Ross Douthat's Pivot to Video

Full disclosure: whatever my disagreements with him, I fundamentally like Ross Douthat. We have occasionally commented on each other’s work. We have had a coffee or two in person. The same people in the national conservatism ecosystem irritate both of us. Some of Douthat’s columns infuriated me, but others had a valuable nugget of insight.1

For my money, Douthat’s greatest strength as a columnist was to take conservative ideas seriously and to serve up the most benign possible interpretation for conservative motives. The value in this exercise was that it caused readers — myself included — to move past an easy dismissal of beliefs that might otherwise be dismissed out of hand and consider the possibility that they might have some staying power.

Unfortunately, Douthat’s greatest weakness was also his belief in benign conservative motives, because it created blind spots when it came to Trump and his movement. On the other hand, Douthat applied a harsher view towards liberal ideas, including the one that declared Trump to be a threat to American values. Douthat pooh-poohed the notion that anything untoward would happen on January 6, 2021. For most of Trump’s time in power, he assumed that Trump’s incompetence sabotaged his malevolence. In 2017 I probably agreed with Douthat on that point, but with each passing year the malevolence has become harder to ignore. That reduced Douthat’s value over replacement columnist with each year Trump was in power.

Late last month the news broke that conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was leaving for Bari Weiss’ 60 Minutes. This past weekend Douthat penned his last column, one that acknowledged the ground that had shifted under his feet over the past decade — but nonetheless put all of his faults on display:

Watching this crisis unfold, I find that I’ve lost my sense of which contemporary worldview is most in need of criticism or opposition, where the good guys and bad guys are. Each major faction seems potentially dangerous, tempted toward the dark side in some unique way, contested or cross-pressured to a degree that makes me uncertain where the side of the angels really lies.

Start with the populism that has risen to power because of the elite consensus’s failures. For many conservatives who shared my critique of the Obama-era establishment, the populist rebellion has been the vessel for their hopes. But in Donald Trump’s second term populism has displayed most of the vices that its critics anticipated. It has been corrupt and bullying and destabilizing. It has rewarded hacks and cronies. And it stumbled into a Middle Eastern war with even less preparation than its establishment predecessors.

For many liberal readers, these sins make populism the maximum danger, the singular emergency. But as Trumpism has flailed and failed, it hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents. At the moment, Trump 2.0 has no great popularity, no legislative capacity, no policy legacy that a Democratic successor can’t easily roll back. The president himself might still be a dangerous figure, there might be darker forces waiting in the wings — but I don’t think that justifies making anti-populism the measure of all things.

It is the “Trumpism has flailed and failed, it hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents” sentence fragment that is the perfect kind of trolling. Trump’s most alarmed opponents probably thought he would declare martial law, and he hasn’t done that. Still, the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, the massive increases in the DHS budget, the mass deportations without much in the way of due process, and the abject corruption of the Department of Justice are all: a) real bad; and b) pretty institutionalized. So I think it absolutely justifies making anti-populism the measure of all things.

Furthermore, even failed Trumpism has long-lasting consequences. Indeed, it’s a shame Douthat failed to read the NYT’s detailed story of the Reflecting Poll fiasco before publishing his final column. Although a minor story in the grand scheme of things, the Times’ reporters provide an excellent explanation for why it merits coverage: “the pool, which was supposed to reflect the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, became a striking reflection instead of the second Trump administration’s willingness to skirt laws, expend millions of dollars, ignore facts and punish truth tellers in service of the president’s demands to put his mark on the capital.” Well, yes.2

Still, perhaps the saddest aspect of Douthat’s departure is what his decision to join Bari Weiss at 60 Minutes reveals about his thinking. Douthat, a man of letters well-versed in the classics, is leaving the world of print for the world of video. It’s almost like he read Rose Horowitch’s Atlantic essay about the decline of reading and decided to follow the trend:

The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse….

Americans also get much less of their news through reading than they once did. In 1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do. Most Americans now get the news on their phones and laptops, and 40 percent say they prefer to watch or listen to online news rather than read it….

Cultural and economic power tends to flow to people who are skilled at using the most popular communications technology. Today, those people are streamers, podcasters, and influencers.

In pivoting to video, Douthat believes he can exert greater influence — a belief that he shares with some of his colleagues on the left I might add:

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, which is really, really into text, hopes that Douthat is wrong about the future of text. Beyond that, however, I wish his the best of luck at raising the bar at his new locale.