alive.
Banned Lizard:
The others are mostly anti-Trump but not full leftist. To me, Kristol appears to have gone full leftist.
What happened? It’s simple; the RINO “Republicans” never WANTED to win. They wanted to be the “loyal opposition” who TALKED a good game, but never got into the drivers’ seats. Cruise Ship Boy Kristol most of all; he had a magnificent grift of selling cruises where he’d give a couple of lectures, strut around the Lido Deck, and gather his applause. He never had to DELIVER.
Then comes Trump, ready to upset his apple cart and force “conservatives” to make some actual CHOICES, choices that would force all right-thinking liberals to exile them from the salons and cocktail parties. No more Washington dinners? No more invitations to the parties of the powerful people? Horror!!!
A _LOT_ of the RINO-class revealed themselves about that time. The Shrubs. Tom Nichols. The entire editorial staff of the National Review, Reed Galen, and the other pedophiles at the Lincoln Project; all of the “NeverTrump” people.
NONE of them actually wanted to win elections as Conservatives. They WANTED to lose, to keep their dinner invitations. Trump’s GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT was to force all the RINOs to display their true colors.
@Ken Mitchell: choices that would force all right-thinking liberals to exile them from the salons and cocktail parties.
It’s not really the cocktail parties. It’s that these choices might have involved connected players not getting their share of appropriated tax dollars. Those players have long-standing connections to both parties.
That’s why the rhetoric about Trump got so unhinged so quickly. It’s not that they really thought he’d start a nuclear war with North Korea (remember that lol). It’s that they knew he was really an outsider who didn’t know how things worked in Washington D. C. and he threatened their carefully developed theatrical cronyism, either by exposing it or actually disrupting it.
Kristol, George Will, Goldberg et al are intellectuals. Trump is not an intellectual, he’s a brawler not a boxer. His beliefs and the thinking that extend from his beliefs are based in what resonates with his gut. Trump is a crude man with a veneer of sophistication. Such men deeply offend the egos of intellectually arrogant people.
It is a relatively rare intellectual who shares Thomas Jefferson’s view of the common man; “men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties.
1. those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them cherish and consider them as the most honest & safe, altho’ not the most wise depository of the public interests.
in every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.”.
Geoffrey Britain:
None of that explains Kristol’s hard left move, just his NeverTrumpism.
It’s the Planet of the Apes. We’re not nearly as rational as most people, particularly conservatives in my experience, like to believe.
Trump deeply threatened the worlds of most Democrats and some Republicans. They reacted emotionally to the threat, i.e. not rationally.
I too am surprised Kristol went as far as he did. But that happens with irrational responses.
Certainly a father angle can add shrapnel to an irrational response. Christopher Buckley’s public declaration to vote for Obama struck me that way. And that declaration has not aged well:
______________________________
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.
–Christopher Buckley, “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sorry-dad-im-voting-for-obama
These people are professionals. Much like sports figures, they play for a team. There was a pitcher for the Blue Jays in the 90’s that admitted he didn’t like baseball all that much. It’s a job, and most do their best. But if they get traded, or in free agency, get opportunities to make more money, they play for the opposing team (the dreaded enemy).
What made Trump such a unique political figure was how he made his money. Unlike the moneyed elite, he made it in real estate– not Wall St. He was willing to upset the money train by insisting on fair trade and reduced immigration. Most of our moneyed betters are willing to tolerate the quaint, old-fashioned morality of the right. But in exchange, we’ve gone along with the free trade/globalism and US military enforcement that leaves Wall St. the preferred piggy bank.
I agree with huxley. Trump and the the events leading up to his election demolished Kristol’s worldview. Kristol can’t understand the popularity of Trump (and the feelings of the people Trump represents) and rather than trying to figure out why he is so out of touch, he has decided to throw a tantrum. Or maybe I shouldn’t say he has decided to throw a tantrum as his feelings are overwhelming his capacity for reason.
I think it might be just pure cowardice. For years they could be profound under the protection of a mighty military and an undivided nation. We no longer have that and I believe that like rats they are looking for the easiest way off the sinking ship!
Or, then again, it could just be that the Republican party is so out of touch with what has been happening for the last 50 years that it makes no sense to support them without question anymore. Millions in this country are looking for a third party!
Class is exceptionally important to these people. What strikes me is how wrong they are to pigeon hole him as their antithesis, and thus the enemy.
Trump’s origins in Queens are very middle class. By this I mean his home and neighborhood. His father was no country club social climber, either. Only his private military high school would obviously indicate “elite” – but it is not a marker that has aged well, nor does it indicate anything elevated in class anymore to our time.
Geoffrey Britain is definitely correct in declaring that “he’s no intellectual, more of a brawler than a boxer.” But a witty and direct brawler.
