David Frum | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Frum in 2014 | |
| Born | David Jeffrey Frum[1] (1960-06-30)30 June 1960 (age 65) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Citizenship |
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| Education | Yale University (BA,MA) Harvard University (JD) |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1987–present[2] |
| Known for | Coining the term "axis of evil" |
| Political party | Independent |
| Other political affiliations | Republican (until 2024) |
| Board member of | Republican Jewish Coalition R Street Institute |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Barbara Frum andMurray Frum |
| Relatives | Linda Frum (sister)[3] Howard Sokolowski (brother-in-law) |
| Website | FrumForum.com |
David Jeffrey Frum (/frʌm/; born 30 June 1960)[4] is a Canadian-Americanpolitical commentator and a formerspeechwriter forPresidentGeorge W. Bush. He is a senior editor atThe Atlantic.
In 2003 Frum authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration.[5] He has taken credit for the famous phrase "axis of evil" in Bush's2002 State of the Union address. He is considered a voice in theneoconservative movement.[6][7]
Frum formerly served on the board of directors of theRepublican Jewish Coalition,[8] the British think tankPolicy Exchange, the anti-drug policy groupSmart Approaches to Marijuana, and as vice chairman and an associate fellow of theR Street Institute.[9]
Born inToronto,Ontario, to aJewish family,[2] Frum is the son of the lateBarbara Frum (née Rosberg), a well-known, Niagara Falls, New York-born journalist and broadcaster in Canada,[10][3] and the lateMurray Frum, a dentist, who later became a real estate developer, philanthropist, and art collector. His father's parents migrated fromPoland toToronto in 1930.[11] Frum's sister,Linda Frum, was a member of theSenate of Canada. Frum also has an adopted brother, Matthew, from whom he is estranged.[3]
At age 14, Frum was acampaign volunteer for anOntario New Democratic Party candidateJan Dukszta for the1975 provincial election.[3] During the hour-long commute each way to and from the campaign office in western Toronto, he read a paperback edition ofAleksandr Solzhenitsyn'sThe Gulag Archipelago, which his mother had given to him. "My campaign colleagues jeered at the book—and by the end of the campaign, any lingering interest I might have had in thepolitical left had vanished like yesterday's smoke."[12]
Frum was educated atYale University, where he took the Directed Studies program,[13] and was awarded both a bachelor of arts and a master of arts. He was awarded hisJuris Doctor degree byHarvard University.
After graduation from Harvard Law School, Frum returned to Toronto as an associate editor ofSaturday Night.[14] He was aneditorial pageeditor ofThe Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992, and then acolumnist forForbes magazine in 1992–94. In 1994–2000, he worked as a senior fellow at theManhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a contributing editor atneoconservative opinion magazineThe Weekly Standard, and as a columnist for the CanadianNational Post. He worked as a regular contributor forNational Public Radio. In 1996, he helped organize the "Winds of Change" inCalgary, Alberta, an early effort to unite theReform Party of Canada and theProgressive Conservative Party of Canada.[15]
Following the 2000 US election ofGeorge W. Bush, Frum was appointed to a position as a speechwriter within theWhite House. He would later write that when he was first offered the job by Chief Bush speechwriterMichael Gerson,
I believed I was unsuited to the job he was offering me. I had no connection to the Bush campaign or theBush family. I had no experience in government and little of political campaigns. I had not written a speech for anyone other than myself. And I had been only a moderately enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush... I strongly doubted he was the right man for the job.[16]
While still aCanadian citizen, he was one of the few foreign nationals working within the Bush White House. He filed fornaturalization and took the oath ofcitizenship on September 11, 2007.[17] Frum served asspecial assistant to the president for economic speechwriting from January 2001 to February 2002. Conservative commentatorRobert Novak described Frum as an "uncompromising supporter ofIsrael" and "fervent supporter ofAriel Sharon's policies" during his time in the White House.[16] Frum is credited by his wife with inventing the expression "Axis of Evil", which Bush introduced in his 2002 State of the Union address.[18] During Frum's time at the White House, he was described by commentatorRyan Lizza as being part of a speechwritingbrain trust that brought "intellectual heft" and considerable policy influence to the Bush Administration.[19]
Shortly after theSeptember 11 attacks, Frum hostedIbn Warraq, a pseudonymous Muslim apostate and critic ofIslam, at an hour-and-a-half luncheon at the White House.[20]
While serving in the Bush White House and afterward, Frum strongly supported theIraq War by furthering the claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda.[citation needed] In later years, however, he would express regret for that characterization, saying that it owed more to psychological and group identity factors than reasoned judgment:
"It's human nature to assess difficult questions, not on the merits, but on our feelings about the different 'teams' that form around different answers. To cite a painful personal experience: During the decision-making about the Iraq war, I was powerfully swayed by the fact that the proposed invasion of Iraq was supported by those who had been most right about the Cold War, and was most bitterly opposed by those who had been wrongest about the Cold War. Yet in the end, it is not teams that matter. It is the results. As Queen Victoria's first prime minister bitterly quipped after a policy fiasco: 'What wise men had promised has not happened. What the damned fools predicted has actually come to pass.'"[21]
