David Frum
David Frum
David J. Frumis a Canadian-American neoconservative political commentator. A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Frum later became the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic and also a CNN contributor. He serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the British think tank Policy Exchange, the anti-drug policy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and as vice chairman and an associate fellow of the R Street...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
CountryUnited States of America
[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak.
The Great Society went wrong for three major reasons. First, the self-organization the Johnson administration promoted turned out to be not the pooling of family and community resources into shops and businesses, but political pressure for government handouts. Second, the Great Society failed to anticipate the perverse side-effects of handing money out to people who have done nothing to earn it. Third, while the Great Society was showering money on the poor, the Supreme Court was with childlike glee smashing to bits traditional methods of maintaining law and order.
The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel).
There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.
Republicans have to move to a point of greater unity.
People who watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events.
Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.
The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies.
The elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped.
Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.
If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?
If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.
Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.
Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.