and career of william rusher, the publisher of the conservative periodical, "national review." mr. frisk examines russia's involvement in the conservative movement and his relationship with "national review" founder william f. buckley. it's about an hour. >> thank you, john, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. there were two bills at "national review." and in the conservative movement. two bills. bill buckley, a brilliant shooting star lit up the sky, and bill rusher, and never wavering north star by which conservatives learned to chart their political course. now, many have written about william f. buckley, jr., that a resistible man, but no one until

david frisk has given us an in depth portrait of the other bill, william rusher, who among his other contributions played a pivotal role in the life of the national draft goldwater committee, and that was critical. because if there had been no draft goldwater committee, there would have been no presidential candidate barry goldwater in 1964. and if there had been no candidate goldwater in 1964, there would have been no president-elect ronald reagan in 1980. it was goldwater you see who approved reagan's famous television address which made reagan a political star overnight. and led to his running for governor of california and eventually president of these united states.

david recounts how bill rusher shored up the goldwater committee when money ran short and spirits sagged. skillfully guided young americans for freedom in its early chaotic days and forced some order and discipline on the spare to ran "national review," expanded the conservative movement through the tv program, the advocates, his newspaper column and his lectures, and championed ronald reagan when other conservatives were somewhat skeptical about the actor turned politician. bill rusher loved american politics. rare wines, traveling to distant lands, and national reuse effervescent editor, bill buckley, of whom he once said quote, the most exasperating people in the world are so often the most beloved. and he is no exception.

now, david frisk has captured all of this and more in this splendid overdue biography of the other bill, bill rusher. dr. frist is a former award-winning reporter who received his psd -- ph.d from claremont and we'll be teaching those lucky students at the alexander hamilton center in new york. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving me a warm heritage welcome to dr. david frisk. [applause] >> well, thank you. for that wonderful introduction of me and more importantly william rusher. can everyone here all right? i suspect there's a very wide range in this room of

familiarity and relative unfamiliarity with bill rusher, who was the publisher of "national review" for 31 years. almost from the beginning. and can all be said to have had a half century long career in american politics, with something of a privileged ringside or front row seat. he never ran for public office, never held public office, never really founded anything on his own as a number of conservative leaders did and became identified, never controlled his own institution. he was as i put it in my introduction, "if not us "if no william rusher, 'national review,' and the conservative movement," published last ever,

he was at the edge of the limelight. a lot of people do very well who he was. a lot of people knew a lot less about him. but as people became aware of william rusher, there was a general agreement among the whole fractious spectrum of american conservatism. we have seen how fractious it can be just after this unfortunate election. there was a wide libertarians traditionalists, purists, pragmatists, that bill rusher really knew what he was doing. one of his great achievements was to give the movement conservatives from i would say the early 1960s right up until the 1990s, by which time he had semi-retired, more confidence that i think he

otherwise would have had, that there really was a conservative movement. and that it really was moving. if imperfectly. we've seen in recent years a lot of doubts about whether the conservative movement still exist anymore. some people even doubt whether it deserves to exist anymore, whether it's destroyed itself. well, there have been people all along who have said things like that. one of the things rusher stood for, most prominently and enduringly was the belief that we conservatives all had to pull together and all had to be together and keep being together. you know, the most obviously shady come to mind and he would've put more articulately and more memorably is to not, not let the purpose be the enemy of the good.

not miss the forest for the trees. these are not the most innovating or exciting sort of messages, but it's very important to have a few people at or near the top of the conservative movement's leadership who believe in and preach these things. and to ask people, asked their fellow activists and conservative intellectuals to remain focused on the need to win a majority of the american people, and to govern. "national review" has a very intellectual magazine throughout its existence, and i think probably even more so than its early years, the '50s and '60s, very much needed i think bill buckley managing -- and

every other major persons there, acknowledged that they very much needed a man just like the rusher to serve as a political eyes and ears, as a political counselor, as a link between "national review" type people as rusher put it to me, the intellectuals and the practical politicians. by politicians, rusher didn't just mean people and/or aspiring to public office. people like his good friend, the mastermind of the draft goldwater campaign and the marshal of the draft goldwater campaign. white, ma too, was a politician and rusher was something of a politician. in other words, a practitioner of actual politics. rusher place tremendous value on these evil.