He later acknowledged that it remains unclear how the USA "could have delivered better success in Iraq" in terms of replacing Saddam with a "more humane and peaceful" government.[22]
Frum left the White House in February 2002. CommentatorRobert Novak, appearing on CNN, claimed that Frum was dismissed because his wife had emailed friends, saying that her husband had coined the "axis of evil" phrase. Frum and the White House denied Novak's allegation.[23] Frum indicated that one of the most important reasons he left the White House when he did was because, as economic speech writer, he would have had to write a speeches defending the imposition of tariffs to protect the domestic steel industry for domestic political reasons.[24]
Frum opposed thenomination of Harriet Miers for theSupreme Court of the United States, because she was insufficiently qualified for the post, as well as insufficiently conservative.[25]
Shortly after leaving the White House, Frum took a position as afellow of theAmerican Enterprise Institute (AEI), a neoconservativethink tank. During the early days of his stint there,Richard Perle and he coauthored aneoconservative view of global affairs and an apologia of the2003 invasion of Iraq entitled,An End to Evil.[citation needed]
His position at AEI lasted from 2003 until March 25, 2010, when his paid position was terminated and he declined to accept an offer of a non-paying position.[26][27] Frum later stated that he was asked to leave AEI because ofhis vocal criticism of the Republican party's no-holds-barred opposition toObamacare.[28]
In 2005, Frum faced a libel lawsuit filed by the Canadian chapter of theCouncil on American–Islamic Relations after he suggested in a column for theNational Post that CAIR was sympathetic to terrorists. Frum first vowed to fight the lawsuit, but instead the paper published an editor's note acknowledging that "neither Sheema Khan nor the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada advocates or promotes terrorism".[29]
On October 11, 2007, Frum announced on his blog that he was joiningRudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a seniorforeign policy adviser.[30][31]
Frum was a contributing editor and onlineblogger for theNational Review until November 16, 2008.[32][33] Frum announced to readers of his blog that he would be starting a new political website, NewMajority.com, describing it as "a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them... conservatives or Republicans." He hoped the site would "create an online community that will be exciting and appealing to younger readers, a generation often repelled by today's mainstream conservatism."[34]
The website was launched on January 19, 2009.[35] On October 31, 2009, its title was changed to FrumForum, to avoid confusion with other political organizations that used "New Majority" in their names.[36] In 2012, the site was merged intoThe Daily Beast, where his blog continued. Citing personal reasons shortly after the deaths of his father and his father-in-law, Frum suspended his blog on June 3, 2013,[37] but resumed writing forThe Daily Beast in September 2013.[38]
Frum joinedThe Atlantic as a senior editor in March 2014.[39] During the2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Frum issued a series of tweets in which he incorrectly characterized a photograph of two blood-covered Palestinian youths bringing their father's body to a hospital inKhan Younis as appearing "fake". However, the man had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.[40] Frum backtracked from his accusation, and apologized toNew York Times photographerSergey Ponomarev, after extensive debunking by Michael Shaw, but justified his "skepticism", describing other "Pallywood" claims.[41] Frum was criticized byWashington Post media writerErik Wemple[42] and by fellow correspondent forThe Atlantic,James Fallows, who called Frum's tweets "a major journalistic error".[40]
On November 2, 2016, he announced that he had voted forHillary Clinton for president. The announcement garnered international coverage.[43]
On November 6, 2024, Frum announced that he had left theRepublican Party followingDonald Trump's victory in the2024 United States presidential election.[44]
Frum's first book,Dead Right, was released in 1994. It "expressed intense dissatisfaction withsupply-siders,evangelicals, and nearly all Republican politicians", according to a negative review by a Frum opponent, Robert Novak.[16]Frank Rich ofThe New York Times described it as "the smartest book written from the inside about the American conservative movement".William F. Buckley, Jr. found it "the most refreshing ideological experience in a generation".[45] In 2008, Daniel McCarthy ofThe American Conservative called it "a crisply written indictment of everything its author disliked about conservatism in the early '90s".[14]
He is the author ofWhat's Right (1996) andHow We Got Here (2000), a history of the 1970s that "framed the 1970s in the shadow ofWorld War II andVietnam, suggesting, 'The turmoil of the 1970s should be understood... as the rebellion of an unmilitary people against institutions and laws formed by a century of war and the preparation for war.'"[14]Michael Barone ofU.S. News & World Report praisedHow We Got Here, noting that "more than any other book... it shows how we came to be the way we are".John Podhoretz described it as "compulsively readable" and a "commanding amalgam of history, sociology, and polemic."[46]
In January 2003, Frum releasedThe Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, the first insider account of the Bush presidency. Frum also discussed how theevents of September 11, 2001 redefined the country and the president: "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man." His book entitledAn End to Evil was co-written withRichard Perle. It provided a defense of the2003 invasion of Iraq and advocatedregime change inIran andSyria. It called for a tougher policy towardNorth Korea, and a tougher USA stance againstSaudi Arabia and otherIslamic nations to "win thewar on terror".[citation needed] He publishedComeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again in 2008.
