Mark Franke

Perhaps the most lasting and significant relationship I developed during my undergraduate years, getting married and having my first child excepted, was to become a member of Young Americans for Freedom. The people I met influenced my thinking, particularly to think in a disciplined and systematic manner. I developed friendships, some of which lasted well beyond our college years.

One person I met briefly was R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who at the time was editing an intellectual magazine out of the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. Tyrell and colleagues, including the fascinating John “Baron” von Kannon who went on to a career with the Heritage Foundation, were brilliant in their recognition of hypocrisy on the left and exposing it to clever ridicule in The Alternative. One of my favorite columns was inside the back cover and entitled “Braying from the Barnyard,” a collection of inane quotes by leftists referred to as “assorted jackasses” if memory serves.

Eventually The Alternative became mainstream without becoming supercilious or establishmentarian. They renamed it The American Spectator, moved to Washington and eventually achieved a circulation of more than 300,000, more than even National Review, as Tyrrell unabashedly points out.

Tyrrell’s “How Do We Get out of Here?: Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator — From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump” (Post Hill Press 2023, 354 pages with notes, $18 hardcover at Amazon) is part autobiography, part exercise in name-dropping. At least I first thought it was mostly name-dropping until I came to the realization Tyrrell actually was a significant national journalist with a lot of high-powered friendships.

By following Tyrrell’s path through his travels, and he did a lot of international travel in search of essays and authors, the book gives one an enlightening history of conservatism during the past 50 years. I don’t know how Tyrrell and his wife managed to attend so many state dinners, Georgetown cocktail parties and political receptions.

One should never be surprised by what someone like Bob Tyrrell is up to next, but I had no idea he became a friend of Richard Nixon post-Watergate. Or that he met so many times with President Ronald Reagan, so much so that staffers who Tyrrell calls the “assistant presidents” worked to counter his influence.

The chapters on the culture wars are among the best. Tyrrell presciently understood the Reagan victory in 1980 was only a political one unless conservatives influenced the culture as well. This is what he told Reagan, to the chagrin of the assistant presidents. He even coined a name for what was happening to western culture — the “Kultursmog.”

Despite the Spectator’s sarcastic irreverence for nearly everything establishment, the magazine still managed a high-brow patina. The writing was meant to be read by the cultural elite, especially the self-appointed elites, and so Tyrrell recruited some of the best thinkers in America and in Europe.

So much of Tyrrell’s professional life revolved around formal dinners. Expensive and exclusive dinners seemed to be his standard operating procedure and at first I thought it was simply braggadocio on his part. But then I revisited the personal relationship he had with several presidents. He became friends with Richard Nixon after Nixon’s resignation. He was invited to the Reagan White House on several occasions and he even reciprocated by inviting Reagan to dine at Tyrrell’s own home. The account of all the security requirements surrounding that dinner is a worthwhile read in itself.

Tyrrell’s relationship with Donald Trump is interesting. Tyrrell was active in the Trump 2016 campaign, traveling with the candidate and writing speeches. His take on Trump’s disposition was one of positive optimism about the outcome of the election even in the face of negative polls. Tyrrell believes that changed when Trump received evidence that he was being targeted by the intelligence community in a politically motivated investigation. It was then that his mood turned to a combative one. So Trump wasn’t always like that? My memory of those days leaves much to be desired so I will accept Tyrrell’s take as true.

My only regret with the book is that Tyrrell doesn’t discuss the decline of The American Spectator from its 300,000 monthly circulation to a website, though still with interesting essays. Was it related to the Clinton administration’s retaliatory persecution of the magazine and its editors for the hard-hitting investigative work of all the Clinton misdeeds, sexual as well as financial? Defending against the Clintonites cost the magazine in excess of $1,000,000 in legal fees. That would sink any not-for-profit publication.

Tyrrell’s wit is present in the book but not overbearing. In fact I would have enjoyed even more of it. It is subtle and might be missed by the unappreciative. It is with his wit that Tyrrell has always been at his best. And make no mistake, Tyrrell’s best is good indeed.

Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Send comments to [email protected].