'Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right' by Michael Smerconish

Smerconish grew up in Doylestown as a staunch Republican. He skipped school to meet Ronald Reagan in 1980, served in the George H.W. Bush administration, and was even a staffer for Frank Rizzo during one of the notorious mayor’s last campaigns.

By the turn of the millennium, Smerconish was a conservative-radio talk-show host (in a WPHT lineup that had him alongside Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity) who boosted President George W. Bush and even wrote a book calling for racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims.

Nowadays, Smerconish has ditched right-wing radio for Sirius XM and CNN. He is a strident opponent of Donald Trump and voted for Barack Obama twice.

Party of one?

The author discussed his book at the Free Library of Philadelphia June 19, 2018, where he seemed to be testing a stump speech for a future political campaign for a centrist political party that doesn’t exist.

Fans of Smerconish from his newspaper, radio, and TV work will likely enjoy the book. But it is perhaps most compelling for what it demonstrates about changes in U.S. political life over the past two decades.

Most notably, it chronicles how far the Republican Party has moved from a place where people like Smerconish can still support it. (As he’s done for several of his books, Smerconish is donating all author profits to charity, in this case the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center.)

The book progresses in chronological order — and some pretty boorish, cringe-inducing stuff was published in Smerconish’s conservative days.

In one column, he complains about the Miss America pageant de-emphasizing sexuality. In the post-9/11 era, he supported racial profiling and “enhanced interrogations.” Smerconish appeared, at least in the early 2000s, to reflexively disbelieve female rape accusers, including against Bill Cosby. He even signed on to a far-out conspiracy theory connecting Iraq to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Catching up with the zeitgeist

Once the book reaches Smerconish’s political conversion, it takes a turn. In its latter half, there’s nothing quite as incendiary as the early pieces. In fact, it becomes more about the author’s run-ins with famous people.

Some of these stories are entertaining, especially a tale of how the Heimlich maneuver’s inventor was discredited by his own son. Another dishes that Sean Spicer, as White House press secretary, asked Smerconish how to get in on the speaking circuit just hours before the announcement of his White House departure.

The story of Smerconish’s political evolution is instructive for our age. Yes, Smerconish changed. But so did the times. In the mid-2000s, the GOP began a march towards extremism and anti-intellectualism to bigotry and thuggishness through the rise of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and eventually Donald Trump.

At the very moment Smerconish was taking the stage at the Free Library, crowds about a mile away were protesting Vice President Mike Pence amid outrage over the grotesque Trump administration policy of separating immigrant children from their families and warehousing them in cages.

Adopting a more centrist outlook and endorsing Barack Obama for president aren’t great for the health of one’s career as a syndicated conservative radio host. At the event, Smerconish couldn’t name anything Barack Obama did in office that disappointed him, a more pro-Obama position than those held by most liberals I know.

Smerconish is an educated, accomplished individual who spent most of his life as a Republican but can’t stomach Donald Trump. That’s a significantly overrepresented media demographic and applies to a long list of cable-news mainstays as well as at least three current New York Times op-ed columnists.

But the author doesn’t just have a media megaphone, he has four of them: he’s a CNN TV host, Sirius XM radio host, newspaper columnist, and prolific author. And there’s another aspect of Smerconish’s personal profile that’s worth examining: he’s really, really rich.

Money makes the world go round

Smerconish lives in Gladwyne, one of the nation’s wealthiest towns. In the book, he repeatedly mentions his visits to Union League and Pennsylvania Society dinners, lavish vacations, and expensive dinners and concerts. Yes, there’s some acknowledgment of that fact by the author.

It’s been argued often that wealthier people in America express centrist political beliefs — especially those of the socially liberal, fiscally conservative variety Smerconish favors — mostly because their day-to-day lives aren’t affected by politics. The wealthy won’t likely ever have to worry about bankruptcy, foreclosure, deportation, hunger, or any of the other real-life challenges that affect many Americans.

I believe Smerconish comes to his beliefs in good faith and that he’s changed his mind on various topics over the years out of sincerity. And yet, his financial cushion can’t help but influence his view of the world.