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Mar 11 2009, 3:10 pm by Marc Ambinder

Ross Douthat's New Perch

It's one step back for the Atlantic, but an order of magnitude forward for the country: my colleagues and I learned today that senior editor Ross Douthat will, in short order, become an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

Ross is a late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan.

It's heretic for a new media pioneer to say this, I guess, but The New York Times remains the most influential journalistic force in the modern world, and its opinion columnists consistently shape policy, government and public opinion. True, the Gray Lady doesn't seem to get orthodox conservatives very well, and in randier precincts of the Right, the suspicion that the op-ed editors recruit reverse-Alan Colmeses to counter their lefty-Sean Hannities is pervasive.  I personally  don't think this is the case; not being able to predict where David Brooks is going to come down on an issue is the reason why I like to read him. Bill Kristol was just a mistake, but boy, talk about the rebound: I think Ross is the sharpest, most innovative heterodox thinker of his generation, left or right.

The Atlantic has been a fabulous perch for Ross, but the Times offers a vantage point that is irresistible. Ross's motive force, whether it be as an editor, as a friend, as a bouncing board for ideas, as a writer, is irrepressible. As the chairman of the Atlantic would say, Ross is in his vertical hour. And now, one of the greatest minds in the country has one of the world's best megaphones.

How great is that?

By the way: it's pronounced dow-that -- with a soft "th." 

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Comments (15)

RobInDayton

Ross is a one trick pony...religion. And if you don't care, he immediately becomes boring.

kamatoa (Replying to: RobInDayton)

I think Ross's brilliance is that he can integrate a religious worldview at times into his commentary in a way that is both approachable and intellectually consistent. There are a lot of one-trick religion ponies out there, which is why the Republican Party is in the wilderness a bit these days, but to speak convincingly about how one's faith intelligently informs one's political views is a trick that not many commentators on the Right, and far fewer still on the Left, have been able to master.

RobInDayton (Replying to: kamatoa)

The point is that if you don't care about religion you don't want to hear a worldview that is integrated with religion.

KarinJR (Replying to: RobInDayton)

Really? Even if your country is consistently led by people whose world view is formed religiously? Even when these people are making decisions that affect your life?

Personally, I find it useful to hear the religious world view early and often. Not least because you can argue with it more effectively when you understand it. And to give Ross credit, he is the one socially conservative commentator out there who feels to me like he is at least writing from the same moral universe that I live in - though on the opposite side of it. Too many of these guys write like there in a parallel dimension, whereas Ross sounds more like my Believer friends and family. We need to hear more form people like that, not less.

RobInDayton (Replying to: RobInDayton)

This is for KarinJR (Can't reply to it)

NO: that would only legitimize their wingnuttery. We need to keep this type of ridiculous thought out of the public sphere.

And BTW. If he was not a right winger would be writing for the Times. You know the answer. No way in hell. Being the best from the right is like (stolen from Balloon Juice) being the tallest midget.

StevenDuque (Replying to: kamatoa)

An interesting take on Douthat's earlier career by Greg Atwan, Author of "Privilege" and "The Facebook Book:
http://bigthink.com/blog_entries/498-A-Portrait-of-Ross-Douthat-as-a-Young-Republican

Douthat's earlier writings for The Harvard Crimson and Salient paint him as someone whose "writer's zeal as a culture warrior, as well as his often bizarre moral logic, should be disconcerting to readers of the Times who share a few fundamental premises more cosmopolitan than this."

MORE EXCERPTS:
"I’m a little shocked, though, that so few bloggers have turned the obvious journalistic trick of looking up Douthat’s columns from the college paper. (Campus Progress and Cambridge coeval Matt Yglesias are the exceptions.) In fact, Douthat wrote voluminously for two Harvard Yard organs: The Times-feeding, left-lilting Crimson, and the hard-right Salient, of which he was president. As CP points out, Douthat’s collegiate corpus reveals a far more bitterly partisan, and far less sanitized, brand of conservatism than does his work after graduation.

In his journalistic adolescence at the Crimson, Douthat comes off as anti-gay, anti-Islam, curiously anti-Asian, and rabidly right on cultural issues like abortion. At the time, though, his most famous—and for me most indicative—column, was an ostensibly non-partisan one: “The Harvard Syndrome” in which he diagnoses virtually all detractors from Harvard’s glory with a peculiar mass delusion. The Tufts man may have reasonable-sounding criticisms of the behemoth University next door, but the source of his gripe, per Douthat, is invariably that he “was denied admission to Harvard.” Douthat’s elitism is not only intellectually insane, but conjures, if indirectly, the least palatable and most antiquated elements of American conservatism."

bjkeefe

Congratulations to Ross. This is good news for him and a good choice for the NYT, especially in light of the other names I've been hearing bandied about for new conservative columnist.

I disagree with RobInDayton. While Ross gets dreary when he goes on about religion, especially abortion, I find almost all the rest of the time that he's worth hearing or reading, even if I disagree with him.

RobInDayton (Replying to: bjkeefe)

The problem is that is 50% of his posts. But I agree the rest of the time he is worth reading.

bcamarda

Good for Douthat, and good for The Times.

I generally disagree with him, but he debates in good faith, uses his brain, and is actually interested in solutions rather than merely misrepresenting and then savaging his adversaries.

So few conservative columnists do that nowadays. Sometimes Brooks. George Will used to do it on occasion. Michael Gerson is capable of doing it, but has chosen not to. The rest? Can't think of any. Am I forgetting anyone?

Most of 'em seem to think the very idea of acknowledging a problem and trying to solve it is proof you're a Communist.

kamatoa

I saw this on the Times website a few minutes ago and was very pleased, but it's a great loss to have Ross leave The Atlantic. I wish him the best of luck in his new, well-deserved position. It will be difficult for The Atlantic to replace such a vibrant and intelligent political voice.

Basic Fact

Ross, you've got away with your bluff because of the small stage. NYTimes will mean you're about to get found out.

I'm looking forward to seeing the crash and burn.

jstrummer

All you can really say about Douthat's pick is that it could've been a lot worse. Douthat is kind of insufferable, but not as bad as McArdle (with whom I actually share more substantive views). He's a nice enough guy, but he's exceedingly smart not in what he actually says, but in crafting this persona of "reasonableness" while trafficking in high minded prose.

Now, Armbinder: he just is a wannabe.

Dwight

So much negativity! Shocking revelation: it's actually the inability to empathize with and maintain civil dialogue with the other side (whatever that is for you) that makes one a 'wingnut,' if we must stoop to such jargon. While we're at it, we might also say that poor grammar does not really help when you're trying to run an ad hominem (e.g. RobinDayton, jstrummer)--it just makes you sound ignorant of your own position as well as those of others.

Ross seems like a good guy. He makes arguments on subjects over which reasonable persons can honestly disagree, and self-deprecatingly invites others into dialogue: would that there were more like this.

RobInDayton (Replying to: Dwight)

Dwight, you truly are a prick. First you make a straw man argument. Then you criticize grammar (which turns out to be a missing word). And you think you should whine about negativity. Since you want to be the grammar police, "run an ad hominem" makes no sense, "-it just makes you sound ignorant".

You think Ross is a good guy, and that people can honestly disagree with his arguments. Because you think it doesn't make it true. His positions are extreme, that makes him a wingnut in my book. Deal with it.

Lee

Robin Dayton, as do so many on the far left, cannot accept disagreement. To such as these, differing opinions are a personal insult and must not be tolerated. Cursing and insult, therefore, are their weapons of choice. One might note that if Robin Dayton is concerned with grammar, he(?) might want to reconsider his own entry which makes obvious he never attended a Catholic school.