A Paleoconservative War Story

And other essays

Below is a set of remarks prepared for a paper I am delivering at the Age of Reagan conference this week. It digests a much longer article draft that, if you are desperate to read, I can send to you.

Before I get to the story, I want to flag several pieces I have published lately. First, a long and long-promised essay on Curtis Yarvin in the Bulwark that updates some really early work I did on him. I argue Yarvin isn’t necessarily influential, but does shape the wider direction of the Right. A second piece in the Bulwark assesses the legacy of Ed Feulner, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, who died last week. Finally, for my friends at the Illiberalism Studies Program’s new Frontiers of Reaction, I have a new essay on James Burnham, Caesarism and Managerialism that draws on themes I have developed on this Substack.

Frontiers of Reaction is edited by Laura K. Field, and I recommend her terrific forthcoming book, Furious Minds, in the strongest possible terms. Now on to the essay.

If you have spent much time studying the intellectual history of the conservative movement, you’ve probably heard the tale of Mel Bradford.

According to the conventional narrative, Ronald Reagan had Bradford – a traditionalist, Southern conservative English professor who taught at the conservative University of Dallas – in mind as the future chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In some tellings of the story, Bradford is already the nominee. Bradford represented the “Old Right,” the true conservative movement, “right from the start,” arcing back to its earliest revolt against modernity and liberalism. And the new post at the Endowment was a reward – a critical piece of patronage for the Old Right’s support for Reagan, allowing Bradford to direct funds towards scholarship he favored.

However, a band of well-connected arrivistes also eyed the NEH chairmanship enviously. This group of “neoconservatives” led by Irving Kristol and including Norman Podhoretz and George Will, were not, in the Old Right’s mind, really conservative at all. But they demanded it for themselves. The patronage fight broke out into the press and the neoconservatives used underhanded tactics to assassinate Bradford’s character – particularly his traditionalist vision of the antebellum South – to steal the job away from Bradford and the Old Right.

Over the 1980s, Bradford’s supporters became increasingly disillusioned with Reagan and the conservative movement. They started to be known as “paleoconservatives,” defining themselves against the “neoconservatives” and purportedly standing for something much older. In this group's folklore, the Bradford affair, extensively recounted in their books and journals, is portrayed as the opening salvo in a personal and ideological struggle between the Old Right and the neoconservatives. This conflict, they argue, was not just about access to the Reagan Presidency, but also about the American Right's fundamental relationship with modernity, history, and the production of knowledge.

The conventional historical narrative follows the same beats as the paleoconservative one. It relies on the extensive and quite good journalistic coverage of the patronage fight, and the same particularly paleoconservative reminiscences. It’s repeated in just about every book on conservative intellectual history.

This story, however, is unsatisfying and incomplete. The narrative treats the nomination as a battle in discursive spaces: the neocons torpedoed Bradford’s nomination by burning his reputation in the press, rolling out George Will to attack Bradford in the Washington Post. As a matter of intra-conservative fights, the conventional narrative frames the nomination fight as a tug-of-war, with the victor claiming the spoils. In all of it, the Reagan Administration, which actually made the decision, is curiously inert – spectators ready to anoint whomever the wider movement chose instead of actively deciding in accord with their own aims.

A fuller version of the narrative, which I have reconstructed using archival sources and oral histories that focuses on the Reagan White House’s priorities and decision-making punctures the paleoconservative mythology. It also helps us understand the Reagan Administration’s own positioning and views regarding the wider conservative movement that assumed it had intellectual ownership over the presidency.

Myth one. Bradford as the prime candidate.

The first myth is that Bradford was the prime candidate or even the nominee.

During the Reagan Administration’s transition into the White House, they knew they wanted to replace the current NEH chair when his term ended in late 1981. Both their internal report on the NEH and one by the Heritage Foundation asserted that the NEH needed to be depoliticized and its chair replaced.

The transition team reported the new chair would need to be committed to academic excellence, be able to communicate with academics “in language they understand, and to the public and elected officials in the language they understand,” and be able to handle “the heat” of public scrutiny.

Bradford had consulted on the Transition team’s report and appears to have had the backing of some of its members. He also, critically, had the backing of a freshman Senator: John East of North Carolina. East sat on the relevant senate committee and was friends with Bradford through conservative movement circles.

But there was another early candidate too. William Bennett. Bennett’s name surfaced extremely early in the process – possibly before Bradford’s – and came from people well-connected to both the Reagan Transition team and the Heritage Foundation. Bennett, who was an emergent neoconservative academic entrepreneur, ran the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. He’d worked on Heritage’s report on the NEH himself.

He would later be backed, as Bradford was by East, by Irving Kristol, the so-called Godfather of neoconservatism. But far from neoconservatives “swooping in” with a candidate to steal it from Bradford, Bennett had been a favorite from the outset.

Myth two. The decision was close and ultimately decided in the press.

