First, a disclaimer: I don’t have the definitive answer. Second: why would I care? I guess it’s because I’m interested in what makes people tick, and especially interested in political change. Most such change goes from left to right. But someone like Kristol – who was thought to be a leading conservative thinker for many years, and who much later in life changed from supposedly right to effectively left – is of some interest.
What made me think of him today was this Instapundit post mentioning that Kristol has come out for Mamdani, and asking, “Did @BillKristol ever believe anything he said he did for decades?” My answer: it depends on what you mean by the word believe.”
Let me add that I was slightly acquainted with Kristol, having met him perhaps twice – one time of which involved sitting very near him at a table of about eight people, for a dinner after a talk he gave. I also wrote for the online Weekly Standard for some years, and would submit articles to him (the articles still exist, with format somewhat strained, at this URL at the Washington Examiner, in case you’re interested in ancient history). My observation is that he certainly appeared to believe what he was saying, although his personality wasn’t what you’d call intense.
Kristol was a Harvard guy, however, who moved in those circles for quite a while. And he was what you might call a legacy conservative. His father was a leading neoconservative (that is, a left-to-right changer) and his mother Gertrude Himmelfarb was a conservative academic historian and author. Bill Kristol’s Wiki page (at the top of which you can find the unintentionally humorous “Not to be confused with Billy Crystal”) notes his career and then his NeverTrumper credentials. But it’s one thing to not like Trump; it’s another to be okay with Mamdani.
Quite a journey. The easiest explanation – money – doesn’t quite do it for me. My guess is that the legacy aspect of Kristol’s conservatism made it perhaps rather shallow, and if you look at his history he was a fan of McCain, for example, and was the kind of neocon who advocated for military interventions. So he was more of a Republican than a conservative.
Trump offended him in some essential and deep way. But why the swing to the left? It was not his children, as far as I can tell. His son works for Tom Cotton and his daughter is married to Matthew Continetti, who is a Trump supporter (at least, according to recent articles he wrote such as this one). I wonder how Thanksgiving goes in their family? Haven’t seen much information about his wife’s politics, so I can’t speak to that.
Kristol’s father died in 2009, before Kristol’s political change. But his mother lived to be 97, dying in 2019. Is that a clue? Did his full political conversion only happen when his mother was deceased? One telling fact may be that, although Kristol hated Trump from the very start, he didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton but did vote for Biden and then Harris; both votes occurred after the death of his mother. Did that death enable him to cut the final cord with his parents’ viewpoints? He also no longer calls himself a Republican. And although he’s continued to support Israel, as far as I can tell, I see no evidence that he’s religious.
Here’s the fuller text of his explanation for supporting Mamdani; he said it in an interview. His reasoning doesn’t make all that much sense and is extraordinarily shallow as well as pretty meaningless, since Kristol lives in Virginia and can’t vote in the mayoral election at all. But here’s an excerpt:
… Abigail Spanberger, who I think will win in November, is really excellent. It might be Sherrill, actually, in New Jersey, excellent. And so, part of my core praise for Mamdani has been that, you know what, if we elect three Democrats who win in November—the three big races, really—and it’s Spanberger or Sherrill and Mamdani? That’s okay. …
… [T]he idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn’t have even ranked Mamdani and would’ve had other people who were more centrist, liberal types.
It was very disappointing. All these big shot, you know, finance types in New York, they couldn’t get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It’s really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they’re rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don’t have that much sympathy for that.
And I also just think, practically speaking, New York is a huge city. He’s not going to destroy it, I don’t think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores, I guess. I don’t think he even will do that [inaudible]. And so they’ll be fine. So there’ll be some grocery store somewhere and it won’t be as good as the privately run ones, and it will go out of business in three years and it’ll be a little bit of a waste of taxpayer money, you know? Or it’ll be harmless, you know? And so people—I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He’s a very impressive politician. I don’t know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He’s 33 years old, he’s never run anything. They’re good people who could work for him though, in New York.
Huh? So, whatever.
