New Republic, February 18, 2021
As most of my readers know, I was a card-carrying conservative for many years. I was working in the Reagan White House when Rush Limbaugh went on the air in 1988 and remember having to go out and buy a desk radio so I could listen to him, which I did almost every day. Even then, however, I didn’t care for his callers—I thought they were ignorant, obsequious fools. But I liked Limbaugh’s monologues at the top of the hour because I learned useful stuff from him.
I didn’t need validation of my views, as was the case with many grassroots conservatives. I wanted intellectual ammunition I could use to design and promote conservative policies in government. Contrary to popular belief, the Reagan administration took analysis and research seriously. Unlike the Trump White House, which often sent out documents with typos in them (a firing offense when I worked there), the policy development process in the Reagan White House was reasonably competent.
A key reason for making sure that there was proper analysis and documentation for administration proposals is that they would have been picked apart in the media otherwise. Not only was the American press generally skeptical of our philosophy, but it was vastly more powerful in those days and could make or break a policy proposal very easily. Frankly, I think Democrats on Capitol Hill, who controlled the House of Representatives during Reagan’s entire eight-year term, tended to outsource their criticism of Republicans to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Beat reporters for the major newspapers were gatekeepers, refusing to even mention any proposal or idea that was insufficiently worked out, lacked empirical data or academic support, or just seemed stupid. Back when I worked for Jack Kemp, it took me years to get the Wall Street Journal tax reporter to mention Kemp’s tax cut plan—even after it had been endorsed by the Journal’s editorial page.
And in those days before the internet, politicians were very heavily dependent on the mainstream media to get their message out. About the only other way of doing so was direct mail. But printing and mailing newsletters was very expensive, and it took an enormous amount of effort to build a mailing list. Like it or not, conservatives in the pre–talk radio, pre–Fox News, pre-internet era had to work through the liberal media and play by its rules.
I should add that the rules of the once-dominant mainstream media were mostly good ones. When the established media lost its gatekeeper function, it led to a vast proliferation of crackpot ideas that circulate unimpeded today. Even members of the prestige media have found themselves unable to keep nutty conspiracy theories from affecting their reporting, as they document what is in fact motivating Republican voters and politicians. But in reporting the existence of crackpot ideas and fake news, the mainstream media implicitly validates them and publicizes them.
When Limbaugh first went on the air, he was a breath of fresh air for conservatives—even those working in the White House—and an essential source of news. As all of his listeners know, he had a vast “stack of stuff” consisting of news clippings, press releases, faxes, and whatnot that caught his eye and formed the basis for his monologues. He was as much a news consolidator and reviewer as he was a commentator in those days. And he frequently had an intelligent spin on the news, often picked up from the many politicians and policymakers he talked to off the air.
Of course, Limbaugh was also a blowhard, and his massive hubris was off-putting. But it was part of his schtick and one of the reasons he was popular. Say whatever else you like about him, but Rush was a masterful radio personality. He really understood and loved the medium. His foray into television just didn’t suit his style and was soon abandoned. (...)
Perhaps the most important long-term effect Limbaugh had on the media is that his success helped convinced Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch to launch Fox News. Longtime Republican political consultant and television producer Roger Ailes drew up the plans for Fox and helped Limbaugh go national with his radio show. (For almost 20 years before meeting Ailes, Limbaugh had labored in the vineyards of small radio stations in Kansas City, Sacramento, and elsewhere.) Without Ailes’s help, Limbaugh would have never become what he was.
It’s also well known that liberal commentators have never been able to duplicate the success of Limbaugh. Even Al Franken, a skilled entertainer with deep political knowledge, failed to find an audience for a contra-Limbaugh radio show. I think the reason for this failure is simpler than it appears: Progressives already have their own talk radio network with a broad reach—National Public Radio. It’s not as ideological as conservative talk radio, of course, but NPR produces exactly what liberals want radio to do, and it does so very, very well. Moreover, I think liberals are basically content with the mainstream media: The New York Times fulfills their news needs almost perfectly. That’s why they get so upset when it strays from the liberal path by publishing conservative commentary.
In truth, the Times attracts precisely zero conservative subscribers by publishing the likes of Bret Stephens. I know this from many years in the conservative movement. I even remember the first moment when I realized how closed the conservative mind had become.
by Bruce Bartlett, Big Picture | Read more:
Image: Jim Watson/Getty
[ed. See also: Rush Limbaugh Made America Worse (TNR); and, Don’t Read This If You Were a Rush Limbaugh Fan (Atlantic).]
