“The Right Nation” and the New Media
We liked The Right Nation quite a lot, and why not? It is entertaining and readable, chock-full of facts, clever quotes and useful historical analogies, and pays us the honor of confirming our prejudices. Who can argue with that? To see what we think in general, read George Will and John Derbyshire together; both of them liked the book as well.
We do not want to write a review, but make only a couple of observations. First, the 400 page book devotes less than a dozen pages to the issues and election of 1994 (discussed here by us), in which power shifted dramatically, with 52 Democrat incumbents losing, and 73 Republican freshmen winning seats in the House of Representatives. We believe that understanding the New Media is important to understanding that election, and in this the book fails entirely. (Jacksonians and Walter Russell Mead do not make it into the book as well, but we don’t want to go off in that direction.)
Instead, let’s refer to the analysis of that election provided back then by Mother Jones(!):
[T]alk to the 73 Republican freshmen. They attribute their stunning victory to Rush Limbaugh, citing polls that show people who listen to talk radio 10 hours or more per week voted Republican 3-to-1.
Limbaugh is the national precinct captain for the Republican Party. And he works the precinct hard, five days a week, three hours a day. Like an electronic ward boss, Limbaugh explains the issues, offers the conservative GOP spin, rallies the faithful, and turns out the voters. It is a virtuoso performance, his harangue leavened by bursts of rock ‘n’ roll, bad-boy jokes, and moments of self-deprecating humor. It was no mistake that the Republican freshmen anointed Rush the “majority-maker” and inducted him as an honorary member of the 104th Congress at their orientation last December.
Another guy who started out in radio, Ronald Reagan, recognized Limbaugh’s importance back in 1992, when he declared Rush “the number one voice for conservatism in our country.” But the Democrats have been in denial. Before the Republican landslide last November, Democratic strategists shrugged off Limbaugh’s clout. “People who listen to the radio in the morning are normal people,” declared Clinton political adviser Paul Begala. “People who listen to Limbaugh in the afternoon are has-been, shut-in malcontents. I don’t pay much attention to right-wing, foam-at-the-mouth radio because they just talk to each other. It’s 20 million people telling each other how they hate Hillary.” It’s also 20 million voters, energized and mobilized by Mr. Limbaugh, as a chastened Begala discovered….. When it comes to defining their enemy, Democrats are stuck in a time warp.
For all their discussion of the grassroots nature of American conservatism, the authors of The Right Nation, Micklethwait and Wooldridge, also seem to be stuck in a time warp of sorts. They give no coverage to the vastly important 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, and give no mention whatsoever to talk radio other than a few mentions of Limbaugh. They commit the classic mistake of defining “dittohead” incorrectly (p. 112), and lump “Rush Limbaugh and the blondes at Fox News” together (p. 215). As for the blogosphere, it doesn’t exist. Andrew Sullivan gets a mention, but the Instapundit suffers the indignity of having his named misspelled (p. 164). It appears evident that the authors never bothered to listen to talk radio or use the blogosphere — hardly a good approach to getting a comprehensive understanding of the Right Nation. The final indignity is getting Scott Ott’s Axis of Weasels wrong (p. 216).
Perhaps we are being picky in expecting gentlemen who spend time discussing “the illusion of prelapsarian innocence” (p. 389) to venture into the lower precincts of the New Media. On the other hand, doing so may just have made Micklethwait and Wooldridge more than excellent observers of the American conservative scene — perhaps they would have become converts.