By Carson Welch, Correspondent
David Frum, currently a senior editor at the Atlantic and a contributor to CNN, spoke on Wednesday about “how to be a conservative in the age of Trump” in Princeton University’s Robertson Hall, filling Arthur Lewis Auditorium with town and gown alike.
“What about those of us who are basically satisfied with the way things are,” Frum asked, making an inroad to the topic of contemporary conservatism. “What about those who think that politics has more to lose than gain?”
In his answers to these questions, Frum pointed to two principles as the basis of his brand of conservatism: strong nationhood and “American leadership of the world’s system.”
Although Frum was born in Toronto, Canada, after being at Yale and Harvard Law School, and after working for various newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, he was offered a position in 2001 as a speech writer in the Bush White House, where he was credited with coining the term “axis of evil.” Later, Frum published the first “insider book” about the Bush Administration, titled “The Right Man: An Inside Account of the Bush White House.”
Frum also lamented “a weakening of commitment to American nationality,” and listed the phenomenon as one of the factors that will define challenges for conservatives in the future.
As one of the first conservative intellectuals to declare his unabated opposition to Donald Trump, Frum criticized the president, saying he was shocked “how it’s possible for a Russian spy to walk into an American political campaign and say, ‘I have information about your opponent. Would you like it?’ And for that campaign to answer, ‘Love it.’”
Many of Frum’s current views diverge from mainstream Republican thought. Soon after the Las Vegas mass shooting, he penned an article in the Atlantic that advocated for a less-tailored approach to gun control, modifying his earlier stance, just as he has reversed his opinion on same-sex marriage.
Political change, Frum said, is something conservatives need to confront, especially in the current political climate.
“Conservatism does have to change,” he said. “Politics is like an exam, where every time you solve a problem, your reward is to be confronted with a new and completely unfamiliar problem.”
Frum said that the influx of Republican power in Washington, “unmatched since the 1920s,” is not without its caveats, and that it’s not as prevailing as it may first appear.
“We have lived for a quarter century through pretty frozen politics,” he said. “Today, while Republicans dominate politically, where songs are written, movies are made, products are invented, and technology is developed—that’s where the Republican Party is not. That is a deviation of political power from cultural power in a way that has never been seen.”
In his closing remarks, Frum returned to a distinction between victims and non-victims, saying that the non-victims, like him, have responsibilities. He recounted how his late mother, the Canadian journalist Barbara Frum, would often quote the first page of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a Princetonian: “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice,” says Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s protagonist. “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.’”
Frum considered it not just a slogan that can guide the future of conservatism, but for political engagement in general: “Carve it on the lintels of congress and print it on the twenty-dollar bill.”
