Breaking the Liberal Pattern

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Quirky and provocative, the New Republic is surging in influence

Of American institutions that wield intellectual influence far disproportionate to their size, from Ivy League colleges to the New Hampshire primary, few have had more enduring impact than the little magazines of political and literary opinion. At the 70-year-old New Republic, Owner Martin Peretz likes to say, "Our circulation is only 97,000, but it is the right 97,000." Among the magazine's subscribers: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Geraldine Ferraro and Edward Kennedy. Traditionally, the opinion magazines have preached to the converted, offering the dependable pleasures of a party line. But since Peretz bought the liberal weekly in 1974, he has guided it to enhanced revenues and much heightened influence by making it resolutely unpredictable. While proclaiming itself still part of the left, the New Republic has opposed campaign reforms and spending limits, the nuclear freeze, Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacy and affirmative action quotas, and has supported military aid to El Salvador. Only this month, the magazine endorsed the assertive defense and foreign policies of the Republican platform. Explains Peretz: "Some people say we are schizophrenic. Yet these are times when even the most thoughtful people are ambivalent."

What gives the New Republic its quirky, thought-provoking appeal is its openness to multiple points of view, often expressed in the same issue. The magazine's warren of offices in downtown Washington, eight blocks from the White House, has something of the atmosphere of a college dormitory during a particularly contentious bull session. The mostly young editors range from old-style liberals to neoconservatives, and while the magazine unequivocally supports Walter Mondale, several senior staffers say privately that they may vote for President Reagan. Says Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, 41: "We are carrying out in our pages the same debate that the Democratic Party is having about its future direction, with something of the same tentativeness and confusion."

Yet the effect in print is not muddle, but barbed and often authoritative reasoning. Says Commentary Editor Norman Podhoretz: "New Republic has become indispensable for anyone seriously interested in the climate of political opinion." Syndicated Columnist George Will describes the magazine's writers, particularly Essayist Charles Krauthammer (who also contributes Essays to TIME), as among the country's most discerning. Michael Kinsley, 33, has made the magazine's "TRB" column an eccentric but successful blend of sardonic humor and compassion for some unlikely subjects, including Michael Jackson and lottery-ticket buyers. The magazine is less beloved by some of its traditional subscribers: many of those who canceled complained of the shift in tone. Editor Victor Navasky of the rival Nation (circ. 53,000) notes that the New Republic's diversity rarely extends to airing the views of true radicals. The magazine is inflexible in its support of Israel and has what Hertzberg concedes is an "obsession with the Middle East."

The weekly was widely and rightly praised for its perceptive coverage of this year's presidential campaign by Morton Kondracke, 45, and especially by Sidney Blumenthal, 35, in his early definition of Gary Hart's appeal as the Big Chill candidate. In a Republican Convention wrapup, Blumenthal wrote, "Reagan is Miller Time, Mondale is the factory whistle . . . In the end, Americans want the pursuit of happiness, not blood, sweat and tears. Almost always, the party of leisure wins elections. In recent history, that is usually the party of deficits."

Founded as an offshoot of Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Republicanism, the New Republic always championed liberalism, but defined it in varying ways.

One early idol was Herbert Hoover, whom the magazine briefly touted as a presidential candidate for 1920. By the 1930s, the editorials were explicitly socialist. In 1946 former Vice President Henry Wallace became editor, before his left-wing campaign for President. But by 1952, the magazine had returned to the Democratic Party mainstream. Almost never profitable, it drew its funding from a succession of wealthy sponsors and its opinions from editors, including Walter Lippmann and Edmund Wilson. Peretz, a Harvard social sciences teacher who inherited some money and whose wife is an heiress, revamped both the magazine's politics and its eclectic cultural section: it covers primarily scholarly books, theater (reviews by Robert Brustein), movies (reviews by Stanley Kauffmann) and, says Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier, "anything I can find about Israel, the nuclear issue or the ballet."

Financially, the magazine has turned around from losses of about $850,000 a year on a budget of $2 million to projected losses this year of about $50,000 on expenditures of about $3.5 million. The major innovations: nearly doubling the subscription price in three years, from $24 to $45, with almost no loss in renewal rate; more aggressive pursuit of national advertising for liquor, tobacco, automobiles and other consumer products; upgraded paper and a color cover to be more attractive on the newsstand. Next year Peretz projects achieving the all but unthinkable for an opinion magazine: a small profit.

A principal architect of this success is the magazine's publisher, James Glassman, 37. Last week Peretz's friend Mortimer Zuckerman lured Glassman away, with Peretz's permission, to become a top executive at U.S. News & World Report (circ. 2.1 million). Zuckerman takes over as owner of the newsweekly next month. Editor Hertzberg has also served notice that he is interested in eventually exploring other careers. But Peretz asserts that the magazine will readily attract able executives. Says Peretz: "The one sure thing at this unpredictable magazine is that we will go on being unpredictable."

--By William A. Henry III