David Frum

David Frum

Frum in a BloggingHeads.tv post
Born David J. Frum
(1960-06-30) June 30, 1960
Toronto, Canada
Residence Washington, D.C., U.S.
Ethnicity Jewish
Citizenship Canada, United States
Education Yale University (B.A./M.A.)
Harvard Law School (J.D.)
Occupation Journalist
Author
Speechwriter
Years active Since 1987[1]
Known for Coining the term "axis of evil"
Home town Toronto
Political party Republican
Board member of Republican Jewish Coalition, R Street Institute
Religion Jewish
Spouse(s) Danielle Crittenden (1988-present; 3 children)
Parent(s) Barbara Frum (1937-1992) and Murray Frum (1931-2013)
Relatives Linda Frum (sister), Matthew Frum (brother)[2]
Website Frum Forum

David J. Frum (/ˈfrʌm/; born June 30, 1960) is a neoconservative[3] Canadian-American political commentator. A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Frum later became the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency.[4] 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,[5] 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 Institute.[6]

Frum is the son of Canadian journalist Barbara Frum.

Background

Born in Toronto, Canada,[1] Frum is the son of the late Barbara Frum (née Rosberg), a well-known, New York-born, journalist and broadcaster in Canada, and the late Murray Frum, a dentist, who later became a real estate developer, philanthropist and art collector. Frum's sister, Linda Frum, is a member of the Senate of Canada.

Frum is married to the writer Danielle Crittenden, the stepdaughter of former Toronto Sun editor Peter Worthington. The couple has three children.[7] He is a distant cousin of economist Paul Krugman.[8]

At age 14, Frum was a campaign volunteer for an Ontario New Democratic Party candidate Jan Dukszta for the 1975 provincial election.[9] During the hour-long bus/subway/bus ride each way to and from the campaign office in western Toronto, he read a paperback edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 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 the political left had vanished like yesterday’s smoke."[10]

Education

He graduated from the University of Toronto Schools in 1978 where he was the school captain. At Yale University, he simultaneously earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in history, graduating in 1982. He was in Directed Studies, a type of "Great Books" curriculum.[11]

Frum earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) at Harvard Law School in 1987.

Career

Early career

After graduating from Harvard, Frum returned to Toronto as an associate editor of Saturday Night.[12] He was an editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992, and then a columnist for Forbes magazine in 1992–94. In 1994–2000, he worked as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a contributing editor at neoconservative opinion magazine the Weekly Standard, and as a columnist for Canada's National Post. He worked also as a regular contributor for National Public Radio.

In 1996, Frum helped organize the "Winds of Change" in Calgary, Alberta, an early effort to unite the Reform Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.[13]

White House

Following the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Frum was appointed to a position within the White House. He would later write that when he was first offered the job by chief Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson,

I believed I was unsuited to the job he was offering me. I had no connection to the Bush campaign or the Bush 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.[14]

While still a Canadian citizen, he was one of the few foreign nationals working within the Bush White House. He filed for naturalization and took the oath of citizenship on September 11, 2007.[15] He served as special assistant to the president for economic speechwriting from January 2001 to February 2002. He is credited with inventing the expression "axis of evil" which Bush introduced in his 2002 State of the Union address.[16]

While serving in the Bush White House and afterward, Frum strongly supported the Iraq War. Frum was the very first conservative commentator to oppose the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court of the United States, on the grounds that she was insufficiently qualified for the post, as well as insufficiently conservative.

Frum left the White House in February, 2002. Commentator Robert Novak, appearing on CNN, claimed that Frum was dismissed because his wife had emailed friends, saying that her husband had invented the "axis of evil" phrase. Frum and the White House denied Novak's allegation.[17]

After leaving the White House

Shortly after leaving the White House, Frum took up a position as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think tank. His position lasted from 2003 until March 25, 2010, when his paid position was terminated and he declined to accept the offer of a non-paying position.[18][19] During the early days of his stint there, Frum coauthored An End to Evil with Richard Perle, which was a bold presentation of the neoconservative view of global affairs and an apologia of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In later years, however, he would express regret for that endorsement, 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 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.'"[20]

On October 11, 2007, Frum announced on his blog that he was joining Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.[21][22]

On November 16, 2008, The New York Times reported that Frum would be leaving National Review, where he was a contributing editor and online blogger.[23][24] 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."[25] The website was launched on January 19, 2009.[26] On October 31, 2009, its title was changed to FrumForum.com. In 2012 it was merged into The Daily Beast, where his blog continued. Citing personal reasons shortly after the deaths of his father and father-in-law, Frum suspended his blog on June 3, 2013[27] but resumed writing for The Daily Beast in September 2013.[28]

Frum joined The Atlantic as a senior editor in March 2014.

Books

Frum's first book, Dead Right, was released in 1994. It "expressed intense dissatisfaction with supply-siders, evangelicals, and nearly all Republican politicians."[14] Frank Rich of the 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,"[29] and Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative called it "a crisply written indictment of everything its author disliked about conservatism in the early ’90s."[12] He is also the author of What's Right (1996) and How We Got Here (2000), a history of the 1970s, which "framed the 1970s in the shadow of World War II and Vietnam, 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.'"[12] Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report praised How 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."[30]

In January 2003 Frum released The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, the first insider account of the Bush presidency. As the title suggests, Frum also discussed how the events 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."