and he was always -- on these people. he was always trying with some success to get the more philosophical conservatives, a classic example of course buckley himself to appreciate that sort of career, that sort of individual and that sort of effort. a lot of what you'll find in the book, and i'm sure some of you have read it, is a good deal of back and forth between publisher rusher, also in house political counselor rusher, who had the full privileges by the way of speaking out on any issue officially and unofficially. by officially i mean in the meetings they held which could be very long and interesting. he had the full privileges speaking out on any issue, editorial issue, anything involving national reuse political position. "national review"'s tone, what it should cover, what is less

important. so he played an editorial role although we didn't have an official one, and they listen to them. at times they got tired of listening to him. but remember, any time if you read about rusher or if you want to formulate a question about him, remember that this is another world technologically. and remained so until the rusher retired from "national review." his successor publisher said when he came right in afterwards it was still operating in the 1950s, that is, in 88, 89, still operating in the 1950s with carbon paper and secretaries who were treated as secretaries. i guess that's a polite term for sexist and it's not an important point to the more important point is, you know, carbon paper. rusher would not have been teamed on social media himself, were he still alive and active today. but he would have appreciated

it. to get back to the point, it's an important one, this was an era when people communicated on paper, and they communicated at length on paper. that was a tremendous resource for my research at the library of congress are rusher's papers are. there's been sufficient evidence -- excuse me, sufficient interest in the rusher papers amongst scholars who are interested in the development of the conservative movement who i think more often than not are liberals. in the rusher papers that they were moved several years ago from the satellite location out of several them into the actual james madison building on the other side of the hill, that's how much interest there has been in the rusher papers, although you haven't, mine is the only book about him and as far as i'm it will be the only book about him. so these people communicated to each other on paper, and that's a lot of what my book is based on, plus interviews with dozens

of people including extensive interviews of russia and extensive interviews with mr. buckley. they were very candid with each other. rusher in buckley in particular. in their differing judgments about what positions "national review" should take up what he should focus on. doctor edwards alluded to the importance of the goldwater campaign for the future of the conservative movement. i don't think there's time and perhaps there isn't any need to stress that to this audience any further than it already has been. very similar event. rusher was in the thick of it. more than anyone, he probably persuaded goldwater to at least remain open to the possibility of the candidacy in early 63 when he didn't want to. he kept the draft goldwater campaign going when the head of it, cliff whatcom his old friend

and associate was ready to get for a variety of reasons, including financial reasons. one of the great lessons of rusher's career is that he didn't believe in giving up, ever. there was always another bus coming along in 10 or 15 minutes. the sun would come up the next morning. and there was always something to do. one of the people who knew rusher well as a young conservative activist in the '60s, rusher than being in his late '30s, or about 40, said that it seemed to him, in his interaction with them in young americans for freedom and so on, that rusher had an extra 10 hours a day. someone else said that he seemed to be the most organized man in the movement.

now, it was a little easier for rusher to play that kind of very energetic and very focused role always on all the time, always giving it his best, always looking good, always speaking well, always dressing well, and always, if not always right, always persuasive, always someone you wanted to listen to. it's easier to develop that reputation perhaps if you don't have a family. he never married, never had children. somebody suggested to me very early in my research that rusher was really married to the movement. i think there's a good deal of truth to that, so it's only unlimited number of people who have that kind of a life to play that quite that kind of role. the point is that rusher did it.