In 2012, his bookWhy Romney Lost (And What The GOP Can Do About It), attributedMitt Romney's defeat in the2012 U.S. presidential election to an economic message out of touch with the concerns of middle-class Americans and to a backward-looking cultural message.
Frum's first novel,Patriots, was published in April 2012.[47] It is apolitical satire about the election and presidency of a fictionalconservative American president.[48]
In 2018, Frum publishedTrumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, about the dangers posed by the Trump presidency to American democracy.[49] He was interviewed for the book on theNew Books Network.[50] In 2020, he published a second volume about the Trump era and its consequences,Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy.[51]
Frum was acommentator forAmerican Public Media's "Marketplace" from 2007 until his final appearance on October 12, 2011.[52] Frum has made numerous appearances on the weekly radio programLeft, Right & Center onKCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, California. On theKCRW program, Frum presented theconservative viewpoint.[53][54]
Frum supported the2003 invasion of Iraq.[55][56] He helped writeGeorge W. Bush's famous "Axis of Evil" speech to describe the governments ofIraq,Iran, andNorth Korea.[55] Frum is a supporter ofIsrael.[57][58] He opposed PresidentBarack Obama'sIran nuclear deal.[55] In 2009, Frum described his political beliefs as follows:
I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of theFederalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page ofThe Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the 'Read My Lips'Bush, the 'Axis of Evil' Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted forJohn McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) theimpeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.[59]
In 2010, Frum was involved in the formation of the centrist groupNo Labels as a "founding leader".[60]
In June 2011, following the legalization ofsame-sex marriage in New York state, Frum's weekly column forCNN was entitled "I was wrong about same-sex marriage". In it he described theevolution of his opinion from a "strong opponent" 14 years prior; while he had feared that its introduction would cause "the American family [to] become radically more unstable", he now feels that "the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test."[61] In 2013, Frum was a signatory to anamicus curiae brief submitted to theSupreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during theHollingsworth v. Perry case.[62]
In a 2013 opinion column forCNN, Frum discussed the need for a "Plan B On Guns" because of a lack of votes in Congress forgun control legislation. Frum specifically urged the commissioning of a surgeon general's report on firearms health effects on individual ownership (writing that "such a report would surely conclude that a gun in the home greatly elevates risks ofsuicide, lethal accident, and fataldomestic violence"), and he called for Senate hearings regarding the practices of firearms manufacturers. He compared these to hearings conducted in the 1990s about tobacco companies.[63]
In 2014, Frum accusedEdward Snowden of collaboration withVladimir Putin's television networks.[64]
Frum appeared on stage withSteve Bannon, Trump's former campaign CEO and White House Chief Strategist, in the November 2, 2018 edition of theMunk Debates inToronto, Ontario, where they debated the future of populism in western politics.[65][66][67]
In 2018, he wrote, "The advanced democracies have built the freest, most just, and best societies in human history. Those societies demand many improvements, for sure—incremental, practical reforms, with careful attention to unintended consequences. But not revolution. Not the burn-it-all-down fantasies of the new populists."[68]
Frum is a proponent of immigration reform, arguing that "reducing immigration, and selecting immigrants more carefully" would lead to increased economic benefits and restore "the feeling of belonging to one united nation, responsible for the care and flourishing of all its people".[69][70]
He expressed support forIsrael and its right to self-defense during theGaza war.[71][72] In December 2023, Frum said that the Israeli response was "inevitable" and thatPalestinian statehood was not the solution.[73]
Frum supportedJohn McCain in the2008 presidential election, writing "I vote for John McCain".[74] In an article forNational Review Online that he posted days before the2008 election, he gave ten reasons why he was going to vote for McCain instead ofBarack Obama.[74] Frum had previously been a vocal critic ofRepublican presidential candidate McCain's choice ofSarah Palin as hisrunning mate because Palin was unqualified to assume the presidency. Speaking of Palin's performance during the campaign, Frum stated, "I think she has pretty thoroughly—and probably irretrievably—proven that she is not up to the job of beingpresident of the United States."[75] Nevertheless, he ultimately stated his support for Palin, writing "But on Tuesday, I will trust that she can learn. She has governed a state—and... it says something important that so many millions of people respond to her as somebody who incarnates their beliefs and values. At a time when the great American middle often seems to be falling further and further behind, there may be a special need for a national leader who represents and symbolizes that middle."[74]
After the 2012 election, Frum said that Romney would have been "a really good president" but that he had allowed himself to be "twisted into pretzels" by the more extreme factions of the Republican Party who immediately abandoned him after he lost the election.[76]
