[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5997-S5999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE RETIREMENT OF NORMAN PODHORETZ

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on the occasion of his retirement after 
35 years as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, I would like to 
offer my concurrence with the sentiments expressed in this morning's 
New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times honoring the 
career and the person of Norman Podhoretz. As a New York Post editorial 
notes: ``the ideas advanced in Commentary--thanks to Podhoretz's 
editorial gifts--make it a forum for the key policy questions 
confronting the Nation.'' David Brooks of the Wall Street Journal, 
offers a similar accolade:

       If there is one thing Mr. Podhoretz and his magazine have 
     stood for all these years, it is the joy and value of ideas.

  Thirty-four years ago, I first appeared as a contributor to 
Commentary. The article, entitled ``Bosses and Reformers,'' dealt with 
conflict within the Democratic Party--a subject still alive and well 
today.
  Norman Podhoretz and Commentary have contributed much of value to 
modern political discourse. We owe them both great thanks. Mr. 
President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the above 
cited articles be reprinted in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
       [[Page S5998]] [From the Wall Street Journal, May 2, 1995]

               Norman Podhoretz, Never Retiring, Retires

                           (By David Brooks)

       Hundreds will gather tonight in a New York hotel ballroom 
     to honor Norman Podhoretz, who is retiring after 35 years as 
     editor of Commentary. There will be toasts from Henry 
     Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Cynthia Ozick--and if 
     the thing were done in true Commentary style, then there 
     would be rebuttals and the whole ballroom would break into 
     discussion groups, debating until morning ``The Podhoretz 
     Question.''
       If there is one thing Mr. Podhoretz and his magazine have 
     stood for all these years, it is the joy and value of serious 
     discussion. He develop a prose style, instilled in the 
     magazine, that is decisive, clear and authoritative, the sort 
     of style that begs for response. Commentary has a letters 
     section that is rivaled in length only by Penthouse and in 
     quality by no American magazine. The monthly can be seen as 
     an effort to create an ideal community, a group of people who 
     are prone to sitting up late at the kitchen table, wrapped up 
     in discussions about politics, culture or Judaism.
       This is the sort of community that Mr. Podhoretz entered as 
     a young man, having studied literature at Columbia and 
     Cambridge. He called it The Family, the group of New York 
     intellectuals centered around Partisan Review in the 1950s--
     Mary McCarthy, Sidney Hook, Saul Bellow. They were on the 
     left, but anti-communist for the most part, which meant they 
     were tough-minded and disputatious, because the verbal 
     battles against American communists were like hockey games--
     every few minutes people would throw off the gloves.
       Mr. Podhoretz was a young star, published in the New 
     Yorker, editor of Commentary when he was 30, close friends 
     with such leading writers as Norman Mailer, James Baldwin and 
     Lionel Trilling. He drifted to the radical left in the early 
     1960s, publishing in Commentary the work of Paul Goodman, who 
     laid out what would later become the standard New Left 
     critique of American life. Mr. Podhoretz was an early 
     opponent of the war in Vietnam.
       But as the decade wore on, he discovered that the ideas 
     that were provocative and subtle in Commentary in 1961 turned 
     dumb and platitudinous when turned into cliches by Tom Hayden 
     and the student radicals. Also, he discovered that teachings 
     about Vietnam were not the sort of serious discussions that 
     he cherished, but rather occasions for shouting down anyone 
     who was deemed insufficiently outraged. In 1967, as he was 
     turning away from the left, he published ``Making It,'' 
     which, typical of his writings, was a book that made 
     everybody talk, not always in calm tones.
       ``Making It'' is a memoir about life in The Family, but 
     with a point--that literary people are not motivated simply 
     by a desire for truth but by a passion that dare not speak 
     its name, worldly ambition. Look at me, he said: I am 
     successful because I am ambitious.
       The New York intellectuals expended a lot of typewriter 
     ribbon on the subject of the American identity. Not only were 
     many of them, like Mr. Podhoretz, poor Jewish kids from 
     Brooklyn, but they were also intellectuals, not a profession 
     featured often on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. But 
     the thinkers in the Podhoretz camp decided that they approved 
     of and identified with American culture, and were attacked by 
     others for not being sufficiently alienated. ``Making It'' 
     can be read as an attempt to show that just because its 
     author is an intellectual doesn't mean he is not involved in 
     the central activity of American life, making it.
       Apparently there were no celebrations in Topeka, Des Moines 
     and Fort Worth when the Partisan Review crowd announced it 
     approved of American life: ``Look, Eloise--They approve of 
     us!'' But it turned out to be important. Because those who 
     like Mr. Podhoretz did approve turned out to be essential to 
     the growth of the conservative movement, bringing to 
     conservatism, when they made the jump in the late 1970s, an 
     intellectual self-confidence that had been in short supply.
       It's usual to say that Mr. Podhoretz and Commentary started 
     out on the left and ended up neoconservative. But that's not 
     quite right. Mr. Podhoretz has been consistent in his love 
     for rigorous argument (and so was appalled by the Dionysian 
     tone of the radical left). He has also remained consistent, 
     for the most part, in his sympathy for mainstream American 
     life, and in his staunch anti-communism. Furthermore, neither 
     Commentary nor Mr. Podhoretz has reached a resting point. 
     Neoconservatism looks lie a transitional phenomenon that may 
     even today be extinct.
       The term was once used to denote those who were hawkish in 
     foreign policy but were sympathetic to the current structure 
     of the welfare state. But Scoop Jackson has passed on, and 
     the so-called neoconservatives are now among the most 
     devastating critics of the welfare state. In what sense, for 
     example, are William Bennett and Jeane Kirkpatrick 
     neoconservative? Both made their reputations in the pages of 
     Commentary but are now mainstream Republican figures.
       These days, the people who seem most insistent on 
     preserving the distinction between neoconservatives and 
     regular conservatives are certain liberals on either coast. 
     Possibly, that is because they see people like Norman 
     Podhoretz and Irving Kristol--who are urbane, literate, and 
     have wives who are equally accomplished--and they insist 
     there must be a huge gulf between this sort of person (who by 
     cultural measures looks like a liberal ideal) and the yahoos 
     who they know (for they have read about it) make up the rank 
     and file of American conservatives.
       One of the legacies of Commentary in the Podhoretz era was 
     that it enhanced the intellectual respectability of 
     conservatism. In the 1960s, conservatives were shooting up at 
     the liberal agenda. Now, liberals tend to be shooting up at 
     the conservative agenda. Thanks to the passion and urgency of 
     those earlier fights, those who travel in Mr. Podhoretz's 
     footsteps can afford to be a little more benign.
                                                                    ____

