Never Mind the 50 Most Influential Pundits—Here Are 10 of the Best

After the success of its “Top 100 Liberals” and “Top 100 Conservatives,” the UK’s Telegraph has now unveiled its “Top 50 Political Pundits.” All three lists have had many in the media buzzing (like flies around a fresh, steaming cow patty.)

Before you check the lists out, a warning: they’re broken down into mini-lists of 10 or 20, so that to peruse them all, you’ll wind up clicking on 17 separate web pages—a cynical ploy aimed at maximizing the Telegraph’s web traffic to drive up advertising rates.

So never mind the Telegraph’s gimmicky lists, which confuse popularity with influence. Influence is a poor measure in the first place, especially when the news media have become more oriented towards entertainment than analysis. By what criteria are comics like Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh, or a superficial confrontationalist like Hack Hannity, or Glenn Beck, considered alongside the best journalists and political pundits of our time?

For what it’s worth, here are Newsprism’s Ten of the Best Political Pundits in America, all on the same page and commercialism free:

10. Michael Kinsley—while he occasionally veers off into liberal la-la land, Kinsley is thoughtful, lucid, and incisive. He’s the most reasonable voice from the far left, idealistic yet practical in a Pat Moynihan sort of way.

9. Charles Krauthammer—a solid bedrock conservative with unmatched acumen in foreign policy, Krauthammer’s analysis of the Middle East is spot-on. He’s as hard-nosed as Bush is hard-headed, staunchly nationalistic without succombing to the naive idealism of the neocons.

8.  Christopher Hitchens—an exceptional writer, Hitchens is also stubbornly independent. He defies categorization in an era marked by polarization; he’s loyal only to his own judgment, never taking sides or pulling his punches, lefts or rights.

7. Dick Morris—he’s as sleazy as the Clintons, and as brilliant, a Karl Rove without the charm (or loyalty.) His cynicism is matched by his insightfulness. A mean streak and his hatred for his former employers make him fun to follow.

6. David Brooks—while the market rewards extremism, especially on the right, Brooks is a moderate conservative devoted to what’s best for the country rather than winning an argument. Brooks is highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and his columns range across critical social and political issues.

5. Frank Rich—a writer on par with Hitchens, Rich anchors the New York Times opinion pages and has the ear of journalists left and right. His background as a critic of culture adds depth and dimension to his political analysis.

4. Karl Rove—the man got George Bush elected. Twice. George Bush. He’s been demonized by the left and stained by his association with the policies of his most famous client, but Rove understands American politics as well as anyone. He’s been outthinking the pack for nearly thirty years.

3. Peggy Noonan—both the woman and her writing are graceful and wise. Never pretentious, she has a way of making profound points effortlessly. Her wit is elegant, simple but never simplistic. Noonan may seem as soft as a feather, but that feather cuts like a scalpel. Her criticisms of George Bush, for example, go right to the heart of a presidency with no moral or philosophical foundation.

2. Pat Buchanan—with the best grasp of history in the business, Buchanan puts contemporary issues into a sweeping historical context. His perspective spans the breadth of Western civilization in an era whose memory barely reaches beyond the 24-hour news cycle. To “get” Buchanan, you should read his books and columns; his appearances on MSNBC don’t do him justice.

1. George Will—nobody connects the dots like Will. His commentary reflects attention to the highest principles while at the same time being grounded firmly in contemporary American culture and history. Will compares favorably with William F. Buckley and Walter Lippmann. His wit isn’t dry, it’s arid, a droll sarcasm befitting his bemusement at our increasingly uncivil society. A collection of his columns like The Leveling Wind transcends punditry; he’s a philosopher who happens to write columns.

Newsprism

America’s Dangerous Mis-Spellings of “Ignorance”

How many Americans can correctly spell “ignorance”? How many teachers and bureaucrats?

Two excellent columns by Bob Herbert and George Will came out this week bemoaning the declining state of American education.

At least three root causes account for the sad decline in education in this country.

First, parents have abdicated responsibility for their children’s education to cold, monolithic government institutions that facilitate mediocrity and stifle innovation. Take President “childrens do learn” Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind program. Administered by the pathetically underqualified Secretary of Education, Bush croney Margaret Spellings, NCLB imposes an asinine amount of testing on schools without addressing the underlying problems—as if measuring academic failure enough will turn it into academic success. Heckuva job, Spellie.

