Back to Basics

A simmering controversy surrounding the “Ground Zero Cross” exposes the intolerance and absolutism behind ongoing battles over religious symbols on public property. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not Christian conservatives who normally start these bitter disputes. It’s more often atheist activists who seek to alter the long-standing status quo by scrubbing the landscape of the most visible signs of the nation’s religious heritage.

American Atheists, an organization representing the civil liberties of agnostics, filed suit in 2011 to block display of the Ground Zero Cross anywhere on the grounds of the new memorial museum planned for the World Trade Center site. The artifact in question became the best known piece of debris recovered from the terrorist attacks, when workmen spotted it on Sept. 13, 2001. The huge cross beam, presumably detached from the collapse of the North Tower and hurled down with many tons of rubble onto the stricken eight-story structure to its northeast, somehow survived intact and almost immediately became an informal shrine for the tireless crews who labored to clear Ground Zero.

A Franciscan friar blessed the welded girders as a sign that “God had not abandoned Ground Zero.” Later, with the cross installed on a city-approved pedestal, millions of tourists came to pray or leave flowers, but as construction proceeded at the World Trade Center, a crane helped to move the giant welded girders to nearby St. Peter’s Church in 2006.

The lawsuit insists the relic must remain where it is, but planners for the new museum, supported by many 9/11 families, want the cross returned to Ground Zero as part of the permanent memorial. The lawsuit cites “mental pain and anguish” suffered by the plaintiffs due to “the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who were directly injured by the 9/11 attack.”

Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League, which often takes a dim view of religious symbols in government-owned locations, declared that it “fully supports” the inclusion of the cross in the museum.

On my radio show, Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists, denounced the potential placement of the cross as unfair because there would be no comparable display of atheist or Muslim symbols. But no one happened to recover atheist symbols (whatever they might be) from the rubble. The cross deserves its unique place of honor because of its powerful historic connection to the first dark days after the terrorist attack.

Moreover, America’s leading government-funded art museums all boast collections of sacred objects, including icons, crucifixes and altar pieces exhibited for their historical and artistic significance.

Had fate shaped the steel beams into any form other than a Christian cross, American Atheists would never think to object to its museum display. The group’s visceral hostility to the cross plays a role in a number of continuing controversies:

•In Woonsocket, R.I., the Freedom From Religion Foundation seeks to remove a World War I memorial topped by a cross that has stood without controversy on city property since 1921.

•In the Mojave National Preserve in California, officials are hoping to settle an 11-year dispute over a “desert cross” first erected on Sunrise Rock in 1934, also to commemorate the sacrifices of those who served in the Great War.

If Mitt Romney succeeds in his quest for the presidency, the media will focus on his status as the first Mormon in the White House. But it’s even more significant that he’d represent the last of another controversial cohort: the final Baby Boomer to occupy the Oval Office, or even to top the ticket of a major political party.

After more than twenty years of dominating the national political scene, the narcissistic children of the ‘60s finally prepare to amble toward retirement, leaving the nation’s highest office to leaders from less polarized and self-righteous generations. Ironically, the Boomers’ last hurrah in the presidential arena will almost certainly come from a starchy straight arrow utterly untouched by weed or Woodstock, rock ‘n roll or rebellion, or other celebrated themes of his turbulent counterparts.

Of course, Hillary Clinton could confound Mitt’s status as the Last of the Boomers by breaking her pledge to eschew electoral politics and making a presidential race of her own in 2016 or thereafter. Even if she delayed her candidacy till 2020, she’d be only 73 at the time of the election – just a year older than John McCain in 2008, and four years younger than Ron Paul this year. Nevertheless, friends of the Secretary of State believe she’s serious in her determination to pursue other paths of public service and personal fulfillment.

There’s also the possibility that Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, could return to the political lists to pursue the presidency and to redeem his family’s honor, but his age and personal history make his identification with the ‘60s generation somewhat questionable. While sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss identify Baby Boomers as those born between 1943 and 1960, a younger member of that group like Jeb (born in 1953) would have missed out on most of the defining experiences of the era. For instance, President Nixon announced an end to the Vietnam draft before Jeb even graduated from prep school in 1971 – and when Barack Obama, by the way, was only ten.