rusher had been come he was a graduate of harvard law school, graduated in 1948, worked at a major wall street law firm, corporate law sherman, sherman and sterling, an old and major firm but he was really bored by corporate law practice. he describes it in his first book which was published in 1968, and it's not really an autobiography, but there's an autobiographical chapter that's quite interesting. he says, well, there were always sided victories and defeats in these quiet conversations, sort of boardrooms of our law firm. and he wanted more action than that, and he also, he loved politics so much that he really had in some way, shape, or form he had to do it full-time. so he walks away from his wall street law firm in early 1956, comes to washington, lives just a few blocks south of here,

somewhere, somewhere near the russell building, the dirksen building in a little apartment, and he joined a very important anti-communist investigator named robert morris. robert morris is importance in the anti-communism investigation of the 1950s, was apparently so significant that whittaker chambers said to buckley in a letter around that time that morris really accomplished most of what joe mccarthy is credited with. in terms of useful and constructive anti-communism that is credited with on the right. rusher was at morse's side on the subcommittee. he was the number two lawyer on that committee. mccarthy was still alive. any mccarthy. and delete -- he knew mccarthy and believed he had been fairly railroad by the liberal

establishment to very much along the lines of what stan evans later argued in his 2007 book, blacklisted by history. rusher, in other words, was part, before he became to "national review," he was part of a cadre of very hard and professional anti-communists. and that was what really got them into the conservative movement. that's what caused him to transition from generic republicanism, which included what i described as a just win baby attitude, and there's something to be said for that. to an attitude of being willing to lose even a presidential election, if it was a constructive sort of loss that

one could take pride in, all a goldwater in 64, that might -- that had at peace in the future. rusher did not initially think that way in 1940, 1952, it was just win, baby. so he is all for trying to. there's similarities to the point of campaign. on our side and on the other side. rusher sees that. in 52 he knows that eisenhower isn't going to be a great shaping of conservative causes. probably also knew that eisner would not be that aggressive in anti-communist, but he wanted to win. well, to keep this reasonably concise, but to finish the thought because it is important, rusher believed that moderate republican administration under dwight eisenhower, who was president for eight years, just

wasn't ideological enough, was in anti-communist enough either at home or abroad. rusher and believed them still significant communist threat within the united states, more and more documentation of that has, in the last 20 years after the opening of the ex-soviet archives. buckley also, a couple years younger than rusher, i'll let you know probably that he wrote got him in a gale which came a year after you graduate from yemen. he has two beasts with yale. rusher shared and accused a graduate of princeton, prewar and during the war. buckley says yale is insufficiently respectful of religion despite its religious heritage and religious heritage of most of the elite academia in america.

also they don't present every enterprise side of economics. they are too changing, quasi-socialist. rusher agreed with all of that. but i think the greater affinity of buckley can be seen in buckley and his brother-in-law, brent mosel's 1984 book, mccarthy and his enemies to which they say yet, mccarthy spent a little too rough. he's made some errors in judgment. but that causes really, really important. and he's being treated unfairly. that's exactly where rusher, that's exactly where rusher is in 1954-55-56, in the years where he turns from generic young republican republicanism to hard movement conservatism. there was a bit of the conservative movement even before buckley founded "national review" in 1955, but it was sort of, it was a little -- it was

disorganized. the polite term might be entrepreneurial, individualist individualistic. a whittaker chambers had another way to describe it but he said it was like people popping out like rabbits. you never knew where they were coming from, where they were going to we might see a little of this today now and then. rusher is absolutely thrilled to hear that there is going to be a conservative and weekly magazine. at the time it was weekly. so when he hears about "national review" been in the works, in 1955, he becomes a charter subscriber even before it actually comes out. he meets buckley with a couple of months after the magazine starts. he spends a year and have in washington on the senate and subcommittee, but remains in touch with the buckley and that, in that circle. he joined the magazine in mid mid-1957. he wasn't interested in the

business side of the magazine, which was his technical and real responsibility, you know, keeping it afloat, finding more subscribers, giving advertisement and all that kind of stuff. they needed someone like that and he was pretty good at that. although there's evidence that after several years, for at least the time he kind of neglected it because he was so into the political site. as i said, he comes into "national review" with a kind of ripped from editor buckley. that he will have full free speech rights, free rights of argumentation and advocacy in the internal deliberations of the magazine. and that is a good part of the book, although i wouldn't say it's quite a majority of it, but it's a particular part of it and it's very interesting. rusher advising buckley any other senior editors, james