Frum stated that he voted forHillary Clinton in the2016 U.S. presidential election.[43] He is identified with theNever Trump movement, Republicans who opposed the election ofDonald Trump and continued to oppose Trump during his presidency.[77][78][79] In October 2019, Frum called Trump "very, very guilty" of attempting toinfluence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponentJoe Biden.[80][81] During Trump's first term, Frum wrote two books criticizing Trump, his policies, and his incompetence at governing. One wasTrumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (2018),[82] the other wasTrumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020).[77] In April 2022, when the Republican Party prohibited its candidates from participating in futurepresidential debates, Frum attributed the decision to the "Trump Cinematic Universe", an involuted cartoon version of reality accessible to "only those conversant with the pro-Trump right's internal myths and legends".[83] In April 2024, he wrote an article published inThe Atlantic entitled "Trump Deflates", where he argued: "The House vote to aid Ukraine renews hope that Ukraine can still win its war. It also showed how and why Donald Trump should lose the 2024 election."[84]
On his podcast and its accompanying article in 2025, Frum noted that, "At the very beginning of the first Trump presidency, back in 2017, I posted on Twitter the following thought:Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims.”[85] The quote was reiterated as part of an introduction of Frum shortly thereafter byCharlie Sykes to the video audience watching his Substack publication,To the Contrary.[86]
In 2009, Frum denounced various anti-Obama conspiracy theories as "wild accusations and the paranoid delusions coming from the fever swamps".[87] In his blog, Frum described theTea Party as "a movement of relatively older and relatively affluent Americans whose expectations have been disrupted by the worst economic crisis since theGreat Depression. They are looking for an explanation of the catastrophe—and a villain to blame. They are finding it in the same place that(Michele) Bachmann and her co-religionists located it 30 years ago: a deeply hostile national government controlled by alien and suspect forces, with Barack Obama as their leader and symbol." He explained Bachmann's political views, some of which he called "paranoid": "It emerges from a religious philosophy that rejects the federal government as an alien instrument of destruction, ripping apart a Christian society. Bachmann's religiously grounded rejection of the American state finds a hearing with many more conventional conservatives radicalized by today's hard economic times."[88]
On August 14, 2009, onBill Moyers Journal, Frum challenged certain Republican political tactics in opposinghealth care and other Democratic initiatives as "outrageous", "dangerous", and ineffective.[89] As Congress prepared to pass thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010, Frum again criticized the Republican strategy of refusing to negotiate with President Obama and congressional Democrats on health care reform, saying that it had resulted in the Republicans' "most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s".[90] Before making this statement, Frum had been associated with theAmerican Enterprise Institute (AEI). He resigned from the AEI a few days later.[91] Following the temporary withdrawal of a Republicaneffort to repeal the ACA in 2017, Frum wrote an article in theAtlantic in which he chastised fellow Republicans and conservatives for failing to take his advice to behave with moderation and humility.[92]
In a September 2011 article,Tablet Magazine wrote: "as the Tea Party has come to dominate the GOP, Frum has been transformed in a remarkably short period of time from right-wing royalty to apostate" and quoted him as saying: "There's a style and a sensibility in the Republican Party right now that I find myself removed from, [but] you can do more good for the country by working for a better Republican Party than by leaving it to the extremists. What have they done to deserve that inheritance?"[93]
Writing forNew York magazine in November 2011, Frum described his reaction to fellow Republicans, who had distanced themselves from him, saying, "Some of my Republican friends ask if I've gone crazy. I say: Look in the mirror." He described the development of an "alternative reality" within which the party, conservative think-tanks, and right-wing commentators operate from a set of lies about the economy and nonexistent threats to their traditional base of supporters. He expressed concern over the inability of moderate Republicans to criticize their conservative brethren, contrasting this to the 1960s split between moderateRipon Republicans and conservativeGoldwater Republicans, when moderates such as Michigan governorGeorge Romney were publicly critical of the conservatives.[94]
Frum is married to the writerDanielle Crittenden, the stepdaughter of formerToronto Sun editorPeter Worthington, and they had three children.[95] Their daughter Miranda died in February 2024, age 32, from complications of a 2019 brain tumor.[96][97][98] He is a distant cousin ofeconomistPaul Krugman.[99] Frum considers himself "a not especially observantJew".[16]Alexander Hamilton andAbraham Lincoln are among his favorite historical figures.[100]Marcel Proust is his favorite novelist.[13]
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I ghostwrote it, but the research & concepts are all his.