The high school Class of ’65 – the graduating class of Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and me – comprised the very heart of the Baby Boom generation. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush may have both graduated in 1964, but it was in January 1965 that Time magazine ran a famous cover story on “TODAY’S TEENAGERS” with the hopeful subtitle “On the Fringe of a Golden Era.”

That article focused on my own senior class at Palisades High School in Los Angeles, and more than a decade later provided the basis for my bestselling book (and later an NBC TV series), What Really Happened to the Class of ’65? The distinguishing characteristic of our moment in history involved sudden, whiplash change that afflicted the country just as we made the always fraught transition from high school to college. Marijuana and psychedelic drugs remained extremely rare (if not altogether unknown) during our high school years, but became thoroughly ubiquitous shortly after we arrived at university. The Vietnam War enjoyed overwhelming, nearly unanimous public support when we got high school diplomas in June 1965, but within two years the rising draft calls made the conflict massively unpopular on university campuses.

Does it make sense for the government to take taxes from the big majority of Americans who never managed to win college degrees in order to subsidize the pricey education of the fortunate few who get to attend top universities?

Why is it fair to increase burdens on stressed-out working families so the feds can reduce future interest payments on student loans for members of the elite?

Isn’t President Obama’s current push to spend a $6 billion on college-loan relief precisely the sort of rob-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-rich outrage that any conscientious progressive ought to oppose?

These are questions that even Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans refuse to pose, as they retreat or temporize concerning the president’s shameless student-loan scam. The big duel in Congress concerns the best way to pay for continuing the subsidized loans, with no real debate about the wisdom of the subsidy itself.

Republicans and Democrats alike feel so intimidated by the brute political power of college students and their families that no one will point out it’s the beneficiaries themselves who ought to cough up the extra money. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that they do so when interest rates revert to their normal, pre-2007 level on July 1st—especially since those students aren’t obligated to begin making those interest payments or retiring their principal until they’ve completed their education or dropped out of school. In effect, our leaders suggest that future millionaire attorneys who graduate from Harvard Law School (as both Obama and Romney did) ought to get reduced payments on their student loans at the ultimate expense of all taxpayers—including janitors who toil away at the very Ivy League campus where the two presidential candidates once matriculated.

The lies surrounding this proposed ripoff ought to embarrass everyone who dutifully recycles them, but prominent reporters, perhaps recalling their own student-loan experiences, repeat the nonsense without blushing. For instance, the notion of crushing student-loan debt hobbling millions of U.S. families counts as an urban legend or deliberate distortion. According to figures from the New York Fed, a full two-thirds of the total student-loan debt is held by people under 30, suggesting that the great majority of borrowing is quickly repaid. President Obama’s example of repaying his debts only at age 43 (when he was already a state senator) would count as atypical.

Moreover, borrowers owe a median of $12,800, a figure that the Associated Press describes as “an amount even advocates for student borrowers acknowledge is usually manageable and more than worthwhile factoring in the economic benefits of a college degree.” Surely, borrowers who owe less than $12,800 don’t need a massive federal rescue to save them from paying at most an extra $34 a month in interest.

Of course, the president prefers to talk about the average loan balance rather than the median, since that average is thoroughly distorted by a handful of big-time borrowers (like the Obamas themselves) who attended the nation’s most expensive universities. As Josh Barro writes at Forbes.com: “A below-market interest rate for Stafford Loans is just another subsidy mechanism…. This pushes students, at the margin, to choose more expensive educational institutions than they otherwise would, and to finance more of their education with borrowing than they otherwise would.

The two candidates for president share more than their Harvard Law degrees and their fiercely competitive instincts: both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney convey an odd but undeniable sense of rootlessness, bearing connections to so many different corners of the country that they don’t seem to originate from any place in particular.

That disconnect from any organic, regional identity has undoubtedly contributed to the ongoing “birther” insanity, with dedicated crackpots supplementing their long-standing challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born” citizen with new lawsuits claiming that Romney fails to qualify for the presidency due to his father’s Mexican birth. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose accent, personal history and long service as governor stamped him indelibly as a son of Arkansas, Romney and Obama seem cosmopolitan rather than homey, national (and even international) rather than local.