burnham, frank myers, and so on. how they should do with the john birch society issue, the extremists at the time. how it should deal with troubles with the young americans for freedom, a very important conservative organization. dr. edwards was i believe the first editor of the new guard, your newspaper, or one of the early editors back in the early '60s. he started very young and has known rusher for that long. rusher would advise the "national review" people, and, of course, above all, buckley was the owner and, therefore, the man there, what was going on out there among conservatives, what the problems were. in conservative politics. with the opportunities and challenges, what good things are happening. buckley though is very interested in maintaining a high -- developing and maintaining a

high reputation for "national review," a reputation as a thoughtful magazine. at one point he writes to his colleagues there and says, no, no, no. it was an editorial. in 1960. he says to readers that he would've said equally to his colleagues, our job is not to make politics commercially to think and write, and occasionally to mediate. that is, to offer sort of, to play something of a broker's role amongst conflicting conservatives. whatever they are conflicted about. buckley sees the need for the. rusher is ideally suited to guiding, helping to guide "national review" in that role. there were two factions at "national review."

i don't mean to overstate that. i don't mean to overstate the conflict there. there was tremendous amount of respect that they all have for each other, but their fundamental agreement with a national reduce imports are they always agreed it was very important, that they had very important duties. but they disagreed about the right approach and the right tone and the right focus for the magazine. the two factions, it's a perfectly good word, if you can get the idea of any idea of backstabbing or underhanded approaches out of your head, that wasn't would like that as far as i could do, but there were real arguments, real arguments, some of which were committed to paper. between a sort of buckley,

priscilla buckley, she was the managing editor and bill buckley's older sister, just passed away a year ago, unfortunate, but then mother of the early conservative movement, in the "national review" was sort of an incubator for young conservatives, very conservative to the to buckley's, and james burnham, a very brilliant ex-trotskyist who already had a substantial reputation before he joined buckley and the founded "national review," the three of them really believed in the importance of national views intellectual reputation. they also believed as burnham put it very early on that this was a magazine that should be on the desks of policymakers, academics, senators.

you know, really important people whether they were conservatives or not. they believe in something of an elite strategy, for -- it was so much to make conservatism powerful as to make it acceptable and to get non-conservatives the more important of the better, to listen to the conservative viewpoints, whether it be on foreign policy and anti-communism, economic conservatism or limited government, constitutionalism or what today is called social conservatives, more likely than it would be called conservatism, the terms are a little different and less clear back then, but there's always been social conservatism. rusher had a very important ally, a man named frank meyer.

meyer remained sufficiently respected and known among at least and over -- an older generation of conservatives that there is a frank myers aside here in washington, which i'm going to be a little group of conservative leaders who keep his memory alive. they're going to meet on monday night and i'll be speaking to them. meyer has been described by rusher as the intellectual engine of the conservative movement. he, too, was an ex-communist as burnham was. but meyer was a conservative activist. a passionate conservative activist. rusher even told me that meyer had once said, i, rusher had been a militant republican. quote, they are not all that far apart, except in what they believe. what rusher meant by that is that he had a tremendous attraction to and respect for,

frankly for political obsession. meyer was both an election upset. he had a house that was literally full of books. it's hard to imagine, hard to describe his books were absolutely everywhere. so extreme intellectual but also extremely logical. as david janes, the long-term, the longer with longtime chairman of the american civil liberties union, you go, you visit my, take a bus from the midwest in his case, you come back and perhaps two weeks later you get busted out of bed by the phone ringing at maybe 2 a.m., frank my would be saying why haven't you done this? in this case, university of wisconsin. why haven't you done this? why have you done the other thing? i think that kind of, that particular style of leadership or mentoring probably wouldn't be too welcomed among conservatives today, and i'm sure there were people then who

thought it was a bit much, even if they tremendously admired my. and the fact was the people like that back then who thought the cost was so important that they could, at least meyer, he would have no quarrels about waking someone up at two in the morning. he was nocturnal. rusher loved it is kind of thing. he didn't have the irregular schedule themselves. he was again as i suggested he was more organized than that, but he loved that spirit. ..