Britain continues “Trump is a crude man with a veneer of sophistication.”
Yes, Trump is a crude man. Sad that — this is rhe controlled media’s narrative.
Yet among people I’ve known or who my friends know, who’ve spent significant chunks of time with Trump during his Presidency and written about it — namely, Steven Moore, K T MacFarlane, Scott Atlas, and Patrick Byrnes — none have declared him to be a “crude” man.
Moore has declared Trump the least guileful leader he’s ever met. What you see at his rally’s is the same persona we see at West Wing, White House meetings.
I think the confusion is rooted in his directness. Unfiltered bluntness at times.
Apart from his delight in tweaking the pretentions of the powerful, which his fans delight in seeing — there’s another Truth about Trump not heard, but made by Kash Patel.
Patel worked as an DOJ counter-terrorism agent with the FBI. Congressman Devin Nunes recruited him to do research on Russiagate, which became Spygate, ObamaGate. And finally Patel was recruited by Trump to spearhead improving hiring for a future second term as President.
I think Patel was asked on Sebastian Gorka’s show (or else it was the Will Caine podcast?), in the past two months, how do you explain his difficulty in firing a bad hire? Why does it take him so long to rid his administration of say, Jeff Sessions as AG?
HERE IS THE SHOCKER: Patel explains that Trump hates firing people. This is why
he sometimes fired people via Twitter.
WHAT SUPREME IRONY. The man who made his reality show tagline “You’re Fired!” in fact, hates to do the firing. He’s that soft inside.
I think Patel’s insight into Trump serves to narrow down, if not wither, the Trump stereotype as “crude.”
Blunt? yes. Plainspoken? true. Direct? Also. But if also crude, he’s also soft and hates to fire anyone.
One final thought. Trump is a more complex man than he’s made out to be.
So, based on your definition of Neocon, that would make Krystol a Neolib right?
I think it’s called regression to the mean.
There was a great interview of Norman Podhoretz a couple of years ago in which he spoke eloquently in support of Trump. I think this link might work.
An even more extreme case is Jen Rubin, who seems to have gone from conservative Republican to liberal Democrat, even attacking DeSantis. I say “seems to” because I doubt she was ever genuinely conservative.
I suspect if you carefully cross-examined the NeverTrump residue, you’ll discover common vanity is a motor for all but a few. They made a mess of predictions and categorical judgments which have been discredited by events. Instead of examining their priors and admitting mistakes, they double down. Another affront to their vanity is that many of these people thought of themselves as those who influenced public opinion and discovered that Republican voters ignored them completely and the Republican politicians most likely to second their opinions were either retiring or were Capitol Hill / K Street corruptocrats doing so only sotto voce.
==
There are business reasons for their conduct in many cases. You see three aspects of that: the common grifters who make up the Lincoln Project; Jennifer Rubin, who went from hired-gun entertainment lawyer to hired-gun purveyor of opinion journalism when her husband relocated from Los Angeles to Washington; and Charles J. Sykes, who has to make a living and couldn’t do so in Wisconsin anymore consequent to the economic collapse of local talk radio in 2014-15. A generation ago, the tech industry was libertarianish if it had any political perspective at all and the business sectors in general tended to regard politicians as fungible. Not so, today. There’s patronage to be had from tech barons and others, and it doesn’t come from promoting conventionally Republican perspectives. Patrons on our side are few and are often advocates of open borders. Ross Douthat and Megan McArdle are salaried employees of organizations much more partisan than they were forty years ago.
==
One thing not mentioned often is that deficient corporate governance allowed a select few running starboard nonprofits to live lush lives. Their consumption patterns were dependent on keeping the patronage flowing. The IRS 990 forms demonstrate a number of people in gatekeeper positions were taking home pay packets which were not a consequence of arms length transactions. John Podhoretz, Richard Lowry, Kevin Williamson, Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Matt Kibbe were all paid absurd-to-obscene salaries in some years. (Arthur Brooks was also paid an inflated salary, but there was some justification for it). I doubt many people enjoyed this life, but a few occupying the most consequential positions did.
==
A different aspect of this has been the material insulation some of this set has enjoyed. Mona Charen’s husband is a BigLaw attorney. Their home in Northern Virginia is readily identified. For the married couple interested in purchasing their home, you’d be well-advised to take a pass unless you have $200,000 in cash on hand and the primary earner in your marriage brings in an excess of $22,000 a month after taxes. David Frum’s late father was a centimillionaire (in real estate, IIRC). The piece of real estate owned by Jonah Goldberg and his wife suggests the two have a considerable private income derived from the the previous generation. They aren’t socializing with the same sort of people you are.
