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By William A. Rusher National Review, the conservative journal of opinion of which I have had the honor to be publisher for most of my adult life, celebrated its 30th birth day recently with a posh dinner party at New York's Plaza Hotel. It was a glittering affair, and inspired in me, as such things tend to do, mellow reflec tions about how the wheel of fortune turns. For example, shortly after I be came National Review's publisher in 1957, Bill Buckley (then and now its owner and editor) suggested that I ap proach Gil Harrison, the editor of The New Republic, our opposite number on the liberal side of the spectrum, about offering special joint subscrip tions to the two publications to college and high school political science class es — the idea being to expose students to both liberal and conservative views on public issues, while improving our two magazines’ circulation figures. At that time, however, The New Re public had been around for about 40 years, whereas National Review was barely 2 years old, and it soon became apparent that Harrison was in no mood to yoke his venerable journal with some parvenu right-wing sheet, even for purposes of contrast. So he declined my proposal, and suggested instead that I inquire whether Lt. Stone’s Weekly, a much smaller and further left publication, might be in clined to accept it. (I didn’t bother we have our pride, too.) A decade further on, under new management, The New Republic had gotten off its high horse and cheerfully entered into an arrangement with Na tional Review to offer a 10 percent discount to any advertiser who would buy space in both publications (there by avoiding charges of political bias). Apparently those 10 years had cured National Review of its leprosy. Another example. In 1955, when Buckley founded National Review, ‘liberal” was the thing to be in Ameri can political circles. The word “con servative,” as a designation for a con temporary political viewpoint, let alone movement, was very much out of fashion. It had sometimes been ap plied to Sen. Robert Taft (who died in 1953), but Lionel Trilling was not far off the mark when he wrote, in 1950, that “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition For it is the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. Contrast that with the results of a poll conducted for The New York Times and CBS News in early Novem ber this year and subsequently report ed in the Times under the headline “A Liberal by Any Other Name May Get More Votes.” Asking 1,659 adults, by telephone, whether various political labels would make them think better or worse of a public figure, the poll sters discovered that 27 percent would think better of a person described as “conservative” and only 13 percent would think worse of him just 15 per cent, however, would think better of a public figure described as “liberal,” and a slightly larger group (17 per cent) would actually think worse of him This, it seems to me, is an extraordi nary turnaround, and while its princi pal cause is undoubtedly liberalism’s own sorry performance over the past 35 years, National Review indisput ably played a part in spotlighting that performance and identifying its perpetrators Incidentally, two labels that also fared well in the poll were “moder ate” (21 percent of those interviewed would think better of someone so de scribed; only 6 percent worse) and “progressive” (37 percent better; 7 percent worse). Clearly, the thing for a politician to be these days is a moder ately conservative progressive, or just possibly a moderately progressive conservative. But never, under any circumstances, a liberal By the way, the most distinguished guest and chief speaker at National Review's birthday party was the con servative president of the United States. I didn’t see Gal Harrison any where around LORNE WSITABEE EN TERPRISE ASSN
Newspaper Details
Marshall Chronicle
Marshall, Michigan, US
Mon, Dec 23, 1985
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Roger M.
USA 01 Jul 2026
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