Bill Kristol on Friendship, Neoconservatism, and Zohran Mamdani

The Forum's full interview with Bill Kristol.

Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Full Interview: Bill Kristol

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The following text is abridged. It features highlights from The Forum's interview with Bill Kristol. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Dhriti Jagadish: You began as an academic in the realm of political philosophy, so we have to ask, what are you reading nowadays? What do you recommend? 

Bill Kristol: Not as much political philosophy as I should. As I’ve gotten older, I'm slightly more inclined to literature and to history, but I still try to read a little bit of political philosophy—and I always love mystery novels. Writing the “Morning Shots,” the newsletter at The Bulwark, keeps me pretty busy. And so when I read, it's often for work. For relaxation—mystery novels and some literature, history, and stuff. 

Shiv Parihar: Of all the books you've read, what are some of the top ones you'd recommend to us, especially as college students? 

Bill Kristol: That’s a good question. I’ll say Harry Jaffa’s book—to take a Claremont former professor—Crisis of the House Divided, had a big impact on me in college when I read it. I was already a student of [Harvey] Mansfield, and I'd taken Mark Blitz. I was in his tutorial my first year. That's how I got into political philosophy.

And [Jaffa] showed how interesting political history could be—and statesmanship. Political theory wasn’t here [points upwards] and politics just down here [points downwards]—there was a kind of bridge between the two. 

I wrote my senior thesis in college on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and that always had a big influence on me. I had an instinct that Tocqueville was a much deeper thinker than people at the time thought. Now I think it's more common to read Tocqueville in political philosophy classes and think about him as Mansfield [and others did]. 

Oakeshott—I read a little bit, but that was never quite my taste in conservatism. I was more American and less traditionalist. I was a young conservative, or semi-conservative, kid and I was anti-New Left. So when my contemporaries were discovering Marx and various Marxists and neo-Marxists—or lefties from the late sixties—I was discovering Burke and people in that tradition. I was sort of a Burke, Tocqueville, Churchill type person. 

Churchill is really worth reading because he's so accessible. And leave aside the books about Churchill. His own autobiography, My Early Life, is so interesting. [So are] all six volumes [about] how you stumble into a war like [World War II] and how it could have been avoided, perhaps, or dealt with earlier.

My recommendation to people who love politics is that they shouldn't read only politics. And people who love political philosophy shouldn't read only political philosophy. You should read some history. History is a very good grounding [for] the world. It took me a while to correct myself. I was in so much political philosophy that I sort of ignored the fact that, well, history also happens, and history happens in very contingent and unpredictable ways.

You can study the theoretical version of modern liberalism or communism, but then an awful lot of what really happens is much more mixed and murky and complicated. And I think that's a good lesson. 

Dhriti Jagadish: Transitioning to politics now, I had the chance to listen to your son-in-law, Matt Continetti, this summer at Hudson. He said that “a surplus of the college-educated elite could lead to radicalism.” It’s true that we, students, are very out of touch. We don't have the pulse of the American populace.

What advice do you have for us, in the time we have left in college and beyond? How do we stay informed and also stay empathetic [from within] this ivory tower?

Bill Kristol: I disagree with Matt a little bit on this, I guess. 

Not everyone has to be constantly in touch with everyone in America. You’re as American as anyone else is. If you're a student at Claremont, you're no more or less American than if you're a 54-year-old unemployed steel worker. The way the press writes, it's, “That guy is the real American and you're the pampered coastal elite.” But that’s ludicrous. Claremont’s a part of America, New York’s part of America. 

Obviously at some point, if you want to go into politics—or if you want to understand the whole country—you need to get some understanding of parts of the country that you're not familiar with. But I think people overdo this sometimes, honestly. It's fine to go to college, read great books, and hang out with your peers at college. You don't have to, at age 22, have a comprehensive knowledge of all America. 

I'm slightly on the side of: study what you want to study, hang out with people you find interesting. And if you decide that you want to have a better understanding of America as a sociological place, you should go at some point to Dayton, Ohio and so forth, and see what's going on there. 

Shiv Parihar: You worked for Dan Quayle [as chief of staff] from 1989 to 1993. A few years ago he was back in the news. It was reported that he was a very powerful force in convincing Mike Pence to go forth with a peaceful transition of power in 2020. As you knew Quayle and worked for him, are you inclined to believe that story as it was reported? Do you have your own perspective on [the] role Quayle may have played? 

Bill Kristol: He’s a good person and a serious person. He hasn't been much involved in [politics since his vice presidency]. He tried to run for president. That wasn't gonna happen. I think he just decided, “You know, I've done what I could do.” 