==
And this last is key. NeverTrump is not a street-level phenomenon. It’s a Capitol Hill / K Street / Media phenomenon. These people talk to each other. They don’t know you.
A simple theory:
Fusionism on the right is/was an alliance. Everybody worked for everyone’s issues (or at least pretended to do so), but I doubt that there ever truly were many examples of a so-called “full spectrum conservative.” I think most conservatives have a set of issues that are most important to them, and others that they could support as part of a coalition.
Maybe Kristol’s issue was a muscular foreign policy and foreign interventionism. Trump did break the consensus for this issue in the GOP. At the same time, the left took it up. Obama’s administration wasn’t as much the repudiation of GW Bush’s foreign policy as it was simply the inept continuation of it. The only Ukraine skeptics now are on the right, not the left. Anyway, as Kristol’s most important beliefs began to shift from right to center-left, it was no longer necessary for him to support the other two legs of the stool.
(Also, the personal cost of changing was likely minor as the circles he ran in became almost exclusively never-Trump.)
In a recent editorial comment, John Podhoretz says that the New York jury’s verdict proves that “something happened” between Trump and E. Jean Carroll. Poor judgment on his part. Whatever Trump is capable of, it’s clear that Carroll is capable of deceiving others and herself, and it’s now clear that a Manhattan jury will always believe the worst about Trump.
Kristol had his magazine yanked out from under him by the publisher. He was already anti-Trump, and that may have pushed him further. Bill Kristol is indeed an “intellectual.” His parents were certainly intellectuals. He has the academic credentials. He makes his living putting words together. But I suspect he picked up the “attack dog” mentality of polemicist. He needs an enemy, and Trump seemed to be the greater threat to his own personal world, to his position and pretentions.
Is it true that Kristol was “never really a conservative”? That’s an assessment one can make from the outside based on his current behavior, but it doesn’t take into account the changes “conservatism” has gone through. It also doesn’t begin to get at what his own state of mind may have been.
You can make a better case that David Brooks was never really a conservative. He was taken up by Bill Buckley and built his career on that start. National Review proteges turning left is common by phenomenon now. In an earlier era, it was homeless Humphrey Democrats (like Michael Lind, who’s zigged right, then left, now perhaps right again). Now it’s more mercenary and careerist. Kristol, though, was more seriously conservative than Brooks. I notice, though, that he always needed some kind of flourish to distinguish himself from run of the mill conservatives. “National Greatness Conservatism” was his brand in the Nineties.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.
Young Buckley’s view of Obama is a lot like the general view of Biden in 2020. Whether he was right or wrong about Obama, the general view of Biden was definitely wrong. So was Buckley’s belief that voters wouldn’t let a Democrat president get away with going hard left. It just demanded the right circumstances, as we are seeing now. Also wrong: Buckley’s notion that Obama wouldn’t grant favors to special interests and couldn’t get away with trading favors with big corporations. His notion that the Democrat left is big on tariff walls looks quaint now.
The never Trumpers took serious flak from conservatives. Many of them clearly got their feelings hurt. They took it personally. It made them irrational.
We see the irrationality in most of what they write. The harder they tried to justify their Trump hatred, the more they exposed their lack of logic. Podhoretz’s silly embrace of the NY court travesty is a good example. It’s stupid. But he wants to believe so badly, he doesn’t think.
French went full on crazy. I admit that I almost never read of any of these people anymore.
I understandt how someone could oppose Trump in the 2016 primary. I did. But anyone who saw Hillary as better on policy or character was on drugs. And every time they wrote about it, they confirmed their “thinking” was wacked.
Once Trump was in office, we got to see whether any of these folks were capable of looking at evidence and updating their evaluations. A lot of people did. But only a few of these pundits did. Why is that? The pundits are supposed to be the thinkers, but they very clearly demonstrated that they weren’t interested in thinking. They were only interested in doubling, tripling down on every stupid thing they wrote in 2016. It got disturbing. It’s still disturbing.
They made a lot of people mad. Their opposition was seen, rightfully so, as backstabbing the right and their previous principles. They didn’t like the pushback. They dug in their heels. It got personal. Logic and rationality, absent from the beginning of the campaign, were consigned to irrelevance permanently. It’s just about the mad now.
Kristol? He seems a bit like J Rubin. The enemy of the enemy and all that. Trump is his white whale — the ultimate enemy. So Democrats are his friends now. It’s not rational. It’s just petty and childish opposition. He’s hurt and he’s giving the finger to everyone who got mad at him about Trump.
@stan:But anyone who saw Hillary as better on policy or character was on drugs. And every time they wrote about it, they confirmed their “thinking” was wacked.
I don’t think their thinking, their REAL thinking, was wacked. It was that they couldn’t say what their not-wacked thinking was, without giving the grift away.
