"Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions." -- George Will
George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics. By the mid 1980s the Wall Street Journal reported he was "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann (1899—1975).
"A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.""A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible "lifestyles" turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.""Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.""As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.""Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.""Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.""Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.""Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.""Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.""Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.""If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.""If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.""In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.""Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.""Look, three love affairs in history, are Abelard and Eloise, Romeo and Juliet and the American media and this President at the moment. But this doesn't matter over time. Reality will impinge. If his programs work, he's fine. If it doesn't work, all of the adulation of journalists in the world won't matter.""Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.""Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.""Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout "Bang!"""The future has a way of arriving unannounced.""The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.""The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.""There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.""Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes.""Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.""World War II was the last government program that really worked.""You really don't want a president who is a football fan. Football combines the worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, the son of Frederick L. Will and Louise Hendrickson Will. His father was a respected professor of philosophy, specializing in epistemology, at the University of Illinois.
Will graduated from University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and attended Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut (B.A.). He subsequently studied PPE at Magdalen College, University of Oxford (B.A., M.A.), and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in politics from Princeton University. His 1968 Ph.D. dissertation was entitled Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society.
Will then taught political philosophy at the James Madison College of Michigan State University, and at the University of Toronto. He taught at Harvard University in 1995 and again in 1998. From 1970 to 1972, he served on the staff of Senator Gordon Allott (R-CO).
Will served as an editor for National Review from 1972 to 1978. He joined the Washington Post Writers Group in 1979, writing a syndicated twice-weekly column, which became widely circulated among newspapers across the country. In 1976, he became a contributing editor for Newsweek, writing a biweekly backpage column. As of 2009, Will still writes both columns.
Will was widely praised by liberals for condemning the corruption of the Nixon presidency. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "distinguished commentary on a variety of topics" in 1977. Often combining factual reporting with conservative commentary, Will's columns are known for their erudite vocabulary, allusions to political philosophers, and frequent references to baseball.
Will has also written two best-selling books on the game of baseball, three books on political philosophy, and has published eleven compilations of his columns for the Washington Post and Newsweek and of various book reviews and lectures.
His column is syndicated to 450 newspapers.
Will is also a news analyst for ABC since the early 1980s and was a founding member on the panel of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley in 1981, now titled This Week. Will was also a regular panelist on television's Agronsky & Company from 1977 through 1984 and on NBC's Meet the Press in the middle and late 1970s.
Will has proposed that the United States withdraw all troops from Afghanistan and defended Barack Obama's response to the uprisings after the 2009 elections in Iran. He also criticized the Bush administration for engaging in warrantless surveillance and supported trials for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. On immigration, Will supports tighter border security and a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants.
Social issues
Will has argued that the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision "truncat[ed]... democratic debate about abortion policy". On crime, Will is opposed to the death penalty, but thinks that higher incarceration rates make the populace safer. Additionally, Will is generally skeptical of affirmative action programs.
Economic issues
Will supports low taxes, as he thinks that they stimulate economic growth and are more morally fair. He was also opposed to both George W. Bush and Barack Obama's stimulus plans. Other positions include supporting the abolishment of the minimum wage, and the creation of voluntary personal retirement accounts to help the government save money on Social Security.
Criticism of the George W. Bush Administrationmoreless
George Will opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court and was among the first to do so.
Will expressed reservations about Bush administration Iraq policies, eventually openly criticizing what he perceived to be an unrealistically optimistic set of political scenarios.
In March 2006, in a column written in the aftermath of the apparently sectarian bombing of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, Baghdad, Will challenged the Bush administration...and U.S. government representatives in Iraq...to be more honest about the difficulties the United States faced in rebuilding and maintaining order within Iraq, comparing the White House's rhetoric unfavorably to that of Winston Churchill during the early years of World War II. The optimistic assessments delivered by the Bush administration were described by Will as the "rhetoric of unreality."
Even though Will had been hawkish in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he criticized the Bush Iraq policy, and broader White House and congressional foreign and domestic policy making, in his keynote address for the Cato Institute's 2006 Milton Friedman Prize dinner.
Criticism of the 2008 McCain-Palin Campaignmoreless
Will was also a harsh and early critic of both Sarah Palin and John McCain's 2008 election campaign. He criticized Palin's understanding of the role of the Vice President and her qualifications for that role.
Will's detractors complain about instances when Will has blurred the line between independent journalist and political advocate. Will helped Ronald Reagan prepare for his 1980 debate against Jimmy Carter. Immediately after the debate, Will...not yet a member of the ABC News staff...appeared on ABC's Nightline. He was introduced by host Ted Koppel, who said "It's my understanding that you met for some time yesterday with Governor Reagan," and that Will "never made any secret of his affection" for the Republican candidate. Will did not explicitly disclose that he had assisted Reagan's debate preparation, or been present during it. He went on to praise Reagan, saying his "game plan worked well. I don't think he was very surprised."
