In Praise of Charlie Sykes and the Bulwark

He's Not Walter Cronkite, but He's Found the Ballpark Walter Was In.

I grew up in Wisconsin, around Wisconsin politics, so I’ve known of Charlie Sykes for a long time, back to when he was on WISN and WTMJ local news. Since the ‘90s, he had a successful radio program that coincided with the rise of right wing A.M. radio/media and Rush Limbaugh. My political coming of age was on the other side of the aisle so as he would focus on and promote Tommy Thompson and Paul Ryan, I was usually disagreeing with him, though I thought Thompson was a generally decent Governor and Ryan was respectable. WI Politics was like that back in the day; disagreement need not be a civil war pitting neighbor vrs neighbor, nor the need to gerrymander an artificial supermajority.¹ There’s a fundamental difference between politics for the sake of governance and the raw exercise of politics for its own sake.

One thing that I always thought about Sykes though was that I always viewed the Wisconsin GOP and Sykes more as business conservatives and not really the cultural bombthrowers rising in the party’s ranks elsewhere. He always seemed a little uncomfortable with the more activist elements in the GOP, talking instead about block grants, U of W funding and Welfare Reform. Back in those days, Clinton was the enemy and it was easy to have talking fodder by buying into the conspiracies a little, can’t fault him for that; certainly didn’t hurt his ratings while he spent less time talking about Gingrich shutting down the government and overlooking other GOP scandals of their own. Bringing up Monica Lewinsky would cover an entire 3 hour show and callers were rabid to get in; those were shows Sykes could just open the lines and coast through without saying much. If someone brought up something Bob Dornan or Mark Levin did or said, Sykes was often quick to change the subject but never really disowned them. Parties are like that; you overlook the bad because of the outcome you want but you still can steer the conversation. One thing Sykes understands better than most others is political pragmatism; if you don’t have the votes on your side, you can’t get things done.

Then when Trump came along the relationship with the party fractured. The right just went further out to the right than Charlie could stomach, focusing on cultural issues and the crazy and Sykes largely stayed put, maybe even shifted a little left no longer bound by GOP dogma. He split off from the party media and started appearing more on CNN and MSNBC commenting on the growing cancer in the GOP. He then created his own multimedia flagship, The Bulwark.

Which is why listening to Charlie Sykes on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover was interesting to me. It reminded me of that Sykes from the 90s. His position within GOP politics has changed (in 2016 he left the party), but his political ideology hasn’t changed altogether that much either, remaining the more business conservative and political pragmatist. You should really give it a listen here:

As much as The Bulwark is anti-Trump (and generally anti-current GOP), it’s not pro-democrat, although there is some of that by default. It’s staked a place in the middle/center-right of the political spectrum, moored by its stark opposition to Trump/cultural conservativism and aversion to the more liberal urges of the left. In the Shakespeare of American Politics, it’s Mercutio calling out “a plague on both your houses,” even as it tolerates Biden given the abyss we’ll fall into if he fails. Insofar as there is a moderate constituency in America, The Bulwark has hit the sweet spot better and have been more successful than others in the post-Trump GOP world. ² Most importantly, they’ve called out current Republican lawmakers as complicit with going along with Trump, and has admonished them. Here’s a great interview Sykes had with his longtime friend, former Speaker Paul Ryan, and he calls out Ryan’s naivite that he could control Trump:

So what happens in 2028 without Trump? My hunch is that it slides back to the right.³ Without the moral compass opposed to Trump, there’s less holding it in place. It would be harder for it to hate on the GOP without the orange doofus. It still aligns with general conservativism, but it just doesn’t like who calls themselves “conservative” these days. Not to mention, it’s easy to stay in place when you point at both sides and say “you’re both horribly wrong”; it’s harder when one of the sides adapts and includes it back into the fold. Should the right get back to normality, I suspect it would be hard for it not to drift back in that direction. The only force countering that is how much on the left tries to appeal to the same group.⁴ Like I said, Sykes understands political pragmatism, and he’s not going to stay shilling for a party he doesn’t believe in if the Republicans can exorcise their orange demon. In that sense, the only question would be how many former moderate dems he takes with him.

That would be too bad too. The Bulwark has really added to the national discourse in a very positive way, and has become a home not just for “Never Trump” conservatives but also for center-left Democrats hesitant of the Democratic Party’s focus on social issues and coastal liberalism. For too long there has been a genuine lack of media focused on the middle, gluing the body politic together. Not since Cronkite has there been a lynchpin that helps define and maintain common sense notions of where the middle is in America, as the country’s most trusted voice. Sykes isn’t that, but he’s identified the ballpark it’s in.

I hope he and the team at the Bulwark choose to stay playing ball there as opposed to playing in a different park once Trump is no longer in the picture. The country and our politics would be better off for it.

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I’m particularly fond of the Bulwark podcasts, which has Charlie Sykes interviewing different people on different topics of importance. Sykes experience as a radio personality really comes through, and the guests he has on are perfect for the particular issues he wants to highlight. I highly recommend them:

https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast/the-bulwark-podcast/

Also, Charlie Sykes’ book “How the Right Lost its Mind” is a pretty good source of reporting about inside the GOP as the party drifted its way to Donald Trump. Its required reading for anyone wanting to understand that GOP era.

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Footnotes and Parting Thoughts

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1. For that we can blame Scott Walker; since 2010 the state has been a battlezone of bitterness and the front lines of swing state political wars. His actions as governor and the political “Win at all costs” mentality adopted by the GOP in the state has been a detriment to the state culture ever since.

2. Ive found the Bulwark to be necessary daily reading. The articles are great, capture a wide range of topics and are more receptive to alternative opinions than many news sites seem to be. Part of that is that it’s readership really is a great community of thoughtful people.

3. This would be a natural thing given the backgrounds of most of the people comprising the Bulwark. It’s not meant as a negative, just a natural gravitation back to where they came.

4. Something that they SHOULD be doing now, while they can, but I don’t see much of it; right now, the only thing I see is the left and the Bulwark aligned by their mutual hatred of Trump, and the left not trying to court anyone in the middle.