Everyone knows that Romney won election as Governor of Massachusetts, but he established other homes in New Hampshire and California after growing up in Michigan. His father, George Romney, served three terms as governor of the Wolverine State, but Mitt’s grandparents made their home in Mexico and lived there until George was a small boy. The Romneys also enjoy strong ties to Utah, where Mitt spent his undergraduate years at BYU and rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Whatever his virtues as a candidate, Governor Romney clearly lacks the distinctive New England flavor of the last Bay State candidate to win the presidency: John Fitzgerald Kennedy conveyed an unmistakable aura of Beantown authenticity, with his tangy accent, family heritage (his grandfather and namesake John Fitzgerald had been a beloved Mayor of Boston), love of sailing and elite regional schooling. By contrast, Governor Romney may be derided by his GOP opponents as a “Massachusetts moderate” but he could actually hail from just about anywhere – though short-lived attempts to present himself as a grits-loving honorary Southerner didn’t work out too well in the Mississippi primary.

In the same sense, Barack Obama comes across as the man from everywhere and nowhere – representing his own exotic planet far more than he does the Southside Chicago district that actually elected him to the Illinois State Senate. The president’s erstwhile father lived his entire life in Kenya other than five brief student years in Hawaii and Massachusetts, the president’s erstwhile father spent his entire life in Kenya; his mother, born in Wichita, raised mostly in Seattle, lived the great bulk of her adult life in Indonesia. Her son endured an unstable childhood in Hawaii, Seattle (briefly), Indonesia and then Hawaii again, before pursuing his education in Los Angeles, New York City, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. His decision at age 24 to identify himself as a Chicagoan counted as career driven and political—made without reference to family ties of any kind. Many observers have noted the president’s pronounced habit of reverting to the lilting, Southern-inflected cadences of traditional black preachers when he addresses predominantly African-American audiences, but it’s an odd affectation given that none of his black relatives (all of whom lived their lives in Africa, not the United States) ever spoke that way.

Critics of George W. Bush viewed his thick Texas twang as comparably calculated—part of a good ol’ boy pose meant to obscure his Connecticut birth and patrician, New England education at Andover, Yale and Harvard.

Why now?

That’s the one question about the present push for the “Buffett Rule” that President Obama can’t answer – at least not without exposing his own proposal as the shabbiest, sleaziest sort of partisan posing.

If the president cared sincerely about “tax fairness,” or the importance of millionaires paying a “proper” percentage of their income to the government, then why did he do nothing to address these issues during his first three years in the White House? This challenge applies with special force to the two years 2009 and 2010, when Barack Obama enjoyed overwhelming Democratic majorities in both House and Senate. Had he suggested the Buffett Rule in, say, April of 2010, the Hope-and-Change intoxicated Congress of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would have passed it without delay, claiming at least partial progress in fulfilling Obama’s often-repeated campaign promise to raise taxes on the rich.

But the president never fought for anything like the Buffett Rule when he easily could have prevailed in the battle, so what changed in the intervening months to make a tax adjustment they never even debated two years ago seem suddenly urgent and important?

Of course the Republicans won sweeping victories in November 2010, and that dramatically altered the political climate in the Capitol. But since Big Bad Boehner rode to power, his GOP Wild Bunch failed to make any major changes in the tax code, and enacted no new breaks or giveaways for millionaires. The same favorable treatment of investment income, the same exemptions and deductions and tax dodges that so offend the president in 2012 existed in all their glory when he first came to office in January 2009. The president can blame the new Republican majority for blocking many of his more ambitious spending initiatives but he can hardly blame them for the sorry state of a disastrously dysfunctional tax code that’s remained largely unaltered in the Obama era.

If anything, the tax system looks less favorably on the rich than it did when this president took power; he’s not only introduced new levies on the prosperous as part of Obamacare, but proudly passed a two year payroll tax reduction that saves 2 percent on all income below $108,000. The Democrats can hardly explain their new-found enthusiasm for a minimum tax rate on high earners by claiming that the administration they ardently admired presided over a shift in a less progressive direction.