>> as they were still feeling their way, as the conservative movement was still gelling. in the 1970 rusher's focus is on, is initially on the possibility of actually replacing the republican party with a new conservative party. i found a letter in which he said to a friend my problem -- it was about 1975 -- my problem with the republican party isn't that it's not conservative enough, it's that it isn't big enough. again, he wanted to win. and the republicans after watergate in the mid '70s were in just terrible shape. i won't recite the details, but they were, you know, they -- a lot of them probably felt that

they were back where they were in the 1930s. not only a minority party, but a small minority party. rusher wants to take this opportunity to start a new conservative party. not rigidly conservative, but consciously conservative. one in which the liberal wing of the republican party would not be present and, therefore, would not have the kind of veto power that he thought they had. he believed the key to this was, one, not necessarily the most important thing, but an important thing was to moderate economic conservativism a little bit and be a little bit more populist. recognize, you know, the needs, the position of the little guy. he always had some of that in him. but with also to welcome social conservativism, the sort of populist issues. and not only southerners, but what then were known as

conservative democrats, people who later became reagan democrats. rusher was one of the first to note the size and importance of that voting bloc. he was one of the first and i'm sure one of the most effective advocates of bringing it into the republican party, and he advised reagan to do this. he knew both reagan and the first president bush pretty well. had known reagan since the mid '60s. he advised both reagan and then vice president bush some years later to do this. he was successful in that, although i don't think reagan really needed to be -- i'm not sure that reagan really needed to be told that. but certainly it's fortifying and encouraging to hear it from someone who he respected as much as he respected rusher. rusher also wanted ray began to be the head of this -- wanted reagan to be the head of this

new conservative party. to make a long story short, reagan refuses, probably prudently. most political scientists, and i've had training in political science, will tell you if a third party is going to be big on a national level, it cannot start small. it's got to start big. probably with a superstar like reagan. so once reagan refused in mid '75, early in mid '75 to join this third party project rusher got going and wrote a book about, it was probably curtains for that particular idea. but rusher had succeeded in getting conservatives to think more about the need to expand the republican party and for the republican party to be more coherent. not so idealogically coherent that it was willing to forfeit elections. i think rusher was past that phase of his, um, political development or perspective by

then. so he recognized that if reagan wasn't going to head it, it was probably not going to get too far. but he stuck with it. the full details are in the book in chapter 13. but he came to see in the late '70s that it really was possible for a guy like reagan to win the republican nomination. once ray gab did -- once reagan did, ever since he won the nomination in 1980 and had a totally successful president is i, rusher remained until the end of his days an absolute loyalist. rightly or wrongly. that's another interesting lesson. a man who at one time who had been a third party advocate comes back to a or more conventional political view, although he was always a strong conservative. in closing, i just want to say two words about rusher's

significance as a symbol among conservatives. he was a very elegant man. he was not particularly tall, he wasn't athletic, you know, things that buckley was. but he was wonderfully articulate. he always spoke in perfectly formed sentences both in public and in private conversation. he was always very well dressed. he loved fine wine and opera, he traveled all over the world, knew all the great hotels of the world. so this is a little unusual for a semipopulist conservative and for a guy as ideological as he was. it -- perhaps leading conservatives today could use a few more people like that. in other words, it's hard for a manhattan liberal, and he knew some, to say, oh, rusher's -- conservatives are, you know, hicks and this and that. you couldn't say that about buckley, and you couldn't say it about rusher.

so rusher kind of reinforced that sense that, well, at least national review, they're fun to have around if you can stand their viewpoint now and then. rusher was another example of that kind of conservative. younger conservatives tended to admire that, and he tried to bring them along in that vienld of vein. also as dr. edwards referred to, rusher was a major, major conservative debater for a while, most prominently on a debate show called "the debaters." a lot of people would watch that and say, well, we can do that too. we can be as good as he is. i have not really had time to go much into his mentoring role with young conservatives, but he loved to advise them. he liked hearing about what they were doing, if they were doing