In 2004 and again in 2005, Carter accused Will of giving the Reagan campaign a top-secret briefing book stolen from Carter's office before the 1980 debate. In a 2005 syndicated column, Will called his role in Reagan's debate preparation "inappropriate" but denied any role in stealing the briefing book. As he had done to Carter privately, Will wrote in his column that he gave the book a "cursory glance", and found it a "crashing bore and next to useless...for [Carter], or for anyone else." In response to Will's column, Carter wrote a letter to the Washington Post retracting his accusations. Carter apologized to Will for "any incorrect statement that I have ever made about his role in the use of my briefing book ... I have never thought Mr. Will took my book."
2003 Association with Conrad Black
Will was criticized for his dealings with Canadian-born British financier Conrad Black. Will served on an informal board of advisors to Hollinger International, a newspaper company controlled by Black. The board met once a year and Will received an annual payment of $25,000. The board was disbanded in 2001. In March 2003, Will wrote a syndicated column which praised a speech by Black and did not disclose their previous business relationship.
2008 Offshore drilling by China
In a Washington Post column on June 5, 2008, Will stated that "Drilling is underway off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are". This statement was incorrect. It was later quoted and subsequently withdrawn by Dick Cheney after Congressional Democrats, backed by energy experts, pointed out the error. House Leader John Boehner also cited the incorrect statement: "Right at this moment some or less off the coast of Key West, Fla., China has the green light to drill for oil."
In a June 17, 2008 column, George Will issued a correction: "In a previous column, I stated that China, in partnership with Cuba, is drilling for oil from the Florida coast. While Cuba has partnered with Chinese companies to drill in the Florida Straits, no Chinese company has been involved in Cuba's oil exploration that close to the United States."(See Offshore Cuba)
2009 Global Sea Ice Level
In a Washington Post column which expressed doubt over the effects of global warming, Will stated that: "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."This and several other claims attracted the attention of environmentalists, such as British author and activist George Monbiot. Asked to respond, the website of Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois states that: "We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979." Will responded in a column that he accurately reported the Center's information and the challenge was mistaken. This drew a second response from George Monbiot, who insisted Will had not accurately reported the Center's information. The debate continued in several forums, including a subsequent op-ed by Chris Mooney published in The Washington Post challenging Will's assertions.
Will has three children...Victoria, Geoffrey, and Jon...with his first wife, Madeleine; Jon was born in 1972 with Down syndrome, which Will has written about in his column on occasion. In 1991, Will married Mari Maseng, a former Reagan presidential speechwriter, deputy director of transportation, and Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. Mari also was a former communications director for Robert Dole. They have one child, a son named David, born in 1992, and live in the Washington D.C. area.
Interests
Will is a fan of baseball, and has written extensively on the game, including his best-selling book The Craft of Baseball. He serves as a member of Major League Baseball's special committee on on-field matters. He is a Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bears fan. Will said in a The Colbert Report interview that he is agnostic.
In Dave Barry's "Tax Guide" column, Barry states that "if the IRS asks where you got this information, remember to give them my full name, George Will."
In a season one episode of 30 Rock ("Jack-tor"), Tracy Jordan, who was thought to be illiterate, is seen reading a newspaper in an elevator remarking, "Damn, George Will keeps getting more and more conservative."
Cartoonist Berke Breathed has referenced him at least three times in his Bloom County comic strip series: In one strip, Opus, while fretting about his campaign as vice president, mentions being criticized by Will. In one of Bloom County's Sunday-only sequel, Outland, Opus, attending the monthly meeting of "Free Thinkers of the Meddow", informs the others that "George Will sends his regrets", causing the others to moan "Awwwww!". In another of Breathed's strips, Opus watches an outlandish news report that claims Will, along with William F. Buckley, has created a defense fund for gay welfare cheats.
For a week in the mid-1980s, Doonesbury centered its strip on the adventures of one of Will's fictional interns, drawing attention to his erudite language and mannerisms. Will had earlier been portrayed (although not actually seen) as hosting a welcoming dinner party for the Reagans.
Will was portrayed by Dana Carvey as overly intellectual and sullen in a sketch about baseball on Saturday Night Live. Carvey also portrayed Will in the final (but unaired) episode of The Dana Carvey Show, where he was part of the "This Week" panel hosted by David Brinkley (played by Stephen Colbert) and vomits while riding a roller coaster.
In a 1995 episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Jimmy", Kramer states that he thinks George Will is handsome but "not all that bright".
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Soultaker" features a stereotyped WASP Republican character chatting up the female lead, leading to a joke from Tom Servo that the character wants to take her to a "George Will concert".
