William Rusher

"I will work for conservative principles within the Republican party, and in the event it became impossible to work for them there, I would work outside," said William A. Rusher, publisher of the National Review, founder of the Harvard Young Republican Club, and conservative firs, Republican second.

Rusher defies the Gov 1 textbooks that describe the members of the two great parties as men who will compromise, sacrifice a few of their principles in order to elect a presidential candidate. Rusher is not a compromiser. "Ideally, the best thing would be not to allow a liberal of any description to become president," he said. "If there had to be a liberal, let him be a Democrat."

Rusher came to Harvard last week to speak to the HYRC, the organization that he formed while a student at the law school after World War Two. In the fall of 1946 Rusher assembled a discussion group called the Harvard Republican Open Forum. The following spring Rusher spoke with B. Carroll Rcece, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, who suggested a more militant and politically active sort of organization."

"I took the most activist-minded people," Rusher said, "and asked them to help me found the Harvard Young Republican Club. The Republicans and the conservatives more generally were underrepresented. There was a tremendous number of left-wing organizations."

In 1955, while working as a lawyer, Rusher wrote an article entitled "The Cult of Doubt" for the Harvard Times-Republican, the HYRC's official publication. A friend sent a copy to William Buckley, who was at the time trying to establish the National Review, acting as both editor and publisher. Buckley contacted Rusher and asked his permission to quote large sections of the article in the magazine. Rusher assented and the next spring, when he went to Washington for a series of Senate hearings, he got in touch with Buckley and the two became friends. In June of 1957 Buckley offered him the post of publisher. "I accepted the job," Rusher said, "and have lived happily ever after."

Rusher is a nondescript sort of man, neither stilted nor folksy, laconic nor rambling, soft-spoken nor raucous. But perched on a table in a Union conference room or leaning over a coffee cup in the Yard of Ale, he makes a glib, effective speaker. Rusher has a quieter kind of charm than the flamboyant Buckley. He punctutes his remarks with precise gestures, and smiles often. But his eyes are hard, his lips thin, and he smiles with his mouth alone.

Like many other conservatives, Rusher resorts to the numbers game to explain away the Goldwater debacle of 1964. To the charge that most of the G.O.P. total consisted of party votes rather than Goldwater votes, Rusher answered, "Given all the pressures to defect, I think the 27 million had an unusually high proportion of the gold as opposed to the dross, contrary to Hugh Scott." He smiled, pleased with the pun, and continued, "They would have sunk their hands on a barrel of rattlesnakes to pull the Goldwater lever."

I asked him what he thought of Republicans like Senator Keating who had disowned the national ticket. "Ex-senator Keating," he corrected, grinning. "When a man accepts a Republican nomination, he accepts the moral obligation to give general support to the Republican ticket. Those of us who have purchased our freedom from this sort of obligation at the price of not running for public office aren't bound in this way."

Rusher welcomed the new crop of Southern Republicans fertilized by the Goldwater candidacy. "I reject the libel that they're rabid segregtionists," he said. "That's a very artistic smear being cultivated by the Northern liberals."

What have the conservatives to offer the Southern Negro? "Help, first of all, toward the ballot for people who are qualified to cast a ballot. Beyond that, the conservatives make no apology for making the same appeal to the Negro as they make to other Americans."

Referring to the current voter registration demonstrations in Selma and other Southern cities, Rusher said, "These demonstrations accomplish nothing. It's funny coincidence that the NAACP appeal for financial support is out at this moment."

Rusher's hostility to the War on Poverty is enthusiastic and unflinching. "I am very skeptical of Johnson's bill which has all the carmarks of a great big boondoggle, something for everyone. He believes in he great political game of give and get. That's what his War on Poverty amounts to." Rusher said that the poverty program reminded him of a cartoon he had seen of "two Cosa Nostra types sitting on a park bench." The caption was "Who do you think stands to score big from the War on Poverty?" Rusher smiled again. "Now don't write that to make me sound callous."

As we talked in the Yard of Ale, a woman in the next booth suddenly began to argue with her male companion in a shrill boozy voice that carried from one end of the restaurant to the other. The manager glided over and tried to herd them out the door. The man, ashen with embarrassment, insisted, "I don't know this woman, I've never seen her before in my life." "You're my husband and you know it," she whined. "We've got three children at home and the freezer's empty. How am I supposed to get home? I haven't got any money." Even after they left the room, her strident complaints could be heard from outside the door.

Rusher turned back to the table and said, "This is what Johnson means by the War on Poverty?"