Book Review: America’s Right Turn by Richard A. Viguerieue and David Franke

Last updated on July 4, 2023

This 2004 volume recounts a half-century of American political history, focused entirely on the technology used to advance conservative and liberal politics. This is not a tirade attacking one side or the other, it is a recounting of how various technical means were used to move American politics in one direction or the other. To hear the authors tell it, relations between conservative publicists such as Viguerie and his liberal counterparts were entirely friendly. After all, they were technical professionals, advocating for their own sides, of course, not politicians engaging in hatemongering.

Viguerie is the past master of direct mail for fundraising and propaganda. However, he gives a series of other technical means their due, including the recent success (2004) of liberals and exploiting the Internet. Unfortunately, this volume stops before the rise of a few social media outlets having a quasi-monopoly on public attention, and the recognition of various groups, notably federal agencies it would appear, that they could exploit this quasi-monopoly to take control of the political sphere.

Viguerie begins with the media revolution of 1517, in which Martin Luther and Protestant publicists took control of public debate over various theological issues. He notes that Catholic publicists were late to respond, and largely spoke to an educated class that spoken Latin, while the Protestant publicists spoke to the general German audience, largely in the vernacular. He then advances to 1776 and the American Revolution, as beautifully recounted at much larger length by Bernard Bailyn’s ideological history of the American Revolution. Finally he reaches the historical period in which he played a role.

In 1955, there were three television networks and two newspapers, one each in Washington and New York that basically set the political direction of the country. Indeed, he notes a historian whose study of. Politics was confined to five locations, two editorial offices and three newsrooms. The consequence of this was seen in 1964, when the Goldwater presidential campaign was buried by the then heavily-liberal media.  At about this time, or so he claims, there were conservatives, notably centered on the National Review and the John Birch Society, but there were no groups of conservatives who got together to consider strategy. Libertarians may find the last bit familiar.

Viguerie notes that the Goldwater campaign was the first recent mass presidential campaign, in which millions of Americans took part in the campaign, either as local campaigners or as donors. Nixon 1960 had 40, 000 contributors, while the various Goldwater campaign groups had close to one million contributors.  There has since been a seachange, allowing millions of Americans to influence the direction of their preferred political party. There is no more effective way to tie someone to supporting a candidate than to persuade them to donate at least a few dollars to that candidate’s campaign, a method brilliantly used by President Obama and his $3 campaign donations scheme.

The takeoff point was a direct mail. The first challenge was that most conservative groups kept their mailing list secret. The notion of renting your mailing list and paying to rent other mailing lists substantially did not exist. The technology was extremely limited. 3 x 5 cards, adressograph plates, and similar lists. Direct mail meant that conservative activists could reach each other, and a highly targeted way, and stay under the radar of what they viewed as the liberal establishment. Viguerie recounts in the period leading up to Ronald Reagan’s successful presidential campaign, the many ways in which direct mail built a conservative movement.  In the midst of this historical recounting, he notes a series of useful issues relevant to any political movement. In particular, he notes that direct mail will bring in donors, but might very well on the initial mailing lose money. He emphasizes that this really doesn’t matter, because if you have created donor, over the lifespan of that donor as a donor you get a series of additional donations, which in the end turn out to be quite profitable. This interpretation is the opposite of the “return on investment” scheme of the current Libertarian National Committee, in which single mailings are expected to be immediately profitable.

A significant advantage of the conservative movement in the period leading up to Reagan was that it had, funded by direct mail, a New Right strategy group that was outside elected politics. It provided leadership that elected Republican politicians did not. Nonetheless, by 1980, was that Ronald Reagan raised three quarters of his money through direct mail, an effort made possible by the billion pieces of direct mail Viguerie had sent over past years. Viguerie then pauses to recount how liberal groups began using direct mail, facing the same challenges and finding many of the same solutions that conservatives had done.

At this point we reach the first new technology, the fax machine. The fax machine had actually been invented in the early nineteenth century, but it was the religious right, in particular Jerry Falwell, who used it as an effective distribution scheme for rapid transmission of positions and ideas.

Direct mail was then use to support a variety of arrangements for advancing conservative politicians. One was the Leadership Institute.  Non-direct-mail approaches also get mentioned, such as talk radio, cable-television beginning with C-SPAN, issue-based television advertising, ideological magazines, and the Internet with web pages.  He closes with a laudatory description of the revolutionary Internet-based Howard Dean campaign, noting that with this technology it was conservatives who lagged behind. A summary chapter describes what had been done and where various publicity schemes might be taking American politics.

Supporters of any third-party political group would usefully read this volume to see what has been done in the past, and perhaps to avoid re—inventing the square wheel by making mistakes that have been made repeatedly beforehand. Secrecy of mailing lists comes immediately to mind.