I don't see him quite as much, just because he's not in Washington too much. We’re on good terms and all that. I'm very proud that, when Pence called him, he told Pence the right thing and bucked him up—and had no question about what the right thing to do was. 

As VP, I think he [Quayle] was underestimated and slightly unfairly criticized at times. [So] I'm glad he was able to get deserved credit for having not just good judgment, but a set of real principles.

Dhriti Jagadish: Jonah Goldberg had a piece yesterday about his relationship with Tucker Carlson, who used to write for you at the Weekly Standard. [Carlson] wrote a piece celebrating the withdrawal of Pat Buchanan from the party in 1999, and today he’s unrecognizable. Did you see any inklings of this shift when you knew him? 

Bill Kristol: Well, it was a long time ago. I think he left the Weekly Standard in 2000. 

People do change, and I don't really like this game of,  “I'm gonna now go back and find this part that really prefigures that.” I don't know what happened. I believe in human agency, mostly, and people are responsible for what they are and what they become. 

But in this case, he's [Carlson] made his choices. I think it's very legitimate from my point of view to criticize him. It's interesting as a kind of biographical matter, obviously—how did someone get from here to there? But I focus more on what people are doing and saying in the moment. 

What I do think is, it's been a moment when people had a chance to step up or not. Or not just not step up—like in his case—[but] really go in and be irresponsible and damaging to the country. 

Shiv Parihar: On a similar note, are there any of your older Republican friends that you've remained quite close to, even if they’ve supported the direction the party's gone, or things it’s done? For instance, maybe someone like Norman Podhoretz? 

Bill Kristol: Norman's quite elderly. I’ve haven’t really been in touch with him much. I think he's in decent shape. Obviously old friends are old friends and we remain cordial. That's true of some people who served [in] the Trump first term. 

I think if you're in another profession—an engineer…or a physician—I assume you can have very close friends [despite political differences]. Politics isn't central to your life. Maybe it's a little awkward sometimes. Maybe there's a little jousting. But 80 percent of your conversation isn't about it. And you have a million other overlaps—in your interests, your hobbies, your families, your communities, church. And so it’s easier in those cases to have close friendships where you're at odds in politics.

I’m in [politics] for a living, [so] it's a little harder to say, “I'm just gonna put all this aside.” But I’ve had many friends who I disagree with over the years. The Trump era is different, I think, from normal political disagreements. I had plenty of friends who were against the Iraq War, and that was a policy disagreement. It was a pretty heated one at times. 

But at the end of the day, we all wished the country well. We all were in favor of the constitutional processes—the legal processes—that did in this case, produce a vote to authorize the use of force. But that was a different kind of situation. I do think the Trump situation has put real stress on old friends and friendships and even acquaintanceships.

I have not had personally—unlike some other friends of mine—dramatic break offs. I've drifted away from a lot of people I was reasonably friendly with and close to. And I do feel—especially with my colleagues at The Bulwark —that I'm in touch with younger people [who] are thinking about the future, not just because it's intellectually interesting, but because they are going to live in it and their kids are really going to live in it. 

My main advice to 22 year olds is: things will change. You'll change. That's good, not bad. You should be open to change, including in your political views, your interests, your tastes, and your friendships to some degree.

I do think people who try to keep an open mind about life, who try to keep learning as they get older—who don't get into a defensive shell, if possible—tend to have more fulfilling, more satisfying lives. 

I don't mean to be too glib about how easy it is to do this—but I think it's good to be somewhat less judgmental than you are when you're 22.

Dhriti Jagadish: It’s clear that you've kept an open mind. You've recently expressed positive sentiments about Zohran Mamdani—

Bill Kristol: Or at least not so negative sentiments. 

Dhriti Jagadish: Which trends in the Democratic Party are you optimistic about? What are some tactics you may think work? 

Bill Kristol: I'm closer to the centrist Democrats than the left-wing Democrats. Predictable. I’m closer to hawkish Democrats, as that’s one thing I haven't changed my mind much about. I still think the Scoop Jackson-Reagan-McCain view of the world is basically correct and basically the right policy for us. 

Things went badly in Iraq. Mistakes were made. And we made some bad judgment calls, including me. But I still think, fundamentally, we should be strong and there should be a global system of alliances. I thought the people who went in after 9/11, many of whom are now serving in Congress, have been a very important change for the Democratic Party from [the] excessive, “We can't use force and power doesn't matter—it’s all about the UN.”

I like the more free, pro-free market Democrats. I like the less left-wing, identity politics Democrats. Having said that, it's a big party. I don't have a whole lot of standing to really tell them what to do, because I'm relatively a newcomer from their point of view. I like to be part of the discussions. A lot of people have put very hard work into the Democratic Party on the progressive side, and they have the right to try to nominate their candidates and push for bigger government healthcare solutions than I would prefer.

