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D I S P A T C H E S The Weekly
Quick! Name the magazine that labeled Pat Buchanan a “Blame America First radical” but also demanded President Clinton’s impeachment. Which newsweekly praised Ronald Reagan as ‘the most consequential president since Franklin Roosevelt,” while lambasting the Republicans in Congress as “vacuous?” If you live within the Beltway (or have the reading habits of a political insider), chances are you recognize the iconoclastic views of The Weekly Standard, a Washington, D.C.-based political magazine that, when launched in 1995, was widely expected to act as defender of the faith for the Republican Party. After all, the magazine was the brainchild of three men with impeccable Republican credentials: William Kristol, a political strategist and chief of staff for former Vice President Dan Quayle; John Podhoretz, editorial page editor of the New York Post and former Reagan speech writer; and Fred Barnes, conservative columnist from The New Republic and a former regular on The McLaughlin Group. In its premier issue, the editors vowed to ’speak for, interpret and guide this conservative realignment.” But some Republican leaders have been disappointed with the Standard. “I think people really thought when we started the magazine that we were going to apologize for and defend Republicans,” says executive editor Fred Barnes in a recent interview at the Standard’s office on the fifth floor of the conservative American Enterprise Institute in downtown Washington. “But to the anger of Newt Gingrich and consternation of Trent Lott, we didn’t turn out to be that.” Associate editor David Skinner agrees: “We are often reviled by people on both sides of the political spectrum.” Indeed, after it printed an editorial saying the Republican Party would be better off without Pat Buchanan, Buchanan, speaking on the Today show, dismissed The Weekly Standard as "that little dinky magazine that’s been subsidized by Rupert Murdoch that pretends to be conservative." Bob Dole lashed out after Kristol criticized Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “Who is Bill Kristol,” Dole grumbled on Face the Nation. “What has he done? I don’t look upon him as anybody who understands politics.” Make no mistake — despite Republican criticisms, The Weekly Standard is a conservative magazine. After Bill Clinton admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the editors wrote that if he did not resign, he should be impeached and convicted. “Either way, Clinton must go,” they demanded. The Standard called the House Republicans’ successful effort to impeach Clinton ‘their finest hour.” Schisms within The Weekly Standard itself started developing during the race for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Kristol and senior editor David Brooks endorsed Arizona Sen. John McCain’s campaign as a “political phenomenon with a potential appeal to the country as a whole.” Barnes supported George W. Bush. “There was some disagreement on that,” Barnes says, labeling Kristol’s and Brooks’ endorsement of McCain “a massive and total failure.” Reporter Jonathan Last dismisses the idea of long-term divisions at the Standard. “There have been disagreements, but it’s always collegial because everybody’s smart,” Last said. “Smart people can argue in an informed, analytical way.” The Weekly Standard was founded after the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. “It was clear we were in a conservative era, and yet there was not a weekly magazine on policy and politics in Washington for conservatives,” remembers Barnes. “People in the Reagan White House were reading The New Republic. It was ridiculous.” Conservative publications, such as William F. Buckley’s National Review and The American Spectator, existed but each possessed certain weaknesses that left the door open for the creation of The Weekly Standard. “National Review is located in New York. That’s the wrong city. Washington is the most important political city in the world,” Barnes says. The perceived need for a weekly magazine was also instrumental in the decision to create The Standard. National Review is published every two weeks, The American Spectator is monthly. “That’s not the news cycle,” Barnes says. Kristol, Barnes and Podhoretz received $3 million in start-up financing from media mogul Rupert Murdoch and hired major-league conservative writers such as satirist P.J. O”Rourke and Wall Street Journal features editor David Brooks. The first issue went on sale in September, 1995. At the time, some journalists questioned the rationale behind launching the new magazine. The New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan was quoted in 1995 as saying, “My idea of magazines is you’re always jousting against people in power. It’s a little odd for a magazine to start specifically to celebrate the people who’ve just gotten to power.” But the celebration didn’t last long. From the beginning, The Weekly Standard demonstrated a willingness to break ranks with the American Right. In its inaugural issue, Kristol predicted the pro-choice, pro-affirmative action Colin Powell would win the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. Columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote a negative review of Newt Gingrich’s book, To Renew America. The Standard has continued to differ with the Republican congressional leadership on various issues. The magazine strongly favored NATO’s intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, while criticizing the Republican Party for ‘veering toward neo-isolationism.” The Standard opposes trade with China because of that nation’s human rights record. “You’ll find we agree a lot with Pat Buchanan on some things, and we’ll agree with Amnesty International on certain things,” associate editor Victor Matus says. The Standard’s writers can be cutting, whether they’re going after Democrats or Republicans. A June, 1999 profile of Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy said that President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, “rails at Republicans in a manner so artless you can almost hear Uncle Jack turning over under his eternal flame.” The Weekly Standard is not a flashy magazine. The few photographs that do appear are black and white. The articles are lengthy and dense with information. The book section ignores the latest potboilers from Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele, instead critiquing works like Francis Fukuyama’s The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order and Robert Pennock’s Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism. Movie and television reviews are infrequent — although NBC’s popular The West Wing was the focus of a recent cover story in which Podhoretz termed the television series “political pornography for liberals - made up of equal parts unrequited longing for and rage at Hollywood’s not-so-obscure object of desire, William Jefferson Clinton.” It is perhaps not surprising that the circulation is relatively small, with between 55,000 and 75,000 subscribers. After four and half years, the Standard has yet to turn a profit. According to Skinner, this isn’t surprising. “The New Republic hasn’t been profitable since it started in 1914. Political magazines almost never make a profit,” says Skinner. Despite its modest circulation, the Standard has become extremely influential in Washington. “Do a Lexis-Nexis search and you will frequently see a senator or congressman on the floor citing an article in the Standard,” Last says. The fact that all 535 members of Congress receive complimentary copies of the magazine each week may help to explain this. Unlike their conservative counterparts at the National Review or the American Spectator, editors and reporters at the Standard have become a staple on the political talk show circuit. If television appearances are an indication of Washington influence, The Weekly Standard wields tremendous clout. Executive Editor Fred Barnes is co-host of Fox News Channel’s The Beltway Boys. Staff writer Tucker Carlson, a seemingly ubiquitous journalist who also writes for Talk magazine, is a regular on CNN’s Inside Politics and Late Edition. Until last December, editor and publisher William Kristol was a commentator on ABC’s This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. Jay Nordlinger, a former Weekly Standard associate editor who is now managing editor of National Review, said he believes the omnipresence of Standard’s writers and editors is more a result of the weekly’s Washington location than major philosophical differences between the two conservative journals. (National Review is based in New York). “There are some editorial differences issue by issue. But that’s personnel-driven. For example, our magazine is strongly pro drug legalization because Bill Buckley is,” Nordlinger says, referring to the magazine’s founder and publisher. “But the dirty little secret is that most of the writers write for both us and the Standard. It’s a relatively small pond.” With the 2000 presidential election gearing up, The Weekly Standard is certain to continue on its avowed mission to shape and guide the conservative movement. But presumptive Republican nominee George W. Bush cannot assume the Standard is going to act as his hallelujah chorus until November. “We are not here to promote any particular politician’s personal objectives. We are not a branch of the Republican Party,” says Matus. “We’re going to continue to call things as we see them.”
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