Nor can they claim that this minor but mercilessly-hyped alteration makes a serious dent in the deficit. The administration’s own figures show that even in a best case scenario the Buffett Rule would generate less than $5 billion a year– amounting to less than 0.5 percent of the current $1.2 trillion deficit, and less than 0.1 percent of the $45.4 trillion the federal government will spend.

If the deficit crisis counts as such a dire emergency that even a reduction of one-half of one percent merits this ferocious tax fight, then why did the president ignore a similarly desperate situation in 2009, 2010 and 2011? Of course, he would say that he addressed the problem previously by calling for an end to Bush era “tax cuts for the rich” but those changes – which Mr.

If, after the stumbles of the last week, the recovery resumed and the economy looked notably healthier in November, would Barack Obama deserve re-election?

Most Republicans would respond with a resounding “no”, but they need to prepare to explain their answer if they want to maintain any hope of victory. Abundant signs of a slowly improving economy should force the president’s opponents to make stronger arguments for his replacement than the tired, simplistic “he made a mess” mantra that has already begun to sound dubious in the face of a brightening jobs picture (including 227,000 new jobs in February) and a robust stock market.

This doesn’t mean that President Obama will sweep to a second term with a triumphal “Morning in America” campaign. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that unemployment will remain above 8% well into 2013, and that it won’t return to “normal” rates of 5% until about 2019. Skeptical conservatives can acknowledge that GDP growth might rise slightly from last year’s brutal 1.7% to a still anemic 2% — still slightly below the average growth rate achieved during eight years of the much-reviled George W. Bush.

But Americans don’t make political decisions based on numbers. They vote according to their feelings, and if they continue to feel that the economy’s gaining momentum, then Republicans will make little headway in convincing them that they’re wrong.

Rather than trying to talk down the business climate and challenging the instinctive optimism of Americans, the GOP should focus on one aspect of the Obama record that even the administration’s most ardent apologists can’t dispute: the relentless growth of government since the president took command of the Oval Office.

In fact, Obama seems positively proud of the dramatic expansion of federal power under his leadership and promises more costly activism if he’s re-elected. Washington’s spending as a percentage of GDP has soared from a 60-year average of 19.7% to projections of more than 24% in this election year — with 40% of the crushing cost of those new initiatives borrowed on the backs of future generations.

While experts might quibble about the true health of the economy, ordinary Americans don’t need convincing that federal overreach stunts growth. They already fear big government as a danger to the Republic. In December, Gallup asked respondents, “In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future: big business, big labor or big government?” A stunning 64% feared big government — the highest percentage since the last days of the Clinton administration. Another poll (from the CNN/Opinion Research Corp.) brought similarly striking results in June 2011: 63% of respondents agreed that “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses,” while just 33% believed that “government should do more to solve our country’s problems.”

This untapped national consensus presents conservatives with a spectacular electoral opportunity. It also helps to explain the unexpected results in one more new survey: Gallup’s state-by-state review of 218,000 adults in all 50 states showing that self-described conservatives outnumber self-described liberals with a national margin of 40% to 21%. In all, 37 states (including such liberal bastions as Illinois and Oregon) show conservatives as the largest group and liberals as the smallest.

In the last 100 years, every U.S. president who lost his bid for a second term did so because he abandoned his principal promise to the American people. If Republicans can persuade the public that Barack Obama similarly shattered the pledge at the very core of his presidency, they will succeed in denying him the new lease on the White House he insists he deserves.

Four elected chief executives in this century failed in their reelection campaigns—and each of them flopped by landslide margins. For William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992, broken promises doomed their chances for another four-year term.

Taft, Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, based his first presidential campaign on guarantees that he would continue the popular policies of his ebullient predecessor, but voters in 1912 knew they’d been betrayed because TR himself came out of retirement to tell them so! Roosevelt not only challenged Taft for re-nomination but ultimately conducted his third-party “Bull Moose” campaign, handing victory to Democrat Woodrow Wilson and pushing the incumbent to a paltry 23 percent of the popular vote.

In 1928, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover ran as the prosperity candidate, deploying the sonorous slogan, “A Chicken in Every Pot, a Car in Every Garage.” The Great Depression smashed his optimistic assurances and helped FDR carry 42 of 48 states.

