William
Kristol stakes out the middle with "post-partisan" comments
at Buchheit Lecture
by Stephen Yusko
William Kristol is a busy man.
He’s the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard,
a conservative political magazine based in Washington, D.C.,
a panelist on Fox News Sunday and a columnist for The New York Times.
To many on the political left, he is a pariah; they say
he’s a perennially wrong prognosticator whose hawkish views led to a debacle in Iraq. To
the right, Kristol is a powerful voice and an influential
leader.
Whatever your politics, Kristol is known as a vehement
partisan – “a particularly polarizing figure,” as
the Times’ public
editor Clark Hoyt wrote.
But on Tuesday, Kristol was in Columbia to give a lecture
and struck an entirely different tone: Resigned to his party’s
defeat, his analysis and predictions were sober and moderate.
Kristol was the featured guest of the 2008 Buchheit Family Lecture Series, presented by the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Standing behind a lectern at the Capstone House, he spoke for 30 minutes, before taking questions for 40 minutes.
He recapped the presidential race, reminding the audience
that, with two highly competitive primaries, this was an
unusual election.
“We haven’t really seen one like this in most of our adult lifetimes,” he
said.
Kristol’s speech was peppered with the occasional joke or jab at Democrats,
but he spent most of the time immersing his audience in election history and
minutiae.
A charged audience
The crowd in the Campus Room at Capstone, where turnout
of about 300 people had volunteers hustling in additional
chairs, was about two-thirds conservative. That estimate
is based on the aggressive clapping that followed Kristol
after he threw his fellow conservatives some red meat. He
called the audience “a little more sensible” than
those he spoke to at liberal-haven Harvard last week.
That section of the audience ate up
his partisan shots, and their laughter at jokes –one at the expense
of Sen. John Kerry, an easy target – was eager
and cathartic. There was a certain buzz to the audience,
with some partisans looking to use this event as an
opportunity to vent their frustrations.
But Kristol may have left them disappointed, as his
nonchalance and relaxed demeanor wasn’t in synch
with their nervousness surrounding the impending administration
of Barack Obama.
“I wanted to hear about Obama’s tax plan,” said
Becca Krygiel, a senior biology student who was described
as “obsessed” with Fox News by a friend
sitting with her.
Kristol on speaking in the
South...
An older man asked Kristol about reports
on the Internet that questioned Obama’s citizenship,
but Kristol quickly dispelled the notion.
Cordell Simmons, a senior political science student,
thought Kristol was appealing to a more balanced college
crowd.
“I appreciated the humor,” he said. “He
wasn’t very partisan tonight.”
Is this a turning-point election?
Kristol said Obama “deserved to win,” and
that 2008 could be a transformational election.
“It all depends on how Obama governs,” he
said. “He has a chance to reshape American
politics – or not.”
Obama’s team is aware of mistakes that Carter
and Bill Clinton made when they first came into office,
Kristol said. He pointed to the selection of
Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff as evidence
that Obama understands the political dangers of governing
from too far on the left wing.
“I think, analytically, Obama has a chance to
be a pretty successful president,” he said, “and
a pretty important one historically.”
For the Republicans, Kristol recommends looking to
young, state-level leaders to bring the party out of
the doldrums.
“There hasn’t been a lot of fresh blood
in the Republican party,” he said, “I’ve
got to think that Republican primary voters will instinctively
want to look for younger faces.”
Kristol on Obama...
But Kristol realizes where
the power lies after Democrats won the White House and
increased their lead in both houses of Congress.
“The ball is in Obama’s court,” he
said in an interview.
The Buchheit Family Lecture Series honors the late Phil
Buchheit, former publisher of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. Phyllis
DeLapp, who established the Buchheit Lecture, said it
was a pleasure to have such a nice turnout.
“I loved having Mr. Kristol here,” she
said. “It means a lot to our family to be able
to sponsor the event.”
Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communication
and Information Studies, introduced Kristol.
“I got to know Bill when he was chief of staff
at the White House for Vice President Dan Quayle, so
we go back 20 years,” said Bierbauer, who was a
Washington journalist for CNN at the time.
Bierbauer recalled being in Washington on Nov. 4 after
Obama had been projected as the winner. He heard
chants of “Yes we can” from people flocking
to the White House gates, and said the election result
was a clear declaration of change.
Kristol on Republicans...
In Obama’s victory speech, he said, “America
is a place where all things are possible.”
If William Kristol can come to town and sound downright
post-partisan, maybe he’s right.
Stephen Yusko, a senior majoring in print journalism, is studying in The Carolina Reporter this semester.
A native of Brookfield, Conn., he chose print as his major because of his interests in writing and in politics..
