Neoconservatism's heirs
For several years, the conventional wisdom has been that neoconservatism is on the skids. Vice President Dick Cheney has been sidelined while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flexes her diplomatic muscles, and old neocon standbys such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have largely disappeared from view. But the movement isn't dead yet. As shown by the announcement this week of former New York Post editorial page editor John Podhoretz's appointment to head the flagship neoconservative journal Commentary, the movement may be battered, but it is not going away. If anything, it is regrouping.
At the moment, the future of neoconservatism hangs on its unspoken system of dynastic succession, in which the top posts of the movement are handed off to the sons of its leaders. A second generation is taking over from the first to lead the crusade against the liberal traitors at home and the terrorists abroad.
Like William Kristol, who edits the influential right-wing journal the Weekly Standard, Podhoretz is the son of neoconservative eminences. Kristol's father, Irving, was editor of the old neocon journal the Public Interest and helped create the movement's network in Washington; his mother, Gertrude Himmelfarb, was a conservative cultural critic and prominent advocate of Victorian morality.
In Podhoretz's case, his mother, Midge Decter, is a trustee of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and has written several books decrying feminism. His brother-in-law, Elliot Abrams, who played a leading role in the Iran-Contra affair, is a staffer on the National Security Council responsible for the Mideast and democratization programs.
But in this galaxy of notables, it is Podhoretz's father, Norman, who looms largest. Norman, now 77, is the patriarch of the neocon movement. An advisor to presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, a prominent advocate of bombing Iran, author of the bestselling book "World War IV" and himself the editor of Commentary for four decades, he exemplifies the intensely intellectual and combative first generation of neoconservatives.
A scholarship student at Columbia University who resented what he called the "WASP patriciate," Norman Podhoretz studied under the literary scholar Lionel Trilling and initially made his name by denouncing Jack Kerouac and the Beat movement in the late 1950s. His mentor at Commentary was Elliot Cohen, a former Trotskyist turned virulent anti-communist. After Cohen committed suicide in 1959, Podhoretz was named editor at age 30.
