Mark Schmitt on David Frum‘s departure from AEI:
I hold no particular brief for David Frum, the conservative writer who was abruptly ousted as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute last week. I’ve participated on panel discussions and debates with him (including at AEI) but wouldn’t consider him a personal friend. He once accused me of becoming like Charles Lindbergh (I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to my aviation heroics). I consider “axis of evil,” his best-known construction as a Bush speechwriter, one of the most irresponsible phrases ever put in a president’s mouth. And with 15 million people unemployed, the last person who needs my sympathy is one who’s had seven years in one of the sweetest deals imaginable, a well-paid think-tank fellowship with few institutional responsibilities.
And yet, Frum’s ouster is a sad day not only for conservatism but for political discourse generally. I don’t say that because Frum and I agree on anything. I don’t say it because I think he’s a nice guy to have a beer with — I’ve never had that pleasure — or because he seems “reasonable,” like David Brooks or some fifth-generation “Rockefeller Republican.” I say it specifically because I disagree with him, because he’s often unreasonable, because he represents a fierce, principled, engaged conservatism, one that participates in arguments in the real world, and sometimes comes back with those arguments modified, and probably improved. That’s been my sense of him ever since reading his first major book, Dead Right in the mid-1990s.