The conventional narrative suggests the decision to choose Bennett over Bradford was a close one and decided late in the affair, which really ran from September 1981 to mid-December 1981. In reality, the Reagan Administration, and especially its Office of Presidential Personnel led by Pendleton James rapidly decided on Bennett and, despite concealing the decision from the press, they never wavered in the decision.

The key actors here were James, his staff, and Reagan’s “troika” of Chief of Staff James Baker, Deputy chief of staff Mike Deaver, and Counsellor to the President Ed Meese.

James was a seasoned headhunter who had worked in the Nixon Administration. He professionalized the presidential appointment process and had secretly worked on appointments throughout Reagan’s campaign – a move many considered risky. The Reagan Administration’s process placed absolute control over appointments in the White House, rather than letting Cabinet secretaries have a free hand or letting Congress impose favors.

James and his office vetted candidates before making recommendations with alternatives to the troika. The troika then decided on a candidate for James to take to Reagan for a final decision.

The White House put off the NEH decision until the current chairman’s post was up. They delayed it further because of backlash the Administration had faced over threats to massively cut arts and humanities funding. The new chairmanship wouldn’t be decided until October. However, in mid-September, someone leaked a detailed account framing Bradford as the favored candidate. It made the front page of the New York Times.

James learned of Bradford’s putative favored status in the paper, and subsequently met with him. According to his recollections, he found Bradford's appearance and demeanor off-putting, and the Office of Legislative Affairs informed him that Bradford would likely face significant challenges in confirmation. James asked for other candidates. His office presented him with Bennett who ticked the ideological and qualification requirements for the White House, and presented as a much smoother candidate.

By October 14 – a deadline imposed to a luncheon related to the arts and humanities – Reagan’s senior leadership and probably Reagan himself had decided firmly for Bennett. This is before the majority of the Bradford saga had played out in the press.

The White House kept this decision quiet. Part of the Presidential Personnel Office’s process included checking with key figures from the candidate’s home state. Bennett lived in North Carolina, so this meant John East – Bradford’s key backer – and his mentor Jesse Helms. East was very upset.

The White House needed East onside in a close-run effort to sell Airborne Warning and Control Systems to Saudi Arabia, so they couldn’t easily ignore him. So the White House delayed announcing Bennett to give the impression of taking East’s concerns on board. “There is no question on how we will come out,” a key aide wrote in a memo, but one day did not give “the appearance of ‘due consideration’” for his concerns.

It’s during this delay – in which White House aides implied they had not decided – that the actions that caused the bitterest recriminations occurred.

Truth 1. The neoconservatives did interfere.

It’s true that Kristol and “about a dozen others” pushed Bennett and criticized Bradford. One of this group, William Simon, was extremely close to James and had his ear. Another, Michael Joyce, head of the Olin Foundation, had worked on both the Heritage and Transition team’s reports on the NEH. Simon and Joyce had significant sway with the Administration on education issues. They weren’t interlopers, but closely connected. They liked Bennett, a colleague. But they also disliked Bradford’s hyper-regionalism and well-attested anti-Lincoln views – which were no good for a Republican president.

Kristol and Joyce met with William F. Buckley and Heritage’s Ed Feulner and decided on Bennett. They called Ed Meese’s aide, Ken Cribb, who had been a conduit for traditionalists into the White House, and made the case for Bennett, further undermining support for Bradford in the White House.

The Phony War

During the delay in naming Bennett, East’s office pushed hard for Bradford. East and his aide James McClellan, part of a gang of hard-right aides East brought to Washington, got a letter of support for him signed by 16 Republican Senators, which they then leaked to the press.

Possibly in response, Kristol circulated a memo of “Quotations from Chairman Mel” highlighting Bradford’s impolitic published thoughts on Lincoln, slavery, and equality. (Another myth, this wasn’t actually the title, but a joke repeated in the press, probably with neoconservative origins).

Duelling leaks and comments in the press from each faction raised the temperature – all while the White House sat on their decision.

In late October, Bradford came to Washington again to campaign for the job. Bradford gave an impromptu press conference which was reported sardonically in the press. It's not true, as Bradford and his friends believed, that this press conference torpedoed his chances; however, it lent further credence to his critics' claims that he was not suited for the high-pressure office.

By mid-November, the White House felt they had reached a point where they could decently move to nominate Bennett over Bradford, especially since the AWACs deal had finally been concluded in the Reagan Administration’s favor in late October. Nevertheless, East’s aides, especially McClellan, worked hard for Bradford’s nomination.

McClellan drafted two memos for East.

One outlined the importance of the NEH chair for traditionalists. McClellan argued it was a critical post of cultural production and trend-setting. The Old Right had to hold it.

In the other memo, McClellan categorized the scholars Bennett had managed at the National Humanities Center by race, gender, and politics. “Many are radical leftists,” he wrote, “and a couple are actually Marxists or Communists.” There was “an abundance of blacks and feminists,” and, McClellan noted, a “large percentage of the recipients also seem to be Jewish.” From this evidence, McClellan argued, Bennett was clearly a liberal.