Second, the erosion of the nuclear family has left more and more of our children adrift without adequate supervision or an understanding of the value of education. The best predictor of academic performance isn’t social class or school quality; it’s the presence of a solid family structure that inculcates the right values and enforces their pursuit. No amount of government intervention can fix the decline of the American family, though government intervention has surely been a major factor in causing it.

Third, we’re increasingly mesmerized by electronic media, which force us into the role of passive, isolated consumers of what nowadays passes for culture. Today’s American child is lost in an amoral popular culture that priviliges physical beauty over mental acuity and appetite over intellect. Reading is becoming a lost art, one that requires thoughtful deliberation as opposed to passive consumption. Market considerations have all but replaced moral ones, and all too often, mind-numbing gadgets take the place of parenting.

Education is ultimately and essentially the responsibility of each individual citizen, and that requires citizens raised in strong families that value knowledge and wisdom. No teacher, school or government program can provide that.

Henry David Thoreau, America’s philosopher laureate, wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Two organizations hacking at the root of our education woes are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the America’s Promise Alliance, run by Colin and Alma Powell (not coincidentally, two devoted couples presiding over strong nuclear families.)

The gravest threat to American democracy isn’t terrorism or global warming. It’s ignorance.

And ignorance can only be cured from within.

Newsprism

Which Philosophy Generates More Generosity—Liberalism or Conservatism?

Dr. Arthur Brooks, a political independent and esteemed economist specializing in public affairs, set out several years ago to figure out who are the more generous Americans—liberals, or conservatives.

His book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, published in November of 2006, has been thrust back into the limelight by a recent column in which George Will, the nation’s preeminent intellectual conservative, exposes the hypocrisy of the outspoken left in Austin, Texas, and by extension, of the left in general. Austin is the South’s version of Berkeley, California and Madison, Wisconsin—a hotbed of liberalism, and, it seems, sanctimony.

The presumption is that liberals, the champions of the poor and downtrodden, are more generous while cold-hearted, individualistic conservatives are less so. Brooks’ thoroughly reseached book proves just the opposite: conservatives give a greater percentage of their incomes to charity, are more likely to volunteer in their communities, and even donate more of their blood than liberals.

The least charitable Americans? Welfare recipients. The working poor, who are little better off than their fellow citizens who live on the public dole, are among the most generous Americans, giving more as a percentage of their incomes than those in the middle class.

At the time of its release, the results of Brooks’ research were popularized by libertarian ABC investigative reporter John Stossel and detailed in the The Chronicle of Philanthropy and at beliefnet.com.

Why is Will bringing Brooks’ work up sixteen months after its release? For one thing, its findings have stood the test of time despite a strong desire by liberal academics to discredit it. For another, we’re in the middle of a presidential race highlighting the differences between the two philosophies that dominate American politics.

The fact of the matter is that liberals as a group are more generous with other people’s money than with their own. Their rhetoric isn’t always backed with action, with sacrifice. Their philosophy is sometimes, in practice at least, shallow and hollow. They too often pander to the welfare class that helps put and keep them in power, taking from others through taxation what they are less inclined to give of their own accord.

Conservatives, on the other hand, submit to high taxation that goes against their philosophy, and yet they tend to give more of what remains of their income and wealth than those responsible for that taxation.

On the whole, Americans, both left and right, are exceptionally generous people. The differences Brooks demonstrates don’t run that deep, but they do reveal a stubborn misconception.

Liberals in the media have succeeded in unfairly characterizing conservatives as cold and uncaring. That’s a stereotype that should be put to rest once and for all.

Newsprism

Pop Culture Conservatism—The Shallow Going Off the Deep End

American conservatism has been dealing for decades with a rift between the social conservatism of evangelical Christians and culture warriors on the one hand, and the libertarian conservatism of free-market individualists on the other. Part of the genius of Ronald Reagan was his ability to energize both factions while smoothing over their differences. Too many conservatives today are altogether ignorant of this rift and therefore risk widening it. 

Over the last couple of decades, another rift has been opened, one that has benefitted conservatism significantly but may at the same time have begun an erosion of its core principles in favor of the superficial and the marketable. This rift separates intellectual conservatism—that practiced by Bill Buckley, Newt Gingrich, George Will, and Pat Buchanan, for example—and a more populist strain that dominates talk radio, the popular book market, and cable news. Instead of “populist conservatism,” however, I think it would be more accurate to label it pop culture conservatism, since its primary home is in the popular media.