something. it was very important to do things. rusher didn't like people who just sat around and talked or didn't really have a lot of patience for sitting around and talking, put it that way. so generations of now-senior conservatives will tell you that they knew rusher either personally or by reputation, that he spent a lot of time with them, that he gave them great advice, that he had time for them. rusher always remained very proud of that. he retired to san francisco. he loved the climate, he liked the relative sophistication of san francisco. he had fallen in love with it in the '50s, and so he lived there for about the last 20 years of his life. and i'll leave you with this quote which also gives a sense of, um, rusher's attitude. in one of -- in perhaps my last interview with him, he said to me san francisco has a dreadful

reputation among conservatives. and new yorkers are always raising the summit with me -- the subject with me, mostly new yorkers. he said, i just dismiss it. i'm not the least bit interested in what the majority of people in san francisco think. i like the food, i like the weather, i like the ambience. it's where i want to live, and if they want to live there too, the liberals, good luck. [laughter] i'll be eager for your questions insofar as we have time for them. [applause] >> if you will, just raise your hand. we do have a gentleman with a microphone, and you if you will, please, give your name and then ask your question. hopefully not -- a question and not a statement. but we'll depend. yes, please. first question down here. thank you.

>> you mentioned, you mentioned how rusher wanted to take a more populist tone and turn at some point. do you think that's a -- >> can you speak up just a bit? >> sorry. rusher wanted to take a more populist turn to the social movement at some point. do you see that as a potential lesson to be applied today from his -- [inaudible] >> well, i'm not, i'm not comfortable trying to say what rusher would say today, but it's clear that he always believed and never -- from the 1970s on, certainly -- always believed and never lost his belief that populist and social conservativism and those voters were absolutely essential to

conservative success, that a their issues had not been dealt with, had not really been dealt with by the official republican party, had not been sufficiently respected. so he wanted those votes just as he wanted southern votes in the early '60 and advocated that. but he also believed that social conservativism and any populist issues had to be expressed in a responsible and thoughtful way. a good example you can find in a footnote in one of the late chapters is a column he wrote about abortion in '31. '81. it was called something like the problem and strength of right to life. he sees a balance there. and, basically, what he says is i'm one of you, i agree with you on this issue, but we must

realize how smug and even offensive or something like that we sometimes appear to others who don't, you know, share our viewpoint. so we have to be moderate in our presentation of it. i'm confident in saying that rusher would absolutely disagree with those who now say in the wake of romney's loss that we should jettison social conservativism. but, again, he would remind social conservatives that, you know, there are a lot of people who disagree with you, and you have to speak to them effectively. does that help? >> hi. i'm martin worcester. as i understand it, and i think i got this from the biography of frank meyer, there's also an a ideological dispute when "national review" got started with priscilla buckley and james

burnham saying the goal of the conservative movement would be to fight communism and not really caring about the welfare state and people like frank meyer saying, no, we've got to shrink -- fighting communism was a good thing, but we need to shrink government first. and that rusher, among other things, acted as a mediator between those two factions. >> i'm sorry, i didn't get the last half sentence there. >> oh, that rusher, one of rusher's roles was to sort of mediate between b two factions. i got the sense that priscilla buckley and burnham were sort of distant ancestors of neoconservatives, and meyer, of course, being a fusionist would have disagreements. and, you know, i think it was

primarily about what conservatives should do about the welfare state, and i'm wondering what rusher's role was in those ideological debates. >> very good question. i would, i would amend something you said which is i don't believe there was much conflict within "national review" about what position to take on the welfare state. but there was some. it was not rusher's primary concern. his primary concern in terms of ideology was that "national review" must be ideological, that the exact positions it took would very often be secondary,

but that insofar as it had certain beliefs on these issues, any issues, it should be really serious about holding other conservatives and especially public office holders to account in showing leadership on them. and in supporting candidates who were most likely to really be solid on those issues. whereas a burnham, he would, he would, in fact, he did, in fact, say -- and the example i have in mind is medicare in '65 -- that it was inevitable. i mean, the nature of the health care such as, the elderly population, various things going on in our society made it inevitable. there was rising mass pressure for it. congress had to account for that. it is to make this new thing work as well as possible, does that sound familiar? it's good that there was a voice there saying that. buckley was more free market though.

