(In light of the announcement that The Weekly Standard is being shuttered, I offer the following appreciation. I've long enjoyed the magazine as a reader and--to my great fortune--as an occasional writer for it. So, in the paragraphs below, don't expect any gimlet-eyed, cynical analysis. Instead, prepare yourself for the soft-focus glow...)
If, as Emerson said, an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man, The Weekly Standard combined the witty iconoclasm of Bill Kristol with the rigorous reporting of Fred Barnes. It had an impressive stable of staff writers, who could do everything from political profiles to policy explainers to techno-fad eviscerations (see, for instance, this Matt Labash piece on Google Glass). A host of regular contributors--including Charlotte Allen, Harvey Mansfield, and William H. Pritchard--supplemented this in-house crew. A lot of careers were started at the magazine, and, I hope, those careers sustained at that magazine will be able to continue elsewhere.
The Weekly Standard played a leading role in public affairs. Taking a hawkish stance, it rallied for the Iraq War and, later, the surge. It was a crucial advocate for the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominees in 2008 and 2012.
But the contribution of a magazine of ideas is not just about influence over public policy--it's also about fostering an exchange of ideas. While many obituaries will portray The Weekly Standard as a "neoconservative" or "anti-Trump" publication, it hosted a variety of views and Trump was only a dominate presence in the last few years of its run.
It served as a testing ground for new ideas from a variety of angles, and its editorial vision was open to heterodoxy. For instance, the 2005 Ross Douthat-Reihan Salam essay "The Party of Sam's Club" called for the GOP to be more attentive to working-class interests; this piece was a forerunner of the reformocon (and maybe popucon?) movement. Ten years later, The Weekly Standard featured as a cover story a case for the political insights of Donald Trump written by none other than Julius Krein, who would go on to start American Affairs (a journal that has helped prompt new thinking on a host of foundational questions).
Though I've so far emphasized the political side of The Weekly Standard, I should also note how solid the book section was. It featured rigorous reviews that not only summarized a book but set it in a broader intellectual conversation. To its intellectual credit, that section was the opposite of clickbait.
One of the core insights of conservatism is that institutions matter. You don't have to agree with everything that appeared in its pages to think that The Weekly Standard played an important role as an institution for fostering serious debate about public and private life. A time of tabloid hysteria makes the loss of any such institution even more painful. This doesn't mean that other institutions won't rise to take its place. The talented folk in the orbit of The Weekly Standard will, one hopes, find new opportunities. (And, though I've been talking about ideas, livelihoods are at stake here, too--and opportunities for other employers to recruit some top-class talent.) Mourning has its limits, but, in due measure, it can be an opportunity to reflect on the virtues of what is gone.