People who’ve been in the Democratic Party for 30 years are much more hostile to each other than I am actually, since, for me, it's a little like coming from outside. It’s sort of, “Okay, you know what? As long as you're against authoritarianism and for the rule of law, and basically for a market system with a welfare state, basically for American global leadership, and basically for welcoming immigrants and [for] a tolerant nation, then I'm sort of okay with it.”

And so I found myself a little bit of a big tent Democrat. I think a lot of the younger Democrats are quite impressive. Uh, I wish—

Dhriti Jagadish: Any names [in Democratic politics] stand out to you?

Bill Kristol: I live in Virginia. So, Abigail Spanberger, who I think will win in November, is really excellent. It might be [Mikie] Sherrill in New Jersey, [and she is] excellent. And so, part of my core praise for Mamdani has been that if we elect three Democrats who win in November—the three big races, really—and it’s Spanberger or Sherrill and Mamdani? That’s okay.

New York City gets to have a left-wing mayor. It’s not the first time, and it’s different from the rest of the country. I wish they were a little less tolerant of certain things—against Israel and all that. But some of the economic stuff, I think, is just silly, but I don’t think it’s going to matter.

Shiv Parihar: Do you think you would vote for him [Mamdani] if you were voting in New York? 

Bill Kristol: You know, I think so. I really can't think—the idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn't have even ranked Mamdani and would've had other people who were more centrist, liberal types. 

It was very disappointing. All these big shot finance types in New York, they couldn't get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It's really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they're rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don't have that much sympathy for that. 

And I also just think, practically speaking, New York is a huge city. He's not going to destroy it, I don't think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores. I don't think he even will do that. So there'll be some grocery store somewhere and it won't be as good as the privately run ones, and it will go out of business in three years and it'll be a little bit of a waste of taxpayer money, you know? 

Or it'll be harmless. I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He's a very impressive politician. I don't know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He's 33 years old, he's never run anything. They're good people who could work for him though, in New York.

So, who knows? I don’t know. 

As I've gotten older, I'm a little more hesitant. Mayor, governor—especially those—are pretty place-specific jobs. And if you don't live in the place…you read stuff online, and you get a little glimpse of Gavin Newsom here and Shapiro there. And of course, you watch clips of them, so you'd have some opinions. But you don't really know, you know? I do not really know what kind of governor Gavin Newsom’s been. 

Now, I do think in Virginia, I have a much better sense of what the governor's effect has actually been. So, I've gotten more hesitant, especially on the state and local races, of having extremely firm judgments about people. Obviously I prefer generally pro-free-market and so forth, and anti- too much government planning, and foolish planning. 

Shiv Parihar: I wanted to circle back a little bit to your response to the last question [on Podhoretz]. 

I'm curious how you see old neocon and paleocon debates [like those between Pat Buchanan and Podhoretz] playing out similarly today in the Republican Party. Now that we are approaching the post-Trump era, and the coalition is going to have to find other ways to define itself ideologically and policy-wise…

Bill Kristol: I'm not so sure we're approaching the post-Trump era, first of all. We may be approaching post-Donald Trump [but] you could be in a Trumpist era. 

Shiv Parihar: Post-Trump presidency, at least. 

Bill Kristol: Maybe. He’ll probably run again though. But anyway—I do think the paleocons were kind of a precursor of Trump in a different way, and Trump is a much more effective demagogue than they were. 

He’s more of a con man, more of a showman, and he is more in touch with actual middle America. He's been selling stuff to them for 40 years. He had a much better feel for how to do all this than someone like Buchanan. Buchanan was a gifted political figure in his own way. A talented polemicist. 

Those fights were a little bit of a precursor. We, the neocons, basically won those fights for 20, 30 years—and then lost. So that's what happens in life. You have to keep fighting the fight. I do regret that some of the neocon types have assimilated—have accommodated Trump. 

There are two aspects to Trumpism I think that…people like me objected to. One was the policy. I do think a lot of it could do quite a lot of damage, especially in foreign policy. The tariffs and the immigration stuff is really reprehensible, and foolish—just damaging. But, the policy stuff could be reversed. 

We could have a crackdown on immigration now, and we could have liberal immigration policies in three years, same with tariffs and so forth. Some of the other stuff’s a little harder to reverse, [such as] global alliances. But that was never my fundamental objection to Trump. There've been plenty of Republicans who were a little more in that direction. I might not have voted for him, but I wouldn't have said, “Never Trump.” 