Frum's book An End to Evil was co-written with Richard Perle. It provided a defense of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and advocated regime change in Iran and Syria. It called for a tougher policy toward North Korea, and a tougher US stance against Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations in order to "win the war on terror" (from the book's subtitle).

In 2008 Frum published Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again. On November 8, 2012, Frum published the e-book Why Romney Lost (And What The GOP Can Do About It), attributing Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 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.[31]

Appearances on public radio

Frum was a commentator for American Public Media's "Marketplace" from 2007 until his final appearance on October 12, 2011.[32] Frum has made numerous appearances on the weekly radio program Left, Right & Center on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, California. On the KCRW program, Frum presents the conservative viewpoint.[33][34]

Political views

In a Newsweek column, 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 the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The 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 for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.[35]

Frum supported John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, writing "I vote for John McCain".[36] In an article for National Review Online which he posted days before the 2008 election, he gave ten reasons why he was going to vote for McCain instead of Barack Obama.[36] Frum had previously been a vocal critic of Republican presidential candidate McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate on the ground that 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 being president of the United States."[37] 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."[36]

In 2009 Frum denounced the various anti-Obama conspiracy theories as "wild accusations and the paranoid delusions coming from the fever swamps".[38]

On August 14, 2009, on Bill Moyers Journal, Frum challenged certain Republican political tactics in opposing healthcare and other Democratic initiatives as "outrageous," "dangerous," and ineffective.[39] As Congress prepared to pass the Patient 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".[40] Prior to making this statement, Frum had been associated with the American Enterprise Institute. He resigned from the AEI a few days later.[41]

In 2010 Frum was involved in the formation of the centrist group No Labels as a "founding leader."[42][43]

In June 2011, following the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York state, Frum's weekly column for CNN.com was titled "I was wrong about same-sex marriage." In it he described the evolution of his opinion from a "strong opponent" fourteen 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."[44]

In his blog, Frum describes the Tea Party as "a movement of relatively older and relatively affluent Americans whose expectations have been disrupted by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They are looking for an explanation of the catastrophe—and a villain to blame. They are finding it in the same place that 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." And he explains Bachmann's political views, some of which he calls "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."[45]

Frum speaking to Policy Exchange in 2013

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?"[46]

Writing for New 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 false facts 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 moderate Ripon Republicans and conservative Goldwater Republicans, when moderates such as Michigan governor George Romney were publicly critical of the conservatives.[47]

Frum claimed that Romney "could have been a really good president", but that he allowed himself to be "twisted" by the more extreme factions of the Republican party who immediately abandoned him after he lost the election.[48]

In a 2013 featured opinion article for CNN.com, Frum discussed the need for a "Plan B On Guns" that president Barack Obama could use in advancing his agenda on gun control outside of the congress, which was unlikely to procure enough votes for gun control bills needed to pass. He advocated as a specific act outside congressional vote, a surgeon general's report on firearms health effects on individual ownership, stating in his opinion that "such a report would surely reach the conclusion that a gun in the home greatly elevates risks of suicide, lethal accident and fatal domestic violence." Emphasizing again a way to circumvent congressional approval by vote, he called for a hearing in the Senate regarding practices of firearms manufacturers, making the comparison to senatorial hearings done for tobacco companies in the 1990s on their methods of introducing harmful chemicals and addictive substances into their products. The piece was seen by many who commented as a direct contradiction of the beliefs previously held by David Frum as a former conservative Republican.[49]

In 2013, Frum was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.[50]

Non-political views

Frum considers himself "a not especially observant Jew."[14] Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln are among his favorite historical figures.[51] Marcel Proust is his favorite novelist.[11]

Controversies

In 2005, Frum faced a libel lawsuit filed by the Canadian chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations after he suggested in a column for the National 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."[52]

