William A. Rusher | |
|---|---|
 Rusher in c.1978 | |
| Born | William Allen Rusher (1923-07-19)July 19, 1923 |
| Died | April 16, 2011(2011-04-16) (aged 87) San Francisco, California, US |
| Alma mater | Princeton University Harvard Law School |
| Occupation(s) | Attorney;Journalist |
| Political party | Republican Campaign strategist for theDraft Goldwater Committee,1964 |
William Allen Rusher (July 19, 1923 – April 16, 2011) was an American lawyer, author, activist, andconservative columnist.[1][2][3] He was one of the founders of the modernconservative movement and was one of its most prominent spokesmen for thirty years as publisher ofNational Review magazine, which was edited byWilliam F. Buckley Jr.[1][2] Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice argues that, "in many ways it was Rusher, not Buckley, who was the founding father of the conservative movement as it currently exists. We have Rusher, not Buckley, to thank for the populist, operationally sophisticated, and occasionally extremist elements that characterize the contemporary movement."[4]
Rusher was born inChicago in 1923. His family had not been especially political; his parents weremoderate Republicans, and his paternal grandfather had been asocialist.[2] In 1930, the family moved to theNew York metropolitan area and lived onLong Island. Rusher enteredPrinceton University at sixteen and was active in student affairs, especially debate. He majored inpolitical science. After graduation in 1943 and wartime service in theUnited States Army Air Corps, he attendedHarvard Law School, where he founded and led the HarvardYoung Republicans and from which he graduated in 1948.[1] Until 1956, Rusher practiced corporate law atShearman, Sterling & Wright, aWall Street firm in New York City.[1] He then served as associate counsel to theSenate Internal Security Subcommittee, under chief counselRobert J. Morris, for seventeen months.[1][2]
In these years, Rusher was also active in New York state and national Young Republican politics, helpingF. Clifton White to lead an alliance in these organizations including theNew York Young Republican Club.[5][2] He came to the attention ofWilliam F. Buckley Jr., editor of the fledglingNational Review, shortly after its founding in late 1955, when he wrote an essay for the Harvard Young Republican paper, titled "Cult of Doubt."
In mid-1957, William F. Buckley Jr. hired Rusher as publisher ofNational Review.[1][2] At the magazine, he oversaw the business operations, but more importantly served as a link to the world of conservative and Republican politics. He held the rank although not the title of senior editor and as such was a full participant in its internal deliberations. AtNational Review, he advocated that the magazine develop and maintain a leadership role in the conservative movement. In doing this, Rusher sometimes disagreed with Buckley and senior editorJames Burnham. In his philosophy of conservative politics and his belief in the urgent need for an active and unified movement to pursue conservative politics, he was especially close to another senior editor at the magazine,Frank Meyer.
Rusher was an early mentor ofYoung Americans for Freedom, founded inConnecticut with his assistance in 1960.[1] He helped to found theConservative Party of New York State in 1961, and theAmerican Conservative Union in 1964.[2] He was a mentor to young conservative activists from these early years into the 1990s.
In 1961, Rusher worked with Clif White and CongressmanJohn Ashbrook to form the nucleus of what becameU.S. SenatorBarry M. Goldwater's campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1964, known as theDraft Goldwater Committee.[1][2][3] Goldwater's victory in thebitterly fought nomination contest over New YorkGovernorNelson A. Rockefeller and the previously dominant moderate orliberal establishment in the Republican Party was the first stage in the rise to national power of the conservative movement.[3] In December 1961, Rusher was a founding member of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters, a lobbying group which sought U.S. recognition of Katanga.[6]
In 1966, Rusher together withMax Yergan became co-chairmen of the American-African Affairs Association (AAAA), which lobbied the United States to recognize Rhodesia.[7] A major theme of the publications of the American-African Affairs Association was the black opponents of Rhodesia were controlled by either the Soviet Union or China, and to allow majority rule in Rhodesia would thus allow Communism to be established there.[8] In a letter to the editor ofThe Nation in 1967, Rusher admitted that an overlap in topics and themes expressed by the AAAA and the Rhodesian Information Office was due to the fact that AAAA shared the same offices at 79 Madison Avenue in New York as the public relations firm of Marvin Liebman Associates, which had been hired by the Information Office to improve Rhodesia's image in America.[9] As a part of his efforts to assist Rhodesia, Rusher introduced Kenneth Towsey, the head of the New York office of the Rhodesian Information Office, to various media personalities where Towsey made his case that Rhodesia, which was often pillared in the United States for its white supremacist policies, was just being misunderstood by the American media.[10]
Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing well past his retirement fromNational Review at the end of the 1980s, Rusher was a very active public speaker on college campuses and in other forums, where he defended and advocated the conservative position. In the early 1970s, he was the main conservative representative on a PBS television debate show,The Advocates, which also featured the latergovernor of Massachusetts,Michael S. Dukakis, the 1988Democratic presidential nominee. Rusher was also a commentator on ABC-TV'sGood Morning America in the late 1970s and a regular radio commentator in the 1980s. Throughout Rusher's career, he was known as an aggressive and exceptionally skilled debater. However, in a 1971 debate, Rusher faced formidable opposition in linguist and prominent anti-war activist MIT professor Noam Chomsky;[11] Rusher repeatedly interrupted Chomsky, who calmly and assertively answered his questions.
