Kristol Derivatives Revisited
By 
Earlier this week I promised to revisit some older posts and evaluate how they have stood the test of time. One in particular that has stuck in my mind concerns the role of Bill Kristol in conservative political journalism. Written in October 2008, it was part of a moment that’s almost unintelligible to us today.
I suspect that there is a larger reason that any Night of Long Knives in conservative journalism is likely to be muted, at least in respect to Kristol; he plays a key role in undergirding the structure of conservative journalism as it now exists.
Right wing journalism/punditry is absurdly nepotistic, and not just in the sense that many of the major pundit/journalists are second generation. Everything depends on relationships; this is of course true in every community of this sort, but the importance of relationships is more pronounced in the world of conservative punditry than in liberal or mainstream. Every conservative writer of note has a portfolio of these relationships, which allows said writer to place articles, give talks, find jobs, get invited on junkets, and even find the best parties. Each writer or pundit also contributes to the portfolios of others, and the relationships stack; knowing somebody who knows Michael Goldfarb or John Podhoretz isn’t quite a good as having them in your portfolio directly, but it doesn’t hurt to have the second-order relationship. These relationships are the grease that makes the world of conservative journalism run; it’s mildly absurd that a community whose ideological focus rests so firmly on conceptions of “merit” depends almost entirely on relationships, but nevertheless.
In the modern configuration of the conservative media machine, Kristol occupies an unparalleled central position of power. It’s not that Kristol knows everyone (although he knows a lot of people), or that he controls all the levers of power (although he clearly has substantial influence over how the Weekly Standard and other institutions of conservative journalism and punditry offer grants, assign articles, and provide jobs); it’s that Kristol always seems to be one of the most important “stocks” in a conservative writer’s portfolio. This is often a second or third order relationship, such that the conservative writer depends on a set of contacts that depend on Kristol. But these “Kristol derivatives”, so to speak, play a critical role in where a conservative pundit falls in the journalistic food chain. There are other derivatives as well, depended on other “nodes” of power, but the Kristol derivatives have the farthest reach. A remarkable number of conservative journalists and pundits have got there start with institutions, grants, or fellowships that originate in institutions that have Kristol’s fingerprints on them.
And herein lies the rub. Relationships are the currency of conservative punditry, and that currency is essentially secured by Kristol. If the bedrock of this currency starts to founder (if Kristol drops the mask, or comes under sustained attack from conservatives), then the entire financial system is in trouble. It’s not that people think that the entire system will collapse; they just don’t know what exactly will happen if the Kristol derivatives turn toxic. At the very least, the system will undergo an earthquake, and the result of that earthquake could be unpleasant. As such, the entire system has a vested interest in making sure that the Kristol derivatives don’t turn toxic, and thus that the bedrock currency remains stable.
And so we see a happy convergence trends that will work to prevent a reckoning in conservative punditry after the election. I’m not saying that the reckoning won’t happen, just that pulling at the Kristol thread is likely to have wide-ranging consequences in conservative journalism. As such, even though Kristol played an important role in many of most disastrous elements of this administration/campaign, those who might gun for him are going to have to be careful.
What is interesting about this argument is that parts of its core hold up despite the fact that I never would have expected the conservative movement to develop along the trajectory that it has developed. It’s as if you were predicting that a house would remain standing because one key load-bearing component was fundamentally solid… then watching as the house collapsed because the load-bearing component collapsed. Kristol Derivatives are now effectively worthless in the conservative ecosystem. They’re also pretty close to worthless in every other ecosystem, although I suppose he still has some influence with Never Trumpers.
This isn’t the whole story, of course. There’s a lot of danger in accepting the narrative of a fundamental realignment in American politics since the early Aughts. The electoral map of 2004, after all, looks a helluva lot like the electoral map of 2024. A lot of the folks who were in conservative journalism and its adjacent industries are still there; they’ve just adjusted their attitudes on a lot of questions, and they absolutely do not rely on their relationships (direct or indirect) with Bill Kristol. This isn’t to say that Kristol is wholly absent, but he’s an inactive foundational presence rather than an active facilitator. 
I’m still grappling with the fact that an election fought largely on the question of the justice and wisdom of invading Iraq and an election in which the GOP nominee was able to frame himself as the Candidate of Peace played out across such similar geographies. Bill Kristol has something to do with that but I’m still not sure what exactly it is.
And of course it was Bill Kristol who brought Sarah Palin to prominence within the GOP, which helped pave the way for Donnie and for the fundamental change that broke Kristol’s career.
Sarah memorized every bumper sticker
On the back of every pickup with a rebel flag
Every morning in the senior parking lot
Every weekend in the fields with the windows hot(She made it look so easy)
She learned to work ’em in to every every sentence
So that she made herself useful to the men who print em
(She made it look so easy)
All the way up in the balconies half the working class is clapping ones and threes(She made it look so easy)
Sarah memorized every bumper sticker
(all fat Donny had to do was wear the pants)
On the back of every pickup with a rebel flag
(She made it look so easy)
Every morning in the senior parking lot
(all fat Donny had to do was wear the pants)
(She made it look so easy)
Every weekend in the fields with the windows hot
Anyway we still got a fundraiser going on…