Writer Still Has ‘Axis’ to Grind

It’s not exactly clear whether David Frum knew that his phrase “axis of evil” would send shudders of fear and anger throughout the world when President Bush uttered it in the State of the Union address in January.

But, says Frum, who coined the unforgettable invective to describe North Korea, Iraq and Iran, “I had a pretty good idea it would be remembered.”

What came next, though, could’ve been a bit of a surprise. Before the White House speechwriter had a chance to savor his salvo, he was unemployed, and the Washington Beltway was buzzing about his sudden departure from the job he had held for only 13 months.

As he resurfaces locally on a weekly political talk show, Frum is circumspect about the drama that led to his sudden change in status. He’d “had conversations about resigning” days before the speech, he says. “I was tired.”

But most people think that he didn’t jump--he was pushed. Frum, after all, had committed the ultimate no-no in the famously disciplined, leak-averse Bush White House: taking credit for the “axis of evil” passage and thus deflecting attention from the president. “Nobody does that with George W. Bush and stays very long,” said conservative commentator Robert Novak on CNN.

Actually, it was Frum’s wife, writer Danielle Crittenden, who landed him in the doghouse. First word of Frum’s authorship appeared in the Toronto Sun, where Crittenden’s father is a columnist. Then Slate.com published an e-mail she’d posted to friends and family, in which she speaks of acting on her “wifely pride” and relishing the fact that her husband’s words could stand alongside such recognizable advertising slogans as “the pause that refreshes.” His phrase, she wrote, would be “repeated in headlines everywhere!”

In short order, headlines were also repeating news of Frum’s exit.

Once speculation began about whether he left his $85,000-a-year post voluntarily or involuntarily, the White House issued word that Frum and his family were away on a much-needed vacation at an unreachable Mexican location. The messy matter accelerated when a reporter (Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times) found them at their home in northwest Washington--which Frum explains as a misunderstanding over dates.

He offers various versions of what he calls “the-I-was-fired” story:

“First is the North Korean version, explained by a press agent from that country who says I was forced out by the wrath of the world. And then there’s the Beltway version, which says that the White House was mad at me [because of the leak]. Both are untrue.”

His wife, who had agreed to comment to the Los Angeles Times on the imbroglio (she says it had her feeling “like Lucy Ricardo”), reneged an hour later.

It’s been several months since all that notoriety, and Frum now works out of a downtown Washington office made available to him by the American Enterprise Institute, the free-market think tank. He couldn’t have engineered a softer landing. Before he packed his bags in the Old Executive Office Building in late February, he’d landed the book deal of his life--only one week after the leak and its attendant media brouhaha.

“Oodles and oodles of money,” is how Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, his agent at William Morris, describes the amount. “I had lunch with Random House publisher Ann Godoff the second week in February, and she said yes right away,” says Walsh. Dollar figures were not forthcoming anywhere, least of all from a tight-lipped Frum.

These days, the Toronto native, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, is frantically working to complete the manuscript of “The Surprise Presidency: The Transformation of George W. Bush,” which he’s promised to deliver by the end of the summer. (It’s a fourth book from the former Weekly Standard columnist whose last two were 2000’s “How We Got Here” and 1995’s “Dead Right,” both from Basic Books.) At home on a late afternoon, the 41-year-old champion of Republican conservatism settles down to a phone conversation, and apologizes for the occasional sniffling from his “terrible cold.”

He responds eagerly to questions about how he arrived at the worldview that led to his “axis of evil” formulation, a perspective that he’s again offering radio listeners on KCRW-FM’s “Left, Right and Center,” which he helped originate six years ago. The show filters the day’s news through the leanings of Frum (right, of course); Matt Miller, who moderates from the middle; columnist Arianna Huffington (floating above the fray) and columnist Robert Scheer (left).

“I’ve been politically conservative all my adult life,” Frum says firmly, and today he embraces a “might makes right” American nationalism.

“After 9/11 happened, those on the non-right asked, ‘Why is the rest of the world mad at us?’” Which is wrongheaded, he says. “But for conservatives, the rest of the world ought to be worried about what we think of them. When 15 Saudi nationals crash a plane into [American buildings], the question is ‘What’s wrong with Saudi Arabia?,’ not ‘What’s wrong with America?’”

Yet others argue that this is a myopic, unilateral view. As many on the “non-right” see it, the “talk big and scare ‘em” strategy not only conjures up memories of World War II’s Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan), but boldly brands as enemy nations the West is trying to urge toward democracy.

The fallout from “axis of evil” prompted Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to say that the White House needed to do considerable backpedaling. Small steps toward loosening the hard line within the government of Iran had been thwarted by the harsh rhetoric, he said. The Tehran “street” erupted and, according to PBS’ “Frontline” investigation “Terror and Tehran,” at least one of Iran’s reformers was subsequently arrested for treason.

“I wasn’t surprised at the world reaction and negative consensus on the ‘axis of evil’ designation,” says Frum. “But I think that reaction was very wrong. The unwillingness of some democratic countries to see evil as it is and call it by its name is not a sign of wisdom but of weakness. And what we have is a moral clash, not just a clash of interests. These regimes we’re fighting are as wicked as our planet has ever seen.”

European leaders, while cognizant of the dangers, take a more tempered approach. But Frum has his own idea of why they and less nationalistic Americans don’t share his proactive position:

“There are people who hear a sound in the basement and say, ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’ They don’t look downstairs. And there others who say, ‘It might be something. Let me go check.’”

While his black-and-white view doesn’t allow for alternatives that take more factors into consideration, it clearly defines the Republican conservative wing, according to Frum. “The Republicans are the party of liberty,” he says, talking about capitalism and the free-market system. “They’re confident that if you leave people to make their own decisions for themselves they will do the right and wise thing. Free choice produces the greatest good for everybody.”

On “Left, Right and Center,” an in-depth, entertainingly civilized yet passionate debate, Frum holds forth with his crisp, rapid-fire delivery. And he stands up to his two opponents. He calls Scheer “someone who has more in common with [recently defeated French rightist Jean-Marie] Le Pen than with me ... and someone so far left that there’s no national Democratic candidate he could vote for.”

Scheer refutes that assertion as “nonsense” and says, “I felt very comfortable voting for Clinton, and I don’t believe in dismissing people. Tell Frum to take it back. But he’s great,” says Mr. Left, good-naturedly. “All our right-wingers have been good.”

Huffington says she enjoys sparring with Frum: “He’s not a person with knee-jerk opinions but is someone who’s well-read and capable of arguing in depth. The ‘axis of evil’ argument is one that we’ll be debating with him about.”

The ex-speechwriter is also reliving his “axis of evil” days by way of his book, which is due out in January. And it seems the White House will have nothing to worry about with author assessments like this:

“Bush got things right [in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks]. He wasn’t too hot or too cold, too bellicose or too pacific. He didn’t make it sound like it would be too easy or too hard. And all this against the narrow mandate and low expectations people had for him.”

If there is either regret or rationalization about the precipitous end to his dream job, he’s not telling.

“Let me put it this way,” he says. “Asking why one leaves the White House is like asking why he stops running 440-meter sprints. The legs give out.

“The guy we expect to stay for eight years has his own doctor on call.”