I TAKE CREDIT FOR THE creation of The Weekly Standard–but only a portion of the credit. My cofounders, Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz, deserve more. In any case, it wasn’t exactly the brainstorm of the century to start a weekly conservative magazine on politics and policy (and a lot more on culture than I expected) in the news capital of the world, Washington, D.C.
Almost from the moment I joined the New Republic in 1985 to write about the White House and politics, I realized that something was missing in Washington journalism. Ronald Reagan’s White House, the most conservative of the 20th century, eagerly awaited the delivery of 30 copies of TNR each Thursday morning. True, that magazine was less liberal in those days, Charles Krauthammer being its star writer, but the Reagan crowd read it. I got feedback and access, even an off-the-record lunch with the Gipper himself. He was a clever and disciplined politician. He knew that nothing was really off the record in Washington. Anyway, the thought occurred to me that if theNew Republic was the only timely opinion magazine for the Reagan White House to read, there surely was more than enough room for a conservative alternative.
Jump to 1994. Led by Newt Gingrich, Republicans won an election that gave the party the House, Senate, and a majority of governorships. It was a smashing breakthrough for conservatives, more sweeping than Reagan’s triumph in 1980. The question was whether a conservative era had begun, or just a moment. Either way, the 1994 victory, coupled with the conservative media vacuum in Washington, was sufficient to justify a new magazine that would both reflect and influence the political mood.
The first meeting was at the Jefferson Hotel in January 1995. I was there along with Kristol, Podhoretz, Andy Ferguson, then writing for Washingtonian, and David Tell. I was ready to leave TNR and Podhoretz was willing to give up his job as TV critic for the New York Post. Kristol was running the wildly successful Project for the Republican Future, which had almost singlehandedly destroyed the Clinton health care plan. Tell was Kristol’s No. 2 at PRF. Kristol had other options, particularly the prospect of becoming a major strategist for Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign. (I contend The Standard saved Bill from the nightmare of the Gramm campaign.) At the meeting and in subsequent chats, we decided to go ahead with the magazine scheme. We had everything but a sponsor.
As luck would have it, Kristol knew Rupert Murdoch thanks to a mutual friend, Irwin Stelzer. So when Murdoch dropped by Kristol’s office a few weeks later, Kristol popped the question. Would he be interested in funding a new conservative magazine? Yes, he said. To lock up the deal, Kristol, Podhoretz, Tell, and I met over dinner with Murdoch in March 1995 at his home in Beverly Hills. Thanks to Murdoch’s generosity, The Standard was born a couple of months later.
The first priority was a name. The American Standard might have worked if it weren’t better known as the name of a firm that manufactures toilets. I think it was Podhoretz who suggested simply The Standard, but that name had been taken by one or more small publications we came upon when doing a trademark search through magazine titles. So we settled on The Weekly Standard. (Despite the name, I’m frequently asked, “How often does your magazine come out?”)
The next step was acquiring a staff. Richard Starr came from the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis. Claudia Winkler departed Scripps Howard to join. David Brooks left his job as op-ed page editor at the Wall Street Journal. Chris Caldwell arrived from the American Spectator. Tucker Carlson was writing a book for the Heritage Foundation when he signed up. I called an ex-intern of mine at TNR, Matt Rees, who was working for the Wall Street Journal in Brussels. I had never heard of Matt Labash, but Podhoretz had and wisely insisted on hiring him. Jay Nordlinger, now at National Review, showed such brilliance as a freelance proofreader of the first issue that he was brought on board as an editor the following week.
That first issue was published the Monday after Labor Day 1995. I suspect if you examine it, you’ll have a couple questions, like whatever happened to President Powell. Notice the headline ends with a question mark. That, in the secret code of journalism, means the answer is invariably going to be no, as it was in this case.
And what about “Permanent Offense”? I’ll have to take the rap for that. I picked up the phrase and the idea behind it from Gingrich and used it in the cover story. It was catchy. It was forward-looking. It never happened. There’s a lesson here about the difference between politics and journalism. Gingrich is long gone as the leader of congressional Republicans. The Weekly Standard lives on, 10 years old with this issue.
–Fred Barnes