                 [From the New York Post, May 2, 1995]

                        Norman Podhoretz Retires

       At a gala dinner tonight in New York, Norman Podhoretz will 
     be honored on the occasion of his retirement after 35 years 
     as editor of Commentary magazine. A monthly long published 
     under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), 
     but without AJC editorial control, Commentary established 
     itself under Podhoretz as America's leading journal of ideas.
       Its circulation has never been large and it doesn't make a 
     profit. But the core readership consists of influential 
     Americans, and the ideas advanced in Commentary--thanks to 
     Podhoretz's editorial gifts--make it a forum for the key 
     policy questions confronting the nation.
       Norman Podhoretz's tenure saw him start out as a seminal 
     figure on the left during his early days at Commentary. But 
     by the late 1960s, Podhoretz had moved significantly 
     rightward. And he'd taken Commentary with him.
       His decision to ``Break Ranks,'' as he described the 
     phenomenon in a late '70s memoir--Podhoretz's early 
     intellectual compatriots remained wedded to the left--made 
     Commentary a leading American voice for foes of Soviet 
     communism, for advocates of a strong national defense, for 
     critics of affirmative action and for supporters of Israel's 
     security.
       The pages of the magazine were filled with essays by then-
     U.N. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan--who called on the 
     U.S. to conduct itself as an opposition party functioning 
     within a hostile international arena--and by then-Georgetown 
     Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick, who deplored the Carter 
     administration's tendency to employ ``double standards'' in 
     dealing with left-wing dictatorships (toward whom it showed 
     some sympathy) as distinct from rightist authoritarian 
     regimes.
       Commentary--under Norman Podhoretz--played a central role 
     in arguing the need for an aggressive posture vis-a-vis 
     Soviet expansionism, for a re-evaluation of failed Great 
     Society programs and for a recognition of ``anti-Zionism'' as 
     the principal contemporary manifestation of international 
     anti-Semitism.
       In the last analysis, the most striking fact about 
     Commentary consists in the fact that over the last 35 years--
     thanks to Norman Podhoretz's leadership--the magazine has 
     always been important to the national intellectual discourse. 
     That's a claim few journals can make for anything like that 
     duration.
       Eventually, many followed Podhoretz's rightward lead, 
     resulting in a circumstance where the magazine he edited came 
     to speak for a whole movement: neo-conservatism, an important 
     intellectual tendency that can be defined loosely as the 
     conservatism of people who were once liberals.
       Norman Podhoretz, we're certain, has much left to say--as 
     his magazine goes forward, he'll undoubtedly produce 
     important books and articles. But it seems appropriate to 
     pause and consider one of the most extraordinary careers in 
     20th-century American intellectual life. Podhoretz will 
     deserve the tributes he receives tonight from Henry 
     Kissinger, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Rupert 
     Murdoch and many others.
       For some years a columnist for this newspaper, Podhoretz is 
     a man who proved, above all else, that ideas matter. The Post 
     joins in saluting him.
                                                                    ____

