At first glance, conservative gadfly Alan Keyes's new MSNBC show, Alan Keyes is Making Sense, seems like just another step in the gradual takeover of televised political commentary by the Fox News Channel model. Rupert Murdoch's brainchild has made significant inroads into the CNN and MSNBC audience, setting off a scramble to attract conservative viewers. Soon after taking over the network last year, CNN chief Walter Isaacson went hat in hand to Capitol Hill to "hear [the] concerns" of congressional Republicans complaining of unfair treatment and even courted Rush Limbaugh.
So when MSNBC brought Keyes on board, tongues wagged that it was a move to steal away Fox viewers. A two-time presidential candidate, Keyes is best known as a passionate social conservative and skilled debater who needled George W. Bush and other Republican presidential contenders in 2000. He also has a reputation for strange behavior and extreme views, including repeatedly accusing the press corps of racism for not covering his campaign.
Yet because it has discarded many of the pathological conventions of talk shows, MSNBC's Alan Keyes is Making Sense has real value. Keyes doesn't aggressively rant against his political foes in the "non-guested confrontation" format pioneered by Limbaugh. He doesn't try to create the structured left-right yelling matches of CNN's Crossfire or bully his guests like Fox's Bill O'Reilly. And he doesn't pontificate about political strategy like a Sunday morning pundit.
Instead, MSNBC has built a kind of ethical philosophy seminar around Keyes (who holds a Harvard Ph.D. in government), in an attempt to capitalize on the host's strengths. Despite the topical hooks, each show is really about moral questions like the nature of justice and evil or the proper limits of executive power.
This was readily apparent during Keyes' debut Monday, which focused on military tribunals. In the roundtable discussion with "regular people" that comprises the heart of the show, Keyes began by reading from the Federalist Papers on the separation of powers, and then asked why the founders were concerned about "the executive exercising the judicial power." From there, he sought to draw out his panelists on the potential problems with creating two systems of justice based on citizenship or classes of crimes. The discussion was substantive and sophisticated, never once sliding into the rhetorical traps that have shut down so much rational debate about the war on terrorism. A constitutional law expert did blurt out, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" twice in a debate with Keyes, but this was the only major aberration.
Over the course of the week, a pattern has become clear. Keyes finds a moral question related to an issue in current events, asks his panelists for their views, and then suggests a conclusion based on the principles articulated. That conclusion then becomes the focus of debate for the remainder of the show. The resulting discussions are remarkable not only for their depth and logic but for their historical sweep and aspirations to serious discourse. On Thursday night, for example, Keyes contextualized debate over morality in "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings" by quoting from Plato on morals in entertainment, and citing past controversy surrounding epic poems like The Iliad.
This level of discussion is extremely rare in the age of O'Reilly, now the most successful political talk show host on cable. O'Reilly talks fast and moves even faster from topic to topic, never pausing long enough for viewers to get bored -- or to reflect on what he's said. By the time he introduces his guests, he's often already yelling at them. By comparison, virtually the only controversy Keyes has generated has involved the hideous Mr. Rogers-style cardigan sweater he puts on for the "regular people" segment (which prompted O'Reilly to call the show "Alan Keyes is Changing Clothes").
Alan Keyes is Making Sense may be a cut above O'Reilly, but it's far from perfect. For one thing, the more extremist Keyes can still reappear. On Tuesday, for example, he argued that, "we do at one level comprehend [the terrorist attacks], because aren't we tolerating ourselves something that reflects the very same principle of evil?" -- by which he meant abortion. As a host, Keyes often succumbs to pressure to keep debate moving by interrupting his guests, and the show can feel like a forum for the conservative movement.
Still, in the Roman Coliseum of hysterical prime time talk, Keyes is off to a promising start. The incentives to try to incite controversy remain huge, however, especially given lukewarm initial ratings. And Keyes clearly has it in him to start a Dr. Laura-style brouhaha.
So let's hope MSNBC keeps its host calm and gives this experiment time to gel. Like Nixon going to China, we may have reached the point at which it will take a controversial figure like Alan Keyes to re-establish norms of reason and rationality in our televised discourse.
