David Frum

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Frum returned to Toronto as an associate editor of Saturday Night.[16] 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, he 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.[17]

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.[18]

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.[19] Frum served as special assistant to the president for economic speechwriting from January 2001 to February 2002. Conservative commentator Robert Novak described Frum as an "uncompromising supporter of Israel" and "fervent supporter of Ariel Sharon's policies" during his time in the White House.[18] Frum is credited with inventing the expression "Axis of Evil", which Bush introduced in his 2002 State of the Union address.[20] During Frum's time at the White House, he was described by commentator Ryan Lizza as being part of a speechwriting brain trust that brought "intellectual heft" and considerable policy influence to the Bush Administration.[21]

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Frum hosted pseudonymous Muslim apostate and critic of Islam, Ibn Warraq at an hour-and-a-half lunch at the White House.[22]

While serving in the Bush White House and afterward, Frum strongly supported the Iraq War. 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.'"[23]

He also later acknowledged that it remains unclear how the US "could have delivered better success in Iraq" in terms of replacing Saddam with a "more humane and peaceful" government.[24]

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.[25]

Frum opposed 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.[26]

Shortly after leaving the White House, Frum took up a position as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think tank. 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.

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.[27][28] Frum later stated that he was asked to leave AEI because of his vocal criticism of the Republican party's no-holds-barred opposition to Obamacare.[29]

In 2005, Frum faced a libel lawsuit filed by the Canadian chapter of the Council on 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."[30]

Frum in 2007 on Bloggingheads.tv

On October 11, 2007, Frum announced on his blog that he was joining Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.[31][32]

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.[33][34] 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."[35] The website was launched on January 19, 2009.[36] On October 31, 2009, its title was changed to FrumForum, to avoid confusion with other political organizations that used "New Majority" in their names.[37] 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[38] but resumed writing for The Daily Beast in September 2013.[39]

Frum joined The Atlantic as a senior editor in March 2014. During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Frum issued a series of tweets labeling as "fake" a photo of two blood-covered Palestinian youths bringing their father's body to a hospital in Khan Younis; the man had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Frum apologized on The Atlantic.[40] Frum was criticized by Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple[41] and by fellow correspondent for The Atlantic, James Fallows, who termed Frum's tweets "a major journalistic error."[42]

On November 2, 2016, he announced that he had voted for Hillary Clinton for President.[43]

Frum supported John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, writing "I vote for John McCain".[69] In an article for National Review Online that he posted days before the 2008 election, he gave ten reasons why he was going to vote for McCain instead of Barack Obama.[69] Frum had previously been a vocal critic of Republican presidential candidate McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate on the grounds 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."[70] 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."[69]

After the 2012 election, Frum said that Romney would have been "a really good president" but that he had allowed himself to be "twisted into pretzels" by the more extreme factions of the Republican Party who immediately abandoned him after he lost the election.[71]

Frum has been critical of Donald Trump and has stated that he voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[43] Frum has called Trump "very, very guilty".[72][73][74]

In 2009, Frum denounced various anti-Obama conspiracy theories as "wild accusations and the paranoid delusions coming from the fever swamps".[75]

In his blog, Frum described 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 (Michele) 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." He explained Bachmann's political views, some of which he called "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."[76]

Frum speaking to Policy Exchange in 2013

On August 14, 2009, on Bill Moyers Journal, Frum challenged certain Republican political tactics in opposing health care and other Democratic initiatives as "outrageous," "dangerous," and ineffective.[77] 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".[78] Before making this statement, Frum had been associated with the American Enterprise Institute. He resigned from the AEI a few days later.[79] Following the temporary withdrawal of a Republican effort to repeal the ACA in 2017, Frum wrote an article in the Atlantic in which he chastised fellow Republicans and conservatives for failing to take his advice to behave with moderation and humility.[80]

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?"[81]

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.[82]

• Frum, David (May 26, 2020). Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy. Harper. ISBN 978-0062978417.
• Frum, David (January 16, 2018). Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-279673-8.
• Frum, David (November 8, 2012). Why Romney Lost (And What the GOP Can Do About It). New York City: Newsweek. p. 224. ASIN B00A3EOVKS.
• Frum, David (December 31, 2007). Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again. New York City: Doubleday. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-385-51533-7.
• Frum, David; Perle, Richard (2004). An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. New York and Toronto: Random House. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-4000-6194-5.
• Frum, David (2003). The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. Random House. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-375-50903-2.
• 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. p. 448. ISBN 978-0-465-04195-4.
• Frum, David (1997). What's Right: The New Conservative Majority and the Remaking of America. Basic Books. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-465-04198-5.
• Frum, David (1996). What's Right: The New Conservatism and What It Means for Canada. Mississauga, Ontario: Random House of Canada. p. 308. ISBN 978-0-679-30783-9.
• Frum, David (1995). Dead Right. Basic Books. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-465-09825-5.
• de Soto, Hernando; Frum, David (2003). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-465-01615-0. I ghostwrote it, but the research & concepts are all his.

• Tomasky, Michael (February 22, 2018). "The worst of the worst". The New York Review of Books. 65 (3): 4, 6, 8. Review of Trumpocracy.