After the sleaze and polarization of the Nixon administration, a nation weary of Watergate turned to a youthful, deeply religious Georgia governor who titled his campaign autobiography “Why Not the Best?” As a former officer on nuclear submarines, Jimmy Carter ran as a sure-handed technocrat who offered the explicit promise of “a government as good as its people.” After three years of economic meltdown, a seemingly endless hostage crisis, and self-defeating talk of malaise, that cheerful vow sounded laughably quaint, and Carter fell by 8.4 million votes to Ronald Reagan.

Finally, in 1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush escaped the nagging “wimp” factor and electrified the GOP convention with an unequivocal declaration meant to evoke the steely resolve of Clint Eastwood. “Read my lips,” he snarled. “No new taxes!” Violating that well-publicized oath with a sharp increase in marginal tax rates literally wrecked his presidency: producing a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, a formidable third-party candidacy by Ross Perot, and a lopsided November win for the young governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton.

If Republicans want to see history repeat itself in 2012, with a once-popular incumbent turned out of office by a deeply disillusioned electorate, they must persuade the public that Barack Obama has continued the big-loser pattern of broken promises. That means reminding voters of the most important theme associated with his rise to power: the pledge to unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences. Whatever happens with the unemployment rate or gas prices, the president’s failure to live up to these assurances remains both painful and apparent.

In the speech that made him a national figure overnight, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gave the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. “Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people,” he intoned.

As he campaigns for re-election, Barack Obama pursues a profound and uncommon honor denied to nearly two-thirds of his predecessors. Contrary to a widely held popular belief, political history doesn’t anoint incumbent presidents as automatic winners or even presumptive favorites. The numbers show that most presidents fail in their efforts to maintain a long-term hold on the affections of the fickle public and that Obama will face an uphill struggle in attempting to reprise his epic victory of 2008.

Of the 42 men who served as president before the current incumbent, only 15 won two consecutive elections.

Among the others, 5 died during their first terms, 7 incumbents declined to run, 5 tried but failed to win their party’s nomination, and 10 won the nomination but lost their bids for re-election. What’s more, three former presidents (Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore and Theodore Roosevelt) attempted to make comebacks and roared out of retirement as third party candidates; all three of them failed miserably in November, winning between 10 and 27 percent of the popular vote.

The numbers look even worse for second terms if you remove the early “cocked hat” presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe) who easily won re-election before the emergence of the modern two-party system. Washington and Monroe, for instance, both eased into second terms without campaigning and without facing even token opposition. With these early chief executives withdrawn from the equation, 70 percent of those who have served as president since 1825 (26 of 37) failed to win two consecutive terms.

Some of these one-termers counted as obvious failures, rejected by big majorities of their contemporaries and winning scant respect from historians. Even at the time, no one expected John Tyler, James Buchanan or Andrew Johnson to renew their leases on the White House. But other presidents who lost bids for a second term played big roles in history and have earned many admirers throughout the generations. If Barack Obama fails in his bid for re-election, he will join such estimable predecessors as John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland (who came back from his second-term loss to win a non-consecutive victory), William Howard Taft (who returned to Washington as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and George Herbert Walker Bush.

Moreover, two powerful presidents generally labeled “great” or “near great” by historians found themselves nonetheless thwarted in their ambitions to win re-election. Both Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson served as Vice Presidents who succeeded to the presidency upon the death of wildly popular incumbents (Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy), then won a full term in their own right. Widely expected to seek re-election, both men fared poorly in early primaries (Truman actually lost in New Hampshire to the little known Tennessee Senator Estes Keefauver) before withdrawing as candidates—and insisting that they’d intended to withdraw all along.

Of the fifteen presidents who prevailed in winning two consecutive terms (or four, in the case of FDR) nearly all of them count as historical giants and successful, significant chief executives. The only two arguable exceptions would be Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77) and George W.

Attempts to advance a leftwing media agenda by destroying Rush Limbaugh’s radio show will surely fail -just as efforts to advance a progressive economic agenda by punishing the nation’s most productive corporations and individuals have always failed.

The raging controversy over the nation’s top-rated conservative commentator won’t rearrange the landscape of talk radio, but it does highlight the odd leftist preference for attacking the success of the other side rather than promoting progress for their own.