On July 24, 2014, during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Frum issued a series of messages from his Twitter account which labelled as "fake" a photo of two blood-covered and distraught Palestinian youth who had accompanied their father to a Khan Younis hospital after he had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. On July 30, 2014, Frum apologized on his blog on The Atlantic's website.[53] On July 31, 2014, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, James Fallows, termed Frum's claims "...a major journalistic error".[54] Frum's apology was roundly criticized by Washington Post media writer Eric Wemple.[55]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Kreisler, Harry. "Conversation with David Frum". Conversations with History. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  2. ↑ Oppenheimer, Mark (July 11, 2012). "The Prodigal Frum". The Nation. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  3. ↑ Mann, James (September 2004). Rise of the Vulcans (1st paperback ed.). Penguin Books. p. 318. ISBN 0-14-303489-8.
  4. ↑ "Barbara Frum | Jewish Women's Archive". Jwa.org. 1992-03-26. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  5. ↑ "Biographies: David Frum, Board of Directors". Republican Jewish Coalition. Archived from the original on November 27, 2008. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  6. ↑ Neeley, Josiah (2012-06-14). "David Frum | R Street Institute". R Street. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  7. ↑ Frum, David. ""about the author" section". Comeback: Conservatism that can win again.
  8. ↑ Krugman, Paul (March 25, 2010). "David Frum, AEI, Heritage And Health Care". The Conscience of a Liberal (blog) (New York Times). Retrieved 2011-01-14.
  9. ↑ "The Prodigal Frum". The Nation. July 30, 2012. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
  10. ↑ Frum, David (October 30, 2007). "Campaigns Past". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  11. 1 2 Frum, David (January 1, 2008). "David's Bookshelf Year End". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  12. 1 2 3 McCarthy, Daniel (2008-01-28) Dead Wrong, The American Conservative
  13. ↑ Canadian Press, "Reform, Tories should merge, right-wing group says", Globe and Mail, May 15, 1996
  14. 1 2 3 Novak, Robert (2003-03-24) Axis of Ego, The American Conservative
  15. ↑ Solomon, Deborah (January 6, 2008). "Questions for David Frum, Right Hand Man". New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  16. ↑ Engel, Matthew (February 27, 2002). "Proud wife turns 'axis of evil' speech into a resignation letter". The Guardian. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
  17. ↑ Engel, Matthew. "Proud wife turns 'axis of evil' speech into a resignation letter". www.theguardian.com. The Guardian. Retrieved 11 July 2014.
  18. ↑ Nagourney, Adam (March 25, 2010). "Frum Forced Out at Conservative Institute". New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  19. ↑ Frum, David (March 25, 2010). "AEI Says Goodbye". Frum Forum. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  20. ↑ Frum, David (September 9, 2013). "Obama's Syria Strategy in Washington is Hopeless, Militarily it's Even Worse". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 20 June 2014.
  21. ↑ Frum, David (October 11, 2007). "Rudy & Me". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  22. ↑ "Disclosure at the end of "Make speech free, and all else follows"". National Post. October 20, 2007. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  23. ↑ Arango, Tim (November 16, 2008). "At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition". New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  24. ↑ Signing Off January 18, 2009.
  25. ↑ Frum, David (November 18, 2008). "A Note to Readers". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  26. ↑ "Welcome to NewMajority.com". Archived from the original on 2009-02-12. Retrieved February 19, 2009.
  27. ↑ Frum, David (June 3, 2013). "All Good Things." The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 27, 2013
  28. ↑ David Frum. "Don’t Call It a Frum-Back: What’s Changed After Three Months Away". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  29. ↑ Frum, David (1995). Dead Right. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09825-5.
  30. ↑ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The 70's, The Decade That Brought You Modern Life - For Better or Worse. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-04196-1.
  31. ↑ Frum, David (2012-04-30). "Why a pundit wrote a novel". CNN.
  32. ↑ Ryssdal, Kai and David Frum (2011-10-12). "David Frum bids farewell to Marketplace". American Public Media. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
  33. ↑ "Truthdig - Tag - David Frum". Truthdig. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
  34. ↑ "Left, Right & Center: School Shooting; Susan Rice Withdraws and More". KCRW. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
  35. ↑ Frum, David (2009-03-06) Why Rush is Wrong, Newsweek
  36. 1 2 3 Frum, David (November 1, 2008). "For John McCain". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  37. ↑ Nagourney, Adam (September 30, 2008). "Concerns About Palin's Readiness as Big Test Nears". New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  38. ↑ Wallsten, Peter (September 14, 2009). "Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
  39. ↑ "Bill Moyers Journal". Transcript. August 14, 2009. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  40. ↑ Frum, David (March 21, 2010). "Waterloo". Frum Forum. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  41. ↑ "David Frum, AEI SPLIT: Conservative's Position 'Terminated' By Major Think Tank". Huffington Post. 2010-10-25. Retrieved 2011-01-14.
  42. ↑ Rucker, Philip (2010-12-14). "No Labels group seeking nonpartisan middle ground". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  43. ↑ "Founding Leaders". No Labels. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  44. ↑ David Frum (27 June 2011). "I was wrong about same-sex marriage". CNN. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
  45. ↑ Frum, David (August 8, 2011). "Inside Bachmann's Brain". FrumForum.com. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
  46. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (September 27, 2011). "Off-Axis". Tablet. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
  47. ↑ "When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?", New York, November 20, 2011
  48. ↑ "Why Did Mitt Romney Lose The Presidency?", MSNBC, November 9, 2012 on YouTube
  49. ↑ "Obama needs a 'Plan B' on guns", CNN, February 18, 2013
  50. ↑ John Avlon. "The Pro-Freedom Republicans Are Coming: 131 Sign Gay Marriage Brief". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  51. ↑ Frum, David (October 27, 2007). "David's Bookshelf 50". David Frum's Diary. National Review Online. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
  52. ↑ "Inside Politics". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  53. ↑ "An Apology: On Images From Gaza". The Atlantic. 2014-07-30. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  54. ↑ "James Fallows". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  55. ↑ Wemple, Erik (2014-07-30). "The difficulty with David Frum’s apology for bogus photo-fakery allegations". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-05-04.

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