The real thinking was that Hillary was an insider and was going to continue to drop slop in the trough for the hogs, and that Trump was an outsider and no one knew what he was going to do. Big business hates uncertainty and prefers bad certainty to uncertainty.
And why should conservative pundits care about that? People don’t throw money at solved problems. There are conservative pundits who really believe in their principles and put that ahead of how they make a living. (I’d put Mark Steyn in this category.) But the less committed ones aren’t going to want to eliminate the status quo in Washington anymore than activists for the homeless really want homelessness solved, or the SPLC really wants racism and anti-Semitism solved, and the March of Dimes didn’t close down when polio disappeared.
Because conservative punditry is not a “product” sold to “consumers”. It’s either done by amateurs like our gracious hostess, or it’s funded by non-profits and corporations, and given away to “consumers”. A world in which people like Trump get elected is not a world that listens to conservative punditry and so non-profits and corporations are going to put their money elsewhere to achieve their goals.
So the less-principled pundits first tried to destroy Trump, then when that didn’t work, just went over to the side willing to throw them money.
Kristol has led a charmed life. His father’s connections got him work for Moynihan, and his father’s fame got him jobs in Reagan’s and then Bush’s administration. From there it’s been think tanks, advocacy groups, and the magazine. Trump’s election and the loss of the magazine must have been bitter blows to him.
“Delayed adolescent rebellion”? Perhaps. How much it’s a rebellion specifically against his father and how much it’s a delayed adolescent kicking over the traces, a 70-year-old’s Rumspringa, I don’t know. Trump’s been accused of wanting to “burn it all down,” but some anti-Trumpers (the Lincoln Project, for example) also have that mentality.
Young Buckley’s view of Obama is a lot like the general view of Biden in 2020. Whether he was right or wrong about Obama, the general view of Biden was definitely wrong.
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Christopher Buckley was 56 years old in 2008. He hasn’t been young in a while.
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WFB hired Richard Brookiser in 1977 with the idea in his head that Brookhiser might be just the person to pass the magazine on to when he was ready to retire. He’d already decided when CB was 25 years old that his son would never be suitable to the task. (He evidently found no one among his 40 odd shirtails he thought it suitable to recruit, either). Eleven years later, he told Brookhiser that the editor’s chair would not be his and he turned it over to John O’Sullivan two years later. He ejected O’Sullivan in 1997 and replaced him with Richard Lowry, who was always inadequate.
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I once attempted to assemble a bibliography of Christopher Buckley’s writing. Just using Reader’s Guide, I found about 300 indexed articles over the period running from 1975 to 2010. Like his books, his magazine articles consisted of humor and travel writing. He placed a couple of articles in The Weekly Standard shortly after it began publication; otherwise, the only organ of the starboard press in which he ever published was his father’s. His contributions tended to be found in the back of the magazine – book reviews, diary entries, and the like. Humor, travel, belles-lettres &c. were his subjects. He’s produced very little topical commentary. He’s had one or two stints working in the White House for Republican officials in the PR apparat writing speeches. To the extent he ever had a political perspective, it was an identification with the pre-Reagan Republican establishment. He’s atypical in a glaring respect: he got his politics and religion not from his father but from his mother. The curious thing about that is that he didn’t much care for his mother.
Kristol has led a charmed life. His father’s connections got him work for Moynihan, and his father’s fame got him jobs in Reagan’s and then Bush’s administration. From there it’s been think tanks, advocacy groups, and the magazine. Trump’s election and the loss of the magazine must have been bitter blows to him.
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Kristol has a research degree and had the chops for an academic career. He completed his dissertation at a time when history faculties were still willing to hire non-liberals. He could have done other things with his life than what he did.
In re Christopher Buckley’s gush, there’s no indication Obama ever had a first class temperament or a first class intellect.
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(There is no such thing as a 1st class temperament. Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon had first class intellects, and we all had to suck it up).
And why should conservative pundits care about that? People don’t throw money at solved problems.
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Pundits may be in danger of being out of work, but it will never be due to ‘solved problems’ unless they only right about one thing.
How does a child born to people of frequently true brilliance manage to thrive, when they themselves are ordinary?
Back in 2016, when Trump was emerging as a serious candidate, Jonah Goldberg recounted some of the warring back and forth he had done with Trump over the years. He concluded by saying that he would never vote for Donald Trump. I think at the time Goldberg did not believe Trump could win the nomination, much less the presidency.
I’d be interested in Mike Judge commenting on Billy Crystal.
brought buckley fils up, because he embodied that serpents tooth aphorism, as well as willing to incur the wrath of his formerboss, and father in law, donald gregg, who was a company man, like his father,