he was actually more interested in economics than rusher was. so i don't think there was a big dispute about the welfare state. to the extent there was, burnham would be the advocate of accommodating it. but still he's an economic conservative. rush everybody was not as libertarian or small government as frank meyer, but, you know, in general the two of them lined up. >> what about priscilla buckley? >> i'm sorry? >> what about priscilla buckley? >> i simply don't know about that. what is perfectly clear is that she and burnham were, you know, very close in a professional sense. they, their personalities were, just meshed together really well. they were both very calm people. they believed -- they both believed in a very high literary quality for the magazine.

and in, you know, keeping things that just didn't measure up intellectually or that might be too extreme out of the magazine. rusher was a little more, um, accommodating to the hard right in that respect. i'm unaware, though, that there was any conflict between priscilla buckley when rusher was there. they overlapped substantially. everyone liked her, everyone respected her. so she wasn't really involved in personal sorts of conflicts. there was a terrible personal conflict between burnham and meyer. ideological conflict as well. but neither of them ever quit. which is to their credit. two more maybe? >> [inaudible] >> or whatever. or i can do more.

>> more questions, please. please, yes. >> have i sufficiently conveyed, by the way, i'll take your question. i want to make sure i give a couple more sort of clever quotes and debate quotes from rusher to share with you his vibrant personality and just his cleverness. important part of the story. it's in the book. go ahead. >> we, thank you. yes, thank you. you must have had conversations with mr. rusher about reagan's, ronald reagan's second term. and earlier you said he considered the reagan presidency an unmitigated success. were there any reservations about the second term developments, ie, iran contra and president reagan's alleged declining intellectual capabilities? >> i apologize. i was wearing ear plugs earlier today. would you mind restating the question for me?

loud. >> the question was regarding if he had any reservations about reagan's second term in terms of his mental capacity declining or the iran contra issues. >> okay. rusher on reagan's second term including iran contra. rusher was one of reagan's most consistent defenders among ideological and leading movement conservatives during the reagan administration. as richard brookhiser who's still a major figure at "national review" and was a writer for it then and pretty good friend of rusher said to me when reagan was elected, rusher decided he would defend him on every single thing. and his reasoning was in terms

of presidents, this is the best guy we're going get. it will neff be better, and -- it will never be better, and it will never be as good. so you have to back this guy up on everything. he had some concerns about reagan's first chief of staff, james baker, who had come from the other wing of the party, of course. he was, he questioned whether someone like that could really put his heart into a reaganite program. a couple of years after that rusher's very upset about some i guess you'd call them technical pr mistakes on the part of communications people in the white house and says so and so ought to be fired. didn't happen. his main concern in giving

advice to reagan -- which he didn't do a lot of -- but his main concern seemed to be let's make sure we are effectively communicating with the american people and getting around the liberal media which is a big bug bearer of rusher's and rightly so. on iran contra, what i say in the book is that he followed it with a kind of dutiful interest. i don't think he was, had a great emotional investment in it. but he did, he was a syndicated columnist for over 30 years. he wrote a number of columns taking the president's side, and it came down to this: you know, he thought maybe reagan had been guilty of a few errors of judgment there, but he said it seems to have come down to an overly solicitous attitude or a overly passionate attitude toward getting the hostages back. but he said, you know, that's a crime of the heart. if ronald reagan has to have a weaknesses, i'm kind of glad it's that one. of he also was damned if he was going to let or enable the

democrats in the media who he saw as kind of the same thing to get a republican president. >> i'm going to take the risk of hazarding another what would rusher think of what's going on today question, but i wanted to ask more about what you thought rusher might have to say about where "national review", his position today -- obviously, it's still a very highly regarded and conservative publication, but it seems increasingly to be positioned i don't want to say in a more moderate place, but in a slightly less combative place than some of the outlets that have arisen since, such as the andrew breitbart empire, talk radio. i'd be interested to hear what you think rusher would have to say about that. >> to begin with, rusher liked