                [From the Washington Times, May 2, 1995]

              The 35 Remarkable Years of Norman Podhoretz

                          (By Arnold Beichman)

       This is the story of the little magazine that could and 
     still can. Launched as a monthly half a century ago by the 
     American Jewish Committee with a guarantee of editorial 
     independence, Commentary became a magazine of enormous 
     influence. Its articles on politics, particularly foreign 
     policy, and culture over the years have had an enormous 
     multiplier effect.
       The editor of Commentary for the last 35 years, Norman 
     Podhoretz, has reached the retirement age of 65. He is 
     retiring to his Manhattan apartment-office to figure out with 
     his wife, Midge Decter, author, publicist and editor in her 
     own right, what his next major effort will be. Midge, 
     however, who is semi-retired, has figured out what to do 
     next. She found a neighborhood health club and is doing what 
     she has wanted to do for years and never had time for--
     swimming every day. It is doubtful that such a future, 
     however temporary, awaits Mr. Podhoretz, 
     [[Page S5999]]  who has just been appointed a senior fellow 
     at the Hudson Institute.
       While Mr. Podhoretz, whose new title is Commentary editor-
     at-large, seeks implementation of several inspirations, he is 
     being honored at a farewell dinner tonight--at New York's 
     Hotel Pierre for four hundred friends, contributors, editors 
     of other magazines, relatives and even critics.
       The remarkable feature of Commentary is that an examination 
     of its issues from the time Mr. Podhoretz took over as editor 
     in 1960 shows the current relevance and readable topicality 
     of so many of the articles published what seems to be so long 
     ago. Here are some of the titles:
       Was the Holocaust Predictable? Was Alger Hiss Guilty?; The 
     Return of Islam; On Returning to Religion; Vietnam: New Light 
     on the Question of American Guilt; Are Quotas Good for 
     blacks?; The War Within the CIA; Reagan and the Republican 
     Revival; What Happened to the Schools; Totalitarianism and 
     the Lie; Education in Defense of a Free Society; The 
     Political Dilemma of American Jews; AIDS: Are Heterosexuals 
     at Risk?; Against the Legalization of Drugs; How Good Was 
     Leonard Bernstein?; The Professors and the Poor; 
     Intermarriage and Jewish Survival; The Liberated Women; 
     Authenticity and the Modern Unconscious; The Problem of 
     Euthanasia.
       And the authors--Irving Kristol, Midge Decter, Thomas 
     Sowell, Bernard Lewis, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Gertrude 
     Himmelfarb, James Q. Wilson, Glenn C. Loury and dozens of 
     other leading intellectuals and scholars. Mr. Podhoretz set a 
     high standard for content. That standard obtained in the 
     articles and also in the letters to the editor feature, which 
     was as widely read as the articles. In fact, some readers who 
     never managed to get articles accepted (and paid for) by 
     Commentary got in anyway by writing long letters--for which 
     there was no writer's fee but the satisfaction at least of 
     being published in Commentary.
       Commentary's overwhelming achievement was its leadership in 
     the world of culture in the fight against communism and the 
     Soviet Union, one undertaken by the magazine's first editor, 
     Elliot Cohen. It is no exaggeration to say that Commentary in 
     time became the scourge of the left, especially in culture. 
     Major analyses of communist foreign policy by writers like 
     Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Sidney Hook, Lexzesek, Kolakowsi, 
     Richard Pipes and other scholars and by Mr. Podhoretz himself 
     filled its pages. They were widely discussed and were read in 
     Congress and the White House. And all this, mind you, by a 
     magazine whose circulation never exceeded 80,000.
       It is a truism that few editors leave behind successors who 
     deserve the promotion. Mr. Podhoretz, however, is the 
     exception. His successor as editor-in-chief is Neal Nozodoy. 
     He has been the leading member of the team which transformed 
     a Jewish magazine with deep involvement in Jewish and Israeli 
     affairs into a publication which without compromising its 
     cultural and ethnic roots became an important part of the 
     resistance to those who sought and still seek the perversion 
     of Western civilization in the name of new revolutionary 
     slogans.
     

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