It was always, for me, about the authoritarianism. And people dismissed it. “So you don't like the tweets, the style, the tone.” But that was never it. I mean, the style and the tone conveyed [that]  he didn't have any respect for the rule of law. He didn't have any respect for constitutional limitations. He didn't have any respect for fellow citizens who…didn't agree with him.

The really bad thing is that he's been as bad as I feared. He was checked in his first term by internal guardrails in the administration. And Mark Esper and all the other characters obviously. Once January 6th happened, I thought, “Well, maybe that's it.” Once he survived that and got himself back on top of the party, I thought, “The second term is really going to be very bad.” And it has been, in my opinion. 

So the people who are still on board, or who are more on board now—I find that somewhat bewildering. And especially if you're older. It's one thing if you're 30 years old, you sort of want a future in politics. For people your age, all you've had is Trump for the Republican Party. [So you go,] “I'm on the right, I'm gonna be Republican.” You're young, I understand that, and I don't hold people quite as accountable. 

And then if you're 30 years old, you're ambitious. “Okay, I’m gonna swallow hard and go in, because if I can rise up, I could be [an] Assistant Secretary of State when I'm 36.” I don't approve of that, but I sort of understand. Why people who are at the end of their careers felt they had to go along with this—I am somewhat mystified by that and disappointed.

Shiv Parihar: Who surprised you most? 

Bill Kristol: That's hard to say. I don't know. I’ll pass on that, I think.

What I was going to say before though, was—in 2016, I thought there was some chance I was wrong. That is, one can miscalculate. “Maybe he’ll become president, he'll feel the weight of the office. He won't be a great president. He'll do some stupid things. I will cringe a lot when he says certain things, but at the end of the day, it'll be four years.” I thought that was the best case, and I wondered if I was overreacting in that sense. 

Dhriti Jagadish: I know you’re certainly not naive enough to think that just because Trump is gone, MAGA will be gone. But a successor hasn't been named. So I’m wondering: who do you think is the closest secondhand man to Trump at the moment? And what does he or she have to do to adopt the MAGA brand in the next three years? 

Bill Kristol: It’s a good and interesting question. My main answer to it is: given how unpredictable everything’s been over the last ten years—we didn’t expect Trump, we didn’t expect Biden, we didn’t expect Trump to come back after January 6th—who knows?

I could give you a more conventional honestly analysis based on my experience. Vance has probably consolidated a fair amount of power and support as a loyal VP to Trump. We could speculate about how the movement probably fractures, because history suggests that the original demagogue—the original cult leader, if you want to be a little less friendly to him—is the strongest. Right? It’s a little harder to hold it together. 

You can imagine it fracturing. Tucker Carlson, Vance, some modern Nikki Haley type, DeSantis, Abbott. It could be a lot of them. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and God knows. 

I just think we haven’t really run this experiment before. But also, you’d have to tell me: is the Trump presidency closing in 2028—if it does close in 2028—with 5 percent growth for the last three years and a successful foreign policy? Or is it closing with a tariff-induced recession? [Will we be] throwing our weight around in little places while Europe and Asia fall apart as we do nothing? So much depends on that kind of thing. 

Bill Kristol: The Democrats more broadly—they’re a traditional political party in America: a coalition, unruly, complicated, with cross-cutting cleavages, generational cleavages, left-center, [and] regional problems. I feel like one could game that out. I’m not saying we could predict it, but we could say what’s likely: who’s going to emerge in these elections, who are the leading centrists, who are the leading leftists, who ran before and might be strong, who was governor of a major state. I feel like that would be a normal conversation. 

But the Trump Republican Party is such a different animal. It doesn’t lend itself to that conversation. It’s much more like figuring out the succession in some semi-authoritarian movement, and that’s pretty unpredictable if you look at history.

So I don’t know. I am pessimistic about the return of a sane Republican Party. I’m pessimistic about a sane conservatism. Look at who’s getting elected. He’s [Trump] been the leader of the Republican Party for a decade. Most people in the House have arrived in the last decade. 

A fair number of senators at this point have arrived in the last decade, or just before, but then accommodated to Trump early enough that they’re basically pretty Trumpy. The old Republican Party is old, and it hasn’t won a lot of elections. There’s Brian Kemp here, and a couple of people there…

I can go have coffee with Larry Hogan, and I can have lunch with Bob Corker, and that’s all very nice. I can chat with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I don’t think that’s coming back fast.

Now, that could be wrong. Things can change. I’d say the upside is: first of all, the Trump thing happened quite quickly. The 2012 Republican ticket was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. The 2014–2015 Republican leadership in Congress was John Boehner, then Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. It wasn’t obvious in early 2015 that this is all just going to fall apart and we’re going to have Trump.