almost any active, reasonably responsible, vigorous, or fearless conservativism. he, therefore, appreciated talk radio, appreciated the, you know, the more controversial aspects of fox news. he watched fox news. he specifically admired rush limbaugh even 20 years ago before rusher -- before rush limbaugh was quite as much of a household name as he is now. i asked him about "national review" which for some time -- this is about 2005 or so -- for some time, of course, it had been, it had been more sort of repper tore y'all and news oriented and current events oriented than it once was. and, yeah, there were people who didn't really like that. rusher said he was fine with

that. he was for that. although he also told me -- and i don't believe this was really a confidence -- that when buckley himself retired from the actual editor hardship of the magazine -- editorship of the magazine which was about, well, it was in stages, but anyway, he told them -- and i don't know if it was personally to buckley or what, that it was very important in his view that "national review" not be, quote, just another conservative magazine. that it was very important for it to retain its identity and its brand. and so it's clear from that that he -- and he specifically mentioned its catholic ting, right? the buckley family's virtually all catholic. rusher was not a catholic, but he very much admired that and respected it as part of

"national review"'s sensibility. so he wanted that to continue, and i suppose to an extent it had. so he had no real beefs with "national review," although he did think there were some younger people there who probably should know more history. but he had kind of a relaxed attitude toward that. he didn't have utopian expectations about what people would know or how ideological they would be. in his older years even more than earlier, he was very much a team player. and i think that comes outs clearly in the book. anyone else? >> how about an example of rusher wit, an example of rusher wit. >> yeah. some of you know the name of theodore sorenson or ted sorenson who was one of the great wordsmiths for the kennedy presidency.

and he -- i don't know if he ran for senator from new york, but he tried to get it going in 1970. rusher in 1970 is really in his prime. he's about 47 years old at that point. he has been a staple on talk radio in new york for about the last ten years, and he really knows what he's doing. and he loves to debate liberals on the air. there's a man who's still alive and i believe still does a radio show in new york, internet radio now, barry farber, who was then a very prominent host who greatly admired rusher. he had the two of them on. and sorenson basically accuses "national review" of racism and extremism and kind of associates that with nixon and with george wallace and just, you know, lumps it all together.

not a very intellectually impressive performance. and rusher just goes after him and keeps going after him. and finally says, you know, based on your performance tonight you may think you're qualified to run for senator from new york, but based on your hysterical performance tonight, you wouldn't be elected dogcatcher. and so sorenson say, well, it seems to me, mr. rusher, you're being rather hysterical now, and rusher says, yeah, but i'm not running for the senate! [laughter] you know, he knew when to give just a little but make the guy look even worse. earlier on the farber show somebody, south africa was already an issue for many liberals. rusher had not yet been there. but somebody said, his liberal opponent said have you been to south africa? rusher says, no, i haven't been to south africa, but you must

have been to south africa, or you wouldn't be making such heavy weather of it. now, what did you learn in south africa that you think is so important for us to know? so he turns a weaknesses into a strength, you know? he, again, don't give an inch. turn it around. it's not the politics of personal instruction, but it's certainly of one upmanship. he believe inside the battle of ideas, but he knew there was a role for wit and drama in politics. and a final rusher quote just picked off the top of my head. buckley loved to ski. he also at one point visited the soviet union and had a "national review" group that got together. most of them went in, i think it was the winter of '75 or '76. rusher refused. he said, no, because they don't have the right to grant permission. i'm not going to ask communist permission for anything, even to

visit their country. i'll wait until they're thrown out, and then i'll go. which he eventually did. and he told me i once said to buckley that i would no more go to the soviet union on vacation than i would if hitler had permitted to have skied in the austrian alps during world war ii. [laughter] and he said buckley took some exception to that. and it is a rather specialized point of view. it may have handicapped me a bit, but i stuck with it. ms. . [applause] >> thank you. >> tell us what you think about our programming this weekend. you can tweet us @booktv, comment on our facebook wall or send us an e-mail. booktv, knob fiction books -- nonfiction books every weekend on c-span2. >> you've been watching book