Boycott threats recently led more than 98 companies to suspend their sponsorship of the Limbaugh show, but Rush and his associates insist (very plausibly) that many other firms have eagerly rushed in (you’ll pardon the expression) to fill the gap. To underline that point, El Rushbo even turned away one repentant sponsor who apparently changed his mind and wanted to come back to the show after a few days off the air; the indignant host declares he wants no part of on-air partners whose support for his work seems wobbly or tentative.

Meanwhile, the Limbaugh apology for crude language (including the epithets “slut” and “prostitute”) in his three days of ridicule of free-contraception activist Sandra Fluke poses an uncomfortable question for his critics: now that he’s said he’s sorry, repeatedly and somewhat emotionally, what, exactly, do they mean to accomplish with their continued pressure to try to force sponsors to sever ties with the show?

Other than raising big money for their anti-Rush jihad, the leftist pressure groups clearly intend to reduce Limbaugh’s national reach and media influence or, even better, to put an end to his show altogether. They tip their hand when they claim that his attack on Ms. Fluke is only typical of the “hate speech” which has always characterized his show. They object to far more than a few minutes of one particularly controversial monologue; they resent the very existence of a program that’s been wildly successful for 24 years and spawned a powerful conservative talk industry which reaches an overall weekly audience of more than 40 million and which more than one-in-eight Americans describe as “very credible.”

Limbaugh’s critics seem unable to accept the fact that many of their fellow citizens actually appreciate the opportunity to listen to his opinions on a regular basis, so rather than persuade those poor, benighted souls to listen to something else, they mean to take away the broadcast that they enjoy.

A version of this column appeared originally in THE DAILY BEAST.

Left-leaning pundits and activists who cackle gleefully at the prospect that current controversies will seriously damage Rush Limbaugh’s media career display their own vast ignorance of the talk-radio industry.

Yes, El Rushbo’s weekend apology for crude comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke demonstrate his own recognition that these remarks fell far short of the “broadcast excellence” he regularly promises his 15 million listeners.

But neither uproar from all quarters against Limbaugh’s language, nor the much-publicized phone call from President Obama to support Ms. Fluke in her silly face-off with the most popular talk host in radio history, will prevent those committed listeners (not to mention a host of curious newcomers to the show) from tuning in to Rush in the weeks ahead.

In other words, it hardly matters if 95 percent of the public disapproves of Limbaugh using terms like “slut” and “prostitute” in response to Ms. Fluke’s demand to Congress that insurance from her Catholic university must provide her with free coverage for all her contraception needs. Neither Limbaugh nor other leading talkers worry about the overall “approval ratings” that obsess politicians.

There’s an unbridgeable gap between the dynamics of conservative media and the imperatives of electoral politics. In order to succeed in radio, you don’t need to win a majority of Americans, or even a majority of Republicans, or even a majority of those who are listening at the specific time of your broadcast. In fact, a show that consistently commands 5 percent of the available, major-market audience will earn millions and count among colleagues as a spectacular success. Limbaugh himself, who often (but not always) dominates ratings around the country, almost never scores more than 10 percent of the big market listeners who tune in to some form of radio during his three-hour daily show. The leading metro areas each boast well over 50 radio stations, so a program that draws even a mildly disproportionate share of the audience on a reliable basis becomes an attractive proposition to advertisers and to programmers.

Talk radio, in other words, appeals to a niche audience—drawing only a small fraction of the public even with its most successful shows, but still connecting with millions of people. The secret involves the fact that nearly everyone in the country listens to radio regularly—with a weekly audience most recently estimated at a staggering 242 million. This means that Limbaugh need not appeal to progressives or moderates or apolitical sports fans in order to maintain his franchise: he can remain a media powerhouse with an exclusive audience of hard-core right wingers.

As it happens, Rush actually does reach far beyond the conservative base—as do other successful right-leaning shows, including my own. Market studies show that a full third of the more than 4 million Americans who listen regularly to my radio show identify themselves as Democrats. They tune in to argue (we bill the show as “Your Daily Dose of Debate”), or to hear what the other side is saying, or to feel outraged or, we hope, to be entertained and informed.