Conservative Journals Are Yukking It Up

Who says conservatives have no sense of humor?

National Review, the standard-bearer of the conservative movement, has been adding to a collection of “Interngate Jokes” on its Web site since the sex-and-cover-up allegations involving President Clinton erupted two weeks ago. (Among the tamer ones: “What is Bill’s definition of safe sex? When Hillary is out of town.” See https://www.nationalreview.com.)

Its first print issue addressing the crisis--dated Feb. 9 and going on sale this week--will show a dancing president and first lady and carry the cover line “Living in Spin.”

William Kristol, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard, told a radio host the other day that he barely had time for the interview because he’s so busy signing up new members of the “right-wing conspiracy” against the president.

Until two weeks ago, the easy reelection of Clinton, his resilience in the polls and the bull strength of the economy seemed to belie the attacks on him in the country’s leading political magazines. The circulations of the American Spectator and National Review, as well as the Clinton-scolding New Republic, had declined from levels reached after the Republicans’ seismic gains in the fall 1994 elections.

Now, as most officeholders continue to withhold substantive comment on the crisis in the White House, the journals of opinion that many of these same lawmakers read are being even more outspoken in their assessments of Clinton and his future. Besides finding humor in his plight, the publications also are firing sharp arrows of told-you-so.

“Whether it’s renting out White House bedrooms or committing adultery in them . . . whatever has besmirched American political life in the last half-decade is ultimately his fault,” the American Spectator wrote of Clinton online last week, when it named him “Enemy of the Week” (https://www.amspec.org). The Spectator, a monthly that Editor in Chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. founded in 1967 as a brass-knuckled alternative to William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review, four years ago published David Brock’s controversial investigation into how Clinton had allegedly used Arkansas state troopers to help him procure sexual favors while he was governor of the state. “What was called trash then now looks prescient,” the Spectator clucks online.

The Weekly Standard, an often playfully conservative magazine launched by Rupert Murdoch’s News America Publishing Inc. in September 1995, is the first of the publications to catch up with the Washington crisis in print. Its Feb. 2 issue is cover-illustrated once again by Sean Delonas (whose grotesque caricatures also appear in Murdoch’s New York Post): Under the words “The Perilous State of Clinton’s Union,” a bulbous Clinton addresses Congress as a menacing Saddam Hussein loads a pistol and a beaming Monica Lewinsky speaks into a tape recorder behind him.

“Congress may have a future role in the Lewinsky affair,” the acid-penned P. J. O’Rourke writes, “but we in the conservative media have a role to play right now. And our role is to stay out of it. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and the network news shows have been carrying Bill Clinton’s water for years. Now let them drown him.”

So much for subtlety. On the other hand, National Review, in the erudite tradition of Buckley, now editor at large, slyly introduces its new issue’s series of essays this way: “When the irresistible forces of lust and imprudence meet the immovable tenacity and spin, a citizen can: summon the Lord’s judgment; weep; or--enjoy the spectacle. Our contributors do all three.”

One of the contributors, former Solicitor General Robert Bork, scorns the law that provided for an independent counsel--and the president now dogged by the counsel’s efforts: “Given the evidence and the man’s past history, there seems no doubt that Clinton is guilty. He is certainly sexually compulsive and a master of the cover-up.”

Thomas “Dusty” Rhodes, president of National Review, said that he foresees a possible uptick in the biweekly’s newsstand sales as a result of interest in the Clinton story. At the same time, he explained that the magazine would seek to present a wider view of the crisis: “We ought to spend our time producing arguments with respect to public policy. If this scandal affects public policy--to the extent, for example, that defense policy is hampered by the scandal--then we’re interested.”

At the New Republic, a left-of-center weekly that has long had mixed opinions about Clinton, Michael Kelly was fired last year as editor after writing several pieces that were especially tough on the president and Vice President Al Gore, a close friend of Martin Peretz, editor in chief and owner. Charles Lane, who is Kelly’s successor, said it has been challenging to direct the magazine’s coverage of the latest Clinton crisis when so many “fine factual distinctions” can alter one’s opinion about what is happening.

Writing in the Feb. 16 issue (“The Politics of Betrayal”), Lane condemns law-enforcement sources for leaking information about prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation. But elsewhere in the issue, Clinton is referred to as “our libidinous president,” one undeserving of impeachment but no “moral leader” either.

Meanwhile, further to the left, The Nation presents in its Feb. 16 issue Robert B. Reich, Clinton’s former secretary of labor, who cites the president’s “bravura” State of the Union address and goes on to argue, “Why We Need to Renew the Social Compact.”

These political magazines have comparatively small circulations, but their influence in government, policy and journalistic circles is immeasurable, and that is why they continue to matter in this increasingly wired age.

“What we write in the magazine is far more influential than anything we say on TV,” said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a frequent guest on “The McLaughlin Group” and other TV broadcasts. “The New Republic and the Weekly Standard have ideological followings, sure, but their influence comes in the journalistic community, the political community, including the lobbyists and such, and the academic community.”

Craig Shirley, a Washington media consultant closely allied with conservative Republicans, said that a story in National Review reaches not only the GOP intelligentsia but key members of the National Rifle Assn. and the Christian Coalition, thereby growing in impact through repetition.

“These people reference a story, and some of that is repeated, maybe on TV during ‘The McLaughlin Group,’ and in the wider media,” Shirley said.

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com. His column is published Thursdays.

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Magazine Circulation

June 1996 June 1997

* The American Spectator 200,011 214,035

* National Review 196,073 171,120

* Mother Jones 135,843 148,193

* The Nation 100,010 102,271

* The New Republic 101,217 95,206

Source: Publishers’ statements of average paid circulation, filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

* The Weekly Standard last reported an average paid circulation of 60,064, for the six months ended Dec. 31, 1996.

* George, which has applied for membership in the Audit Bureau of Circulation, last fall claimed a monthly circulation of 410,000.