A Flagship Heels to Starboard

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Which of these characteristics might not normally be used to describe the editor of the New Republic: a) conservative; b) Catholic; c) British; or d) outspokenly gay.

Try "All of the above." In Andrew Sullivan, 28, the 77-year-old magazine once considered the flagship of American intellectual liberalism has a new editor who defies the old conventions, just as the New Republic now does itself. "I'm a conservative with a small c," said Sullivan last week, hours after his first issue as editor had appeared. "I'm much more comfortable running pieces that are unashamedly conservative than my predecessors were."

Those predecessors included such stalwart liberal thinkers as founding editor Herbert Croly and early contributor Walter Lippmann. But in 1974 the magazine was bought by Martin Peretz. It subsequently reflected his evolution from a major donor to liberal Democratic causes to a leading neoconservative with hawkish views on foreign policy. During the 1980s the magazine went soft on the Reagan Administration, ridiculed much of the Democratic Party for its lack of pragmatism and echoed Peretz's forceful pro-Israel views. No journal has done better explaining the often unprincipled but always practical reasoning of Bush Administration officials, who routinely unburdened themselves to the magazine's White House correspondent, Fred Barnes. Notes Michael Kinsley, a former New Republic editor who still writes the magazine's "TRB" column: "I don't think Andrew's appointment indicates any change. It confirms a change that has been implicit for many years."

But in fact, Sullivan's appointment does indicate a subtle but significant change. Like Peretz, both Kinsley and the most recent editor, former Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg, had their intellectual roots in old-fashioned liberalism. Even as they and their colleagues criticized the outworn dogmas of the Left, they conveyed anguish about the future of liberalism and the Democratic Party. Though his views on social issues are eclectic, Sullivan is no lapsed liberal. Instead he is a Young-Turk Tory not given to twinges of regret over liberalism's demise.

Sullivan's ascension was something of a surprise. Peretz announced one day nearly a year ago that Sullivan was the new deputy to Hertzberg. His sudden rise -- as well as his penchant for stories on such subjects as the ins and outs of black conservatism -- seemed to mark the culmination of Peretz's own political evolution.

Raised in East Grinstead, a working-class town south of London, Sullivan attended Oxford, where he read history and dabbled in drama and debate. While president of the Oxford Union, he met Peretz, who was participating in a debate on Middle East policies. Sullivan subsequently attended Harvard, where he earned a master's degree and worked summers at the New Republic; he returned to Harvard to complete his doctoral dissertation on conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott.

Sullivan, who once played Hamlet at Harvard, says the "to-be-conservative- or -not-to-be-conservative" question is "boring." "With the collapse of the Soviet empire and the general discrediting of the Great Society liberalism, what does it mean for a magazine to move from left to right?" he asks. "We're happy to mix it up."

Sullivan has brought a cutting-edge quality to the magazine's reporting on homosexuality. Sullivan's December cover story on gay life/gay death reported rifts between HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men. He is most proud of putting a pink triangle, the logo of the gay movement, on the New Republic's cover. "No other magazine has done that," he says.

Well, no other conservative magazine.