Everyone now has decided that was obvious after the fact, right? “Oh, they were zombie Reaganism, it was old and stale.” It didn’t feel that way. Scott Walker seemed to be a successful governor of Wisconsin. Bobby Jindal was a young, impressive, successful governor of Louisiana. Jeb Bush, if you wanted another Bush, was from Florida. Ted Cruz was an impressive conservative from Princeton [and a] Supreme Court clerk. It wasn’t obvious that it was going to go the way it went.

So the flip side of that is maybe it could all change much faster in a different direction. Politics does sometimes do that.

Shiv Parihar: Professor Jon Shields at CMC had an article in the New York Times about how he thought liberal professors might influence younger conservative students towards a center-right conservatism, as opposed to [a] more Trumpy, MAGA [type conservatism]. I was curious, what sort of things do you think young conservatives, maybe Trump-skeptical [young conservatives], should be thinking about? 

Bill Kristol: I’m sympathetic to Jon’s wish that that would happen. I’m a little skeptical [about how much] professors teaching certain books is gonna change students’ views of things. Sometimes it does, but it’s sort of accidental, and it’s often unpredictable. But if you’re honestly gonna teach them, you’re not gonna teach them in this edifying way: “Here, I’m gonna give you a…” 

I don’t really like courses—this is my own prejudice in a funny way—about “Conservatism” or “Liberalism.” I’m not against it, of course. You teach these traditions and so forth—but you teach them in a way that’s skeptical and open-minded, not like, “Here are the doctrines, and you’ll really like these ones if you read them.” I think people should read important books. But honestly, the great conservative books are great liberal books, for me. 

The Founders did not go around saying they were “conservative.” They didn’t call themselves anything. “Liberal” wasn’t really a term at the time. But they were in favor of a revolution. They were in favor of innovation, as they put it in the Federalist Papers, in politics. They were not friends to the old order in Europe. The more prescient of them were not friends to the parts of the old order that remained here in the U.S., such as church-state issues and especially slavery.

And Tocqueville sat on the left, the center-left in the French Parliament, not on the right. And Churchill began as a Tory, then he quickly became a Liberal in 1905, and at the end of his life said something like, “In my heart, I was always a Liberal.”

I’m more of a fan, especially at this moment, with Trump, of the broad liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal tradition. Obviously, there are plenty of 20th-century books. You can go back, obviously, to Burke and all these people, which is great—but there are plenty of 20th-century thinkers who fought against fascism and communism, who tried to think about the problems of liberal democracy and how to strengthen it.

The neoconservatives were one school of that, but there are many, many instances. [George] Orwell, who was a social democrat and a socialist, [was] a great analyst of politics. [Jose] Ortega y Gasset, who was a liberal in Spain.

Bill Kristol: That would be my main recommendation: conservatives should read liberals who are open to conservative insights, and conservatives who are liberal at heart. Now, they can also read Nietzsche and Marx. I read them, and they had an influence on me.

One of the stupidest things, honestly, about [those] setting up “conservative programs” and so forth, is that, what, they’re not gonna teach kids Marx? That’s really idiotic. He’s kind of an important thinker in world history. Or they’re not gonna read Nietzsche or Heidegger or other people who were not in favor of the American-type regime? Or they’re not gonna read serious Catholic thinkers or others?

I’m more for liberal education and a little less for attempting to shape people’s points of view. 

Dhriti Jagadish: In The Bulwark, Jonathan Last wrote that all journalism will tend toward propaganda unless it's explicitly formulated as anti-authoritarian. 

Bill Kristol: In the era of Trump, I think he said.

Dhriti Jagadish: In the era of Trump, yes. How concerned are you about the recent sales and mergers with Bari Weiss and CBS, David Ellison and Paramount? What do you think about the future of media and journalism? Should we be worried that journalism is so concentrated? 

Bill Kristol: Well, I think concentration is a worry regardless in a way of where one might be on the ideological spectrum. I think Jonathan's being a little rhetorical there, but I think it is true. The tendency is to pull your punches against the people who could hurt you if you want to get ahead.

The best journalism's always been sort of rebellious, and sometimes that's been at the expense of conservatives, sometimes at the expense of liberals. Obviously Bill Buckley: “we stand athwart history yelling stop.” People need to remember that. That was admirable. 

Buckley made some mistakes, and not everything was great with National Review over the decades, but to have the courage to say that and to do that was really something.

I think we need a little more standing athwart history yelling stop, and a little less trying to figure out which way things are going so you can get on the parade. 

Shiv Parihar: Thank you so much for your time.

Bill Kristol: Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation. And good luck with everything.