IT WAS ROUGHLY SEVEN months ago that the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill went down to ignominious defeat. At the time, many pundits blamed or credited talk radio for the bill’s demise. While guest-hosting for nationally syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt at the height of the hubbub, I interviewed Mort Kondracke, who railed against the decidedly non-constructive role that talk radio played.
Meanwhile, in the talk radio community, the bill’s downfall occasioned a moment of joyous triumph. Since the day the compromising senators announced their grand package, talk radio had opposed the bill spiritedly and monolithically. My friend and mentor Hugh Hewitt was on the air when Republican senators released their talking points on the bill to friendlies in the media. Hewitt read the talking points on the air, and angrily dismissed them as “four pages of crap.” The battle was instantly joined, and in a few short weeks, it was won.
In the aftermath of the bill’s defeat, I interviewed former Reagan cabinet member and current talk show host Bill Bennett about talk radio’s role in the bill’s defeat. Specifically, I asked Bennett whether or not he felt he and his colleagues led public opinion. He responded, “All I do is provide a dial tone.” His meaning was his callers will think and say what they want; he provides the phone lines, they provide the opinions. Bennett’s modesty was striking in what could have been a moment of talk radio triumphalism. But he was right. And I’d take that analysis a step further–anyone who thinks talk radio leads public opinion also probably believes that trees push the wind.
In the last week, we’ve seen the conversation regarding talk radio’s impact renewed, only this time the conversation is running in the opposite direction. In spite of nearly universal animosity in the talk radio community, John McCain has prospered in the early primary states. This has led many commentators, including popular talk radio host Michael Medved, to declare talk radio “the big loser” in South Carolina.
It’s worth pointing out that Medved, virtually alone amongst his chattering peers (and I include myself in that category as Hugh Hewitt’s regular fill-in), views the McCain campaign without hostility. Nevertheless, his conclusion regarding talk radio’s lack of influence still has to be considered what lawyers would call an “admission against interest.” Like McCain’s favored approach, Medved’s analysis would seem a fine example of straight talk.
To buy his conclusion, though, one would first have to believe that talk radio wielded a disproportionate amount of influence, influence that inexplicably vanished amidst a South Carolina winter. Speaking from my experience behind the microphone, I would strongly dispute that conservative talk radio leads national opinion or even conservative opinion. We’re factors in the conversation, but we don’t lead it. The interests and concerns of the people lead the conversation. It’s truly a bottom-up phenomenon.
Conservatives didn’t need talk radio hosts to discover their antipathy towards the McCain/Kennedy reform. I pinch-hit for Hewitt several times while that debate raged. Whenever I tried to steer the discussion to anything other than the immigration dispute (merely to disrupt the monotony of talking about the same issue for three hours a day for days on end), the phone lines would die. Most of the listeners who called in would hang up; those who decided to dial in anyway did so to discuss immigration, even though I had changed the subject. I’m pretty sure all conservative talk show hosts found the same thing. The month of June 2007 was all-immigration-all-the-time on the air. The listeners had made up their minds on the merits of McCain/Kennedy before a single talk show host had said a word.
IF YOU WANT to crack the code of what conservative talk and conservative talkers mean to the body politic, you have to understand the composition of the conservative talk audience. The people who choose to spend their time listening to news talk are by definition high end news gatherers. They won’t be embarrassing themselves anytime soon by being unable to name our 16th president while Jay Leno snickers on a suburban Los Angeles street.
As high end news gatherers, these listeners have formed a lot of opinions before they flip on their radios. They are not waiting for Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, or even Michael Medved to tell them what to think. The latter fact is what makes Medved’s formulation regarding talk radio’s “loss” in South Carolina off base. Talk radio has never had even a metaphorical place on the ballot. What’s more, conservative talkers like Bill Bennett and Hugh Hewitt have always had a healthy enough respect for their audience to realize that their listeners are serious people who make up their own minds.
That being the case, some might wonder why listeners actually tune in to conservative talk. If they already know what to think, why do they need a conservative talk show host in their lives? The answer is simple–millions of people find the format entertaining. What’s more, every talk show host knows that if his show fails to entertain, it will also fail to find and keep an audience. Or at least every successful talk show host knows as much. There are some local guys who will spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon carrying on an endless monologue about secular humanism and then head home and angrily ask their wives, “What’s Sean Hannity got that I don’t?”
The inference that listeners who find a host entertaining and enlightening will follow that host’s dictates like a flock of obedient sheep is illogical. What’s more, I’ve never heard anyone in the talk show community express such a thought.
SO SHOULD POLITICAIANS care what talk show hosts think and say? Very much so, for precisely the same reason they care about what the New York Times says about them. The New York Times, when it lets go of its normally scrupulously maintained neutrality, can craft a narrative that affects events. Talk radio hosts can do the same.
But just as is the case with the Times, talk radio can’t bend the public’s perception at will. A talk radio host merely has the opportunity to make a case. If he or she makes a good case, it will change minds. If it’s a weak one, it will not influence the debate.
A talk show host can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In the past few years, we’ve seen individual conservative talkers defend such Bush administration follies as the Harriet Miers nomination, the Dubai Ports World deal, and the administration’s dilatory response to Katrina. Their advocacy failed to move not only the general public but also their conservative listeners, primarily because the Bush administration didn’t give them much to work with.
But those incidents don’t mean talk radio’s advocacy is irrelevant. Talkers Magazine, the bible of talk radio, estimates that Rush Limbaugh gets at least 13.5 million listeners a week. A sane politician would not want such a popular figure railing against him for days on end, anymore than he would want the New York Times editorializing against him for days on end–assuming of course the Times‘ editorial page enjoyed several times the readership that it actually does.
As far as John McCain is concerned, I’m sure he’d prefer talk radio give him a mulligan on the past seven years of mutual antagonism. Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s antipathy does not further the McCain campaign’s interests. The talk show hosts can make a strong case against the senator’s campaign, and the case they make will sway some of their listeners.
But their advocacy doesn’t doom McCain. The conclusion that McCain’s perceived electability along with his steadfastness on the war makes him the best Republican candidate is not manifestly unreasonable. And some talk radio listeners will reach that conclusion, regardless of what talk radio hosts say.
The flip side of that coin is that a bunch of conservative talk show listeners resolved years ago never to vote for John McCain. That subset of the audience doesn’t need any reminders from El Rushbo to strengthen their will.
And in the middle, in an audience of 13.5 million people, there have to be some who are susceptible to persuasion on the subject of John McCain. In other words, Rush Limbaugh and his fellow talkers will influence the primary results, but to an extent we simply can’t determine.
One last thought–conservative talk radio is part of a community of conservative commentators and thinkers. A prominent part for sure, but still just a part. Members of this community include Fox News, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, the National Review, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Charles Krauthammer, George F. Will and the influential members of the conservative blogosphere like the very smart people at Powerline, Hot Air and Pajamas Media. This is a starkly different terrain than the one politicians confronted in 1994, when conservative talk radio commanded a much higher percentage of the playing field.
A Republican politician who found himself opposed by all these disparate entities (let’s call that politician Mike Huckabee, just for fun) would indeed have a tough road to hoe. But it would be a mistake to conclude that a conservative politician needs the monolithic support of all conservative media to prosper.
McCain has his enemies, and he has his friends. Like all Republicans and all office-seekers, he would do better with more friends and fewer enemies. Contrary to Michael Medved’s suggestion, the enemies McCain has so assiduously cultivated over the years do make his nomination less likely.
But they do not make it impossible.
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
