Fifty Years of Spectating — R. Emmett Tyrrell’s Rousing Memoir of American Politics

F or more than half a century, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has been a leading figure in conservative journalism, consulted by Republican presidents from Nixon to Trump, and a source of irritation to Democratic presidents from Carter to Biden. He has just written How Do We Get Out of Here? Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator — From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump, a rollicking new memoir that provides an entertaining, idiosyncratic take on how Washington — and American culture — has changed.

Lots of high-and-mighty people populate Tyrrell’s recollections. Some are praised while others are trashed or cheekily dismissed as unworthy of attention. The name-dropping begins early with a Democrat whom Tyrrell admired but who was cut down in the prime of his political life.

In early 1968, Tyrrell was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington when he watched from backstage as Senator Robert Kennedy roused his audience of potential voters in the Democratic presidential primary. As Kennedy finished and slipped behind the curtain, he found Tyrrell the only person there and asked him, “How do we get out of here?” Tyrrell dutifully escorted the candidate to his car but couldn’t resist a prank by pressing a “Reagan for President” button into Kennedy’s hand.

Tyrrell was already a troublemaker on campus. The year before, he had started what eventually became the American Spectator, a magazine that still bears the imprint of its irreverent, no-criticism-barred founder. During the 1970s, Tyrrell proved a master at convincing writers as diverse as Thomas Sowell, Tom Wolfe, P. J. O’Rourke, Paul Johnson, and James Q. Wilson to contribute. Over the years, he helped launch such noted bylines as Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News, and John Podhoretz of Commentary. (I was a contributing columnist at the Spectator from 2002 to 2012).

Along the way, Tyrrell has made peace or clashed with perhaps every major figure in conservative circles. William F. Buckley Jr., National Review’s founder, was a warm friend even though the Spectator was a competitor. George Will was a frequent writer but later asked not to be mentioned in Spectator advertisements. Tyrrell documents, with satirical sniping of a high velocity, the recent slide of Bill Kristol and David Frum toward the left.

As for presidents, Ronald Reagan is considered the gold standard of presidents by Tyrrell. He lavishes several pages on the challenges of the 1988 private dinner that Reagan attended at Tyrrell’s Virginia home. Donald Trump is lauded for being “a gifted neophyte” as president, but Tyrrell now mourns what he sees as Trump’s obsession with slashing back at every attack against him rather than soaring over them. “He took comfort in the [Steve] Bannons, the [Paul] Manaforts, and the [Roger] Stones of this world,” Tyrrell writes, confirming the suspicion of many that Donald Trump’s worst enemies are sometimes the people he hires.

As for Democratic presidents, Tyrrell gives us an entertaining account of how he punctured the pomposity of Jimmy Carter both during and after his White House years. (A Spectator cover of Carter’s White House portrait depicted him as white space inside an empty frame.) Bill Clinton became a cause célèbre for the Spectator, and it published an investigative piece about the sexual harassment of Paula Jones and the misuse of Arkansas state troopers by Clinton when he was governor. The article was roundly attacked by mainstream journalists but later largely corroborated by the Los Angeles Times and many others. The piece also set in motion the events that eventually led to Clinton’s impeachment, his settlement with Paula Jones, and the loss of his law license for committing perjury.

The Clinton Justice Department launched an investigation of the Spectator, citing flimsy evidence that it had tried to tamper with witnesses in the Whitewater probe of the president’s finances. The Justice investigation amounted to nothing, but it did scare away Spectator donors and almost caused the magazine to go under.

While largely an online publication now, the Spectator hasn’t retreated an inch in its conviction that radicals from the 1960s eventually became the establishment and infected the nation with what Tyrrell calls Kultursmog. Tyrrell defines that as “the complete domination of mainstream political culture by one point of view: the liberal point of view.” He adds, “They’ve polluted the political discourse in our country.”

Tyrrell says that rays of sunshine are now penetrating the Kultursmog: Networks such as Fox News and Newsmax provide an institutional alternative to left-wing news channels, talk radio is dominated by conservatives, and the Internet bristles with sharp starboard commentary and often penetrating investigative journalism.

But I wonder whether Tyrrell would say the same about some of the brash personalities and interventionist principles celebrated by several of those alternatives to the Kultursmog. Back in 2010, as Tea Party groups were just forming, Tyrrell was optimistic about the future of the Republican Party. He told James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, “I think people like Paul Ryan, Mike Pence [then Indiana governor], Mitch Daniels are people of ideas. . . . If they gain influence in the Republican Party, as I hope they will, I think the future’s going to be good for the Republican Party.”

One can’t help but note that all of those men had their time in the sun, but it has since set for them. Ryan became House speaker but retired in 2018, Pence became vice president but just dropped out of the GOP presidential primaries, and Mitch Daniels recently retired from the presidency of Purdue University. I fear that many of their would-be successors who claim they now deserve the mantle of leadership act far more like show horses than the workhorses whom Tyrrell admired.