But McClellan also pointed at an exit strategy for East. Alongside the NEH Chair, the president also appointed 26 members of a National Council on the Humanities. There were nine upcoming vacancies and McClellan and Bradford reckoned three appointments would give traditional conservatives a “voice.” Bradford provided 20 names who would “blow the whistle” on liberal spending.

On November 13, President Reagan called East personally to put Bennett forward. East agreed, but asked for sway over council appointees and to meet Bennett for assurances. Finally, on November 18 – more than a month after they decided – the White House announced its intent to nominate Bennett. East acknowledged supporting Bradford, but called Bennett “an able man” whom he intended to support.

It seemed, at this point, that Bennett’s nomination would proceed smoothly. According to paleoconservative lore, Bradford’s supporters wanted to attack Bennett’s credentials in a like-for-like move. Bradford vetoed it. However, someone – possibly James McClellan himself – took McClellan’s memo about Bennett’s “liberalism” directly to Jesse Helms and pressed the case against Bennett. The influential North Carolina Senator had generally backed East. Now he told Reagan’s head of Congressional Liaison he felt “betrayed” by the Administration’s “assurances” regarding Bennett’s credentials and principles. Helms put a hold on Bennett’s nomination.

The Presidential Personnel Office, Bennett, and his backers, particularly Kristol and Joyce, scrambled to rebut the allegations made in the McClellan memo. They wrote strongly worded letters affirming Bennett’s experience and conservative bona fides, while attacking the assumptions underlaying the memo. The problem, Joyce argued, with liberal management of the NEH was that it privileged liberal projects. By contrast, the “conservative cause” can “triumph only under conditions of fair and open discussion.” Reflecting the Heritage and Transition reports, Joyce insisted the Reagan Administration not “turn the new NEH into a mirror-image of the old, simply substituting conservative bias for liberal bias.” The solution was ensuring “the highest standards of scholarship,” which Bennett had done. For his part, Bennett pointed out McClellan’s assessment of the scholars bordered on sexist and racist and was politically motivated.

Helms acquiesced around the same time George Will published a column in the Washington Post about the affair. The timing suggested, once again wrongly, that the battle had been decided in public, not in the White House.

Reagan appointed Bennett during the Senate recess on December 21; he was confirmed formally in early 1982. In exchange, East had five candidates nominated to the National Council on the Humanities, giving it a strong traditionalist hue. Bradford’s supporters remained bitter they had not won the major prize. Nevertheless, East won them some patronage and influence that they would maintain.

Where Bradford was a true believer but with undeniable baggage, Bennett “wasn’t anyone conservatives could have objected to.” The key decision makers in the White House valued philosophical commitment and respectability. Bennett met this demand. To them, he was a talented, clean-cut candidate who spoke in Reaganite shibboleths – namely scholarly excellence – and had, through the Heritage Foundation, demonstrated his commitment to Reaganite ideas about education. The White House correctly gambled that East and Helms could be managed through delays, and, ultimately, light concessions. “If we play it cool,” one staffer was reported as saying, “it'll all work out.”

The Transition team, Heritage Foundation, and Administration all cohered around scholarly excellence as a core concept for managing the Endowment. Despite his stated agreement with neutrality, Bradford carried with him a whiff of partisanship as an “old right” candidate with sectarian views who publicly mused about shifting the direction of Endowment funds. Bennett, on the other hand, had demonstrated capability as an academic administrator who focused on scholarship – so much so McClellan and Helms made an issue of it.

The affair was also an example in microcosm of a larger shift in conservative strategy away from Congress and toward the presidency. The neoconservatives’ presence in Washington or proximity to Washington and access to White House staff proved critical as they swayed those with direct responsibility for the decision.

If anything, the neoconservatives overplayed their hand. They pitched their arguments against Bradford too vociferously and too publicly such that they created enduring resentment. It was overkill; they had already won. Paleoconservatives read into the neoconservatives’ arguments and conduct a great disagreement about the nature of conservatism. While it is true that paleo- and neoconservatives had contradictory assumptions about the nature of American conservatism, the “Bradford affair” was decided – by the Reagan White House – on far narrower grounds.

In the end, East thanked Bradford. He had performed “a great service.” “Sometimes, in defeat, we gain more than we might have in victory,” East wrote. Perhaps that would be the case here. “Politics is a devious and unpredictable thing.” East continued to recommend Bradford for federal posts. Bradford dedicated his 1982 book The Worthy Company to East, “A Christian Statesman and Constitutionalist.” Paralyzed since 1955, East suffered further health setbacks. He declined to defend his Senate seat, and died by suicide in 1986.

Bennett’s performance as NEH chair, meanwhile, swiftly won over most conservative critics. It proved to be a career stepping stone. In 1985, Reagan appointed Bennett as Secretary of Education as he became a prominent conservative public figure. Asked if he had anything to say about Bennett’s Cabinet nomination, Bradford “replied that he thought Bennett would be a good choice for the job.” Bradford’s supporters and other paleoconservatives did not agree, and continued to see Bennett as a neoconservative wolf in sheep’s clothing. Bradford never received a high federal post. He died in 1993, aged 58.