Pop culture conservatism emerged out of a long era of American journalism in which liberalism dominated public discourse. The Media Elite, an influential 1986 study of political bias, found that nearly 90% of leading journalists had voted for Democratic candidates in prior presidential elections. When Rush Limbaugh demonstrated in 1988 that a huge audience of disaffected conservatives was ripe for the picking, pop culture conservatism burst onto the scene, and it’s been flexing its muscles ever since. Now, slickly-marketed popular figures like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and Laura Ingraham exert far more influence over the conservative movement with their confrontationalism and intemperance than more substantive and measured voices do with reasoning and balance.

Intellectual and pop culture conservatism worked together brilliantly in 1994, when Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” consolidated the Republican base and swept Republican candidates into majority positions in both Houses of Congress. The result: the Clinton administration was forced to control the growth of government, so that by the time George Bush took office in 2000, the federal budget was in surplus.

A conservative Republican president inheriting a budget surplus should have set the foundation for a serious, measured restructuring and contraction of our imperial federal government. Instead, Bush has grown the government from a $2 trillion “enterprise” to one that will spend well over $3 trillion in 2008, with disastrous economic and monetary results. The numbers speak for themselves:

The federal government’s budget has grown from under $2,000,000,000,000.00 to over $3,000,000,000,000.00 per year!

The very core principles of conservatism—limited government, individual responsibility, individual liberty, market dynamics, free enterprise—have been buried under an avalanche of big government programs and out-of-control spending. It was Republican Senator Ted Stevens and Republican Representative Don Young who tried to push through billions in funding for Alaska’s infamous Bridges to Nowhere.

Intellectual conservatives have strongly condemned this liberal spending spree, but their voices aren’t being heard over the loudmouthed shouting of the pop culture talking heads.

Pop culture conservatism has created a class of citizens and politicians who don’t seem to value or understand the historical and intellectual foundations of classical American conservatism. These surfacy conservatives just spent seven years in power in the White House, most of that time with like-minded Republicans controlling Congress, yet they have done more damage to the institutions of free enterprise and individual liberty than any liberal in memory.

Shallow creatures of the media going off the deep end have helped put conservatism at risk of drowning in the warm, therapeutic waters of liberalism: naive idealism, spiraling debt, and dependence on government.

Newsprism

Has Rush Limbaugh Been Sucked Into the Mainstream Media?

In his bestseller See, I Told You So, Rush Limbaugh says that his job is really pretty simple: to draw the largest radio audience he can. That’s typical Limbaugh faux humility.

Rush knows full well that he’s become a major figure in both American media and politics. That became undeniable last week during the dust-up between The New York Times and John McCain over The Times story hinting that the Senator had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. Not only was Rush’s response to the story covered on talk radio and cable news networks, where the 24-hour news cycle cries for content at any cost, but also on the broadcast network news and in daily newspapers across the country, where editorial standards remain high.

The question is, has Rush been sucked into the mainstream media, the “drive-bys” he so relentlessly attacks?

There’s no denying Limbaugh’s stature in the media; his radio audience alone approaches 20 million listeners per week, plus he publishes some of the best political satire around at The Limbaugh Letter, his books were both bestsellers, and politicos and media critics quote and analyze him ad nauseum.

Maybe five media figures in American history have exerted such an influence over the American public: Horace Greeley, who fostered various social reforms and played a key role in putting an end to slavery; William Randolph Hearst, who is often credited with helping to start the Spanish-American War; Walter Cronkite, who is often credited with ending the Vietnam War (Lyndon Johnson responded to Cronkite’s famous commentary on the futility of that war by saying, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”); Walter Lippmann, who advised five presidents and wrote some of the best works ever on mass media and the relationship between journalism and civil society; and William F. Buckley, who did more than anyone in the 20th Century to keep conservatism alive as a vital and much-needed counterweight to liberalism.

What fascinates many about Rush is that his persona is so multi-faceted, and that his commentary is so deep and funny at the same time. Few on the left or the right quite “get” the man or his schtick. The left, for instance, tends to take him at face value–a shallow, bigoted, knee-jerk conservative. The right, on the other hand, tends to do exactly the same thing!