In the middle 1970s, Rusher was among the most prominent advocates for a conservative third party, or as he called it "new majority party," that would replace the Republicans; he was also involved heavily in efforts to organize such a party.[1][3] He repeatedly and unsuccessfully urged Reagan, whom he had known since the late 1960s, to lead this effort and to agree to accept such a party's nomination.[3]
Although he was a"fusionist" conservative who believed in both small-government and socially-conservative positions, Rusher was greatly concerned with unifying the movement and keeping it unified. He believed thatRonald Reagan, whom he promoted as a possible presidential candidate as early as 1967 and in whose reluctantcampaign for the Republican nomination in 1968 he had some involvement, was the ideal leader for this purpose. Rusher also believed that the Reagan presidency was the conservatives' greatest political achievement.
In terms of issues, he was heavily motivated byanti-communism throughout his career, was an outspoken opponent ofthe 1960s counterculture, and took a special interest in what he considered pervasive liberalbias in the news media. As an adult he was baptized and became aTraditional Anglican,[3] although his religious views rarely entered into his political discourse.
In 1976, Rusher together withMarvin Liebman and a former CIA officer,David Atlee Phillips, founded a new pro-Rhodesian lobbying group, the American-Rhodesian Association, whose object was having the U.S. recognize Rhodesia.[12] Despite its public claim to be working independently of Rhodesia, the American-Rhodesian Association worked closely with the Information Office of the Rhodesian government.[12] In 1978, Rusher visited Chile, where he praised the regime of GeneralAugusto Pinochet, saying he was "unable to find a single opponent of the regime in Chile (as distinguished from New York) who believes the Chilean government engages in torture".[13] Rusher also wrote about the status of political prisoners that "about four thousand Allende sympathizers were prosecuted and convicted of specific crimes after the 1973 coup", of which all "but a dozen were sent into exile abroad or were jailed".[14] Finally, he argued that even if the Pinochet regime had violated human rights, it did not matter because the regime was "creating a powerful and truly sinewy Chilean economy" and "sacrifices to this end are very much worth making".[14]
Rusher wrote five books:Special Counsel (1968), a memoir of his time on the Internal Security Subcommittee;[2]The Making of the New Majority Party (1975), in which he advocated the establishment of a new conservative party to replace the Republicans in the post-Watergate period;[1][2][3]How to Win Arguments (1981), a primer of debating techniques;The Rise of the Right (1984), a history of the conservative movement from the 1950s to the early 1980s, re-released in 1993 with an appendix covering more recent developments;[1][2] andThe Coming Battle for the Media (1988).
At times, Rusher doubted the GOP could ever be converted to true conservatism, and spent some of his career unsuccessfully trying to jump-start a conservative third party.[15]
Rusher retired fromNational Review at age 65 at the end of 1988.[1][2] The following year, he moved from New York to San Francisco.[2] In California, Rusher served actively as a distinguished fellow of theClaremont Institute from 1989 onward.[1] He also served as a board member of the conservative California Political Review, and was for many years the chairman of the board of theMedia Research Center, an anti-bias organization founded and led byL. Brent Bozell III. In addition, Rusher was involved with the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, thePacific Research Institute, and thePacific Legal Foundation.
He was in the news during the hearings for theSamuel Alito Supreme Court nomination in 2005, when he allowed Senate staff members to inspect documents related to theConcerned Alumni of Princeton group, in which Alito was tangentially involved, in the Rusher Papers at the Library of Congress. Rusher retired from his newspaper column, which he had written since 1973 under the title "The Conservative Advocate," in February 2009.[1] After more than half a year of ill health, he died in April 2011 in an assisted living home inSan Francisco. He never married and had no survivors.[1]
 | This article'suse ofexternal links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Pleaseimprove this article by removingexcessive orinappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate intofootnote references.(September 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