If you take either the man or his words at face value, you’re missing the point. Rush appeals to so many precisely because he can be interpreted in so many ways. Shallow liberals and shallow conservatives can drink at the surface of his reservoir of knowledge and wit, responding with spite and glee, respectively. More nuanced thinkers can chuckle at his put-on excesses: the feigned bravado, the innuendo, the hyperbole, the intentionally over-the-top tweaking of liberals. The irreverant mind can marvel at his satirical skills, the linguistic at his language skills, the mnemonic at his uncanny memory, and the holistic at his ability to connect the dots of our national conversation.

Rush deosn’t mean for us to take him seriously; he does expect us to take conservatism seriously. That’s the genius of Limbaugh: he’s a virtuoso entertainer and satirist, but at the same time, an unwavering advocate for conservative philosophy. He is to pop culture conservatism what George Will is to intellectual conservatism.

To answer the question above, has Rush been coopted by the mainstream media?

Not even close. In fact, he’s laughing at the drive-bys for taking him so seriously…laughing all the way to his place of worship—the bank.

Newsprism.com

Conservatism at the Crossroads

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, conservatism seemed not merely on the ascendency, but approaching supremacy over liberalism. The nation was enduring a new sense of vulnerability, and the need for a strong military called unequivocally for conservative leadership. With Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats looked destined for a long period in the minority.

What happened? A scant six years later, Democrats control the House, have a slight majority in the Senate, and seem poised to take back the White House.

In “The Road to a GOP Minority,” George Will blames the Republicans’ lack of fiscal restraint and legislative ethics. Not only has a federal government dominated by Republicans run up the budget deficit and the national debt substantially, it’s done so with literally thousands of highly questionable earmarks added to bills totally unrelated to the earmarks. The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” which has become symbolic of pork barrel spending, is just one example.

With over 10,000 such earmarks last year alone, and with similar numbers in previous years, it’s no wonder we’ve witnessed a slew of ethical scandals involving lobbyists and selfishly-motivated legislation. Jack Abramoff (Inmate #27593-112 at Maryland’s Cumberland Federal Correction Institution) is the poster boy for such scandals; his lobbying activites have helped land literally dozens of legislators and government employees, nearly all of them Republican, in hot water.

One of the fundamental tenets of conservatism demands a small federal government staying out of the private lives of its citizens and practicing fiscal restraint. American conservatism puts the individual above the society; this means both that individual freedom must be sacrosanct, and that the individual is responsible for his or her own life. How, then, did the party of conservatism manage to take a federal budget that had been balanced by Bill Clinton and in six short years run up budget deficits approaching half a trillion dollars? And how did the party of conservatism manage to nearly double the national debt?

Some would simplistically reply, “9/11,” but that is not a sufficient answer. The fact is that Republicans have been spending like drunken Democrats, often in their own self interest, and sometimes in ways that defy logic and ethics. Some “conservative” legislators have lined their own pockets with lobbyist money, others have left government for lucrative careers in the lobbying industry (which has enjoyed an unprecedented expansion under the Bush Administration,) and many have enriched their cronies with perfectly legal, yet perfectly corrupt, legislation. There has also been some well-intentioned legislation, like the prescription drug bill that has helped millions of retirees afford much-needed medication; but even that defies conservative philosophy. (The Heritage Foundation documents this fiscal irresponsibility as well as anyone.)

David Brooks suggests a new road for conservatism that he dubs “Fresh Start Conservatism.” His basic idea is to better prepare individuals to compete in a rapidly evolving global economy. How? Through education. Starting with early childhood education and running on through adult re-education, Brooks envisions a federal focus on teaching people to fish, not giving them fish.

Many in the movement believe that conservatism is at a crossroads, and that the future of the nation may hang in the balance, especially if a Democrat wins the White House in November. Some, including John McCain, would have the party of conservatism turn slightly to the left, continuing the leftward momentum of Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” Others, including Rush Limbaugh and his progeny in the right wing media–Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage–favor a sharper turn to the right (hence their distaste for McCain.) Few, if any, thoughtful conservatives favor staying on the current path.

There may well be a fourth choice at this crossroads: turn around. Go back. Return to the original principles of the Founding Fathers; return to individual freedom and individual responsibilty, to small government and fiscal restraint, to creating a better nation by enabling an enlightening the individual citizen.

Sometimes you can’t get where you need to go without putting it in reverse.

Newsprism.com