William Bennett

Bennett first rose to prominence in the early 1980s when he was appointed to head the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and then in 1985 as Secretary of Education. Both appointments surprised observers because of Bennett's apparent lack of credentials. Only 34 years old at the time of his 1981 NEH appointment, Bennett had little academic experience and even less publishing experience. What Bennett lacked in experience, however, he made up in connections. As historian Philip Burch writes, "Bennett had been director of the rightist Committee for the Free World, a body whose executive director was Midge Decter, who was a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and the wife of Commentary's influential editor, Norman Podhoretz. ... In addition, in 1980 Bennett had been an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and later that year had contributed to that body's 'politically prescriptive' Mandate for Leadership volume [which served as a policy blueprint for the Reagan administration]. ... Throughout the 1980s, [Bennett was also] a member of the board of directors of the New York-based Institute for Education Affairs," which was created in 1978 by Irving Kristol and William Simon (see Philip Burch, Reagan, Bush, and Right-Wing Politics).

Bennett was appointed education secretary after he helped produce Heritage's "Mandate for Leadership," which argued that the creation of the Department of Education had been a "historic blunder, a combination of overweening federal ambition and pandering to interest groups. Still, the department exists. The question now becomes: How can it be turned into an agency of minimum nuisance? ... A suitably reformed Department of Education would resemble a three-room schoolhouse" (Burch, Reagan, Bush, and Right-Wing Politics). He served as education secretary until 1988, and in 1989 was appointed as the nation's first "drug czar" by President George H.W. Bush; Bennett served in that post until 1990.

Though he has been out of government for years, Bennett remains a key right-wing figure, exercising his influence through a small group of conservative policy organizations that he helped form. In 1993, he founded Empower America, which in 2004 merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy to form FreedomWorks, whose motto is "Lower taxes, less money, and more freedom," and where Steve Forbes is on the board. Though Bennett founded Empower America, he does not appear to be actively involved with its successor organization. Bennett also started Americans for Victory over Terrorism, which is now run by the conservative Claremont Institute.

Bennett was sharply critical of post-9/11 thinkers who dared to question the Bush White House's handling of the war on terror. When Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University wondered shortly after 9/11, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House,'' Bennett seized the thought and turned it into an issue of morality and patriotism. In a piece for the Boston Globe, Bennett wrote: "Just whose principles are the Columbia, Williams College, and Harvard faculties promoting? Have they criticized Osama bin Laden as much as they have President George W. Bush?" (Boston Globe, November 4, 2001). Of course had more Americans actually listened to, and questioned, the administration's rhetoric, as Foner suggested, Iraq might not have turned into the mess it is. But Bennett's strain of unquestioning flag-waving held sway, and in his vilification of liberal educators, Bennett blazed a trail followed by the likes of David Horowitz, who in 2006 published a book of the supposed "most dangerous"—read: liberal—U.S. professors. (Bennett was also a board member of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, now the Horowitz Freedom Center.)

In 2006, Bennett was part of an anti-immigration letter-writing campaign organized by the Hudson Institute, where Bennett was once a fellow. "We are in the middle of a global war on terror," the letter read. "2006 is not 1986. Today, we need proof that enforcement (both at the border and in the interior) is successful before anything else happens. As Ronald Reagan used to say 'trust, but verify.'" The letter was signed by Bennett, along with other right-wing and neoconservative figures such as Newt Gingrich, Robert Bork, Daniel Pipes, David Frum, Fred Ikle, and Frank Gaffney, among others (National Review Online, June 19, 2006). Bennett serves on the advisory board for Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, along with Morris Amitay, Phyllis Kaminsky, Paula Dobriansky, Richard Perle, Robert Joseph, former Rep. Curt Weldon, former Rep. Chris Cox, Michael Rubin, and many other conservative voices.

Bennett has advocated radically conservative policies on a range of issues, including education, race, and military affairs. In 1997, Bennett declared that "Homosexuality 'takes 30 years off your life,'" reported Slate.com (December 18, 1997). According to Slate, shortly after Bennett took that remarkably inaccurate stance, he repeated it in the pages of the November 24, 1997 Weekly Standard.

In fall 2005, Bennett was criticized for remarks that many perceived as racist. He "came under fire from Democratic congressional leaders ... for comments he made on a radio program about the potential for reducing crime by aborting all black children," reported the New York Times (September 30, 2005). Bennett's words, which he later defended: "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. ... That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

The uproar over Bennett's comments reportedly led him to resign from his post at K12 Inc., an online resource for home-schooling that was being investigated by the General Accountability Office for "K12's involvement in a project that received an improper multimillion-dollar grant from the Department of Education during Bennett's tenure at the firm" (Media Matters, January 5, 2006).

In 2003, Bennett was harshly criticized for his gambling habits, which seem to run counter to his many moral crusades. As Joshua Green reported in the Washington Monthly: "Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to 'homosexual unions' to 'The Ricki Lake Show' to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler. The Washington Monthly and Newsweek have learned that over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a 'preferred customer' at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million" (Washington Monthly, June 2003).

"By furtively indulging in a costly vice that destroys millions of lives and families across the nation, Bennett has profoundly undermined the credibility of his word on this moral issue," Green wrote.

Bennett has written or edited several books, including The Book of Virtues (1993) and Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (2003). He has also been a trustee at the conservative-leaning Sarah Scaife Foundation; in the late 1980s he was a director at the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Government Service

Private Sector

Education

Biography of William J. Bennett, Empower America, http://web.archive.org/web/20040803152102/http://www.empower.org/bennett.htm (Internet Archive).

Philip Burch, Reagan, Bush, and Right-Wing Politics: Elites, Think Tanks, Power, and Policy, Part A: The American Right Wing Takes Command: Key Executive Appointments, (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1997), pp. 281, 307-309, 362-363.

William Bennett, "Maddening Deeds at U.S. Universities: Colleges are Anti-Patriotic," Boston Globe, November 4, 2001.

"Enforcement First: The Right Way to Reform Immigration," National Review Online, June 19, 2006, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWM2NGJlZmY1Y2JiMTFkODQ3NTI4ZTMzZjUzN2YwYjg=.

David Kirkpatrick, "Democrats Attack Radio Host's Words on Crime," New York Times, September 30, 2005.

"Despite Controversial Comments and GAO Investigation, Bill Bennett, Reportedly Joining CNN as Political Analyst," Media Matters for America, January 5, 2006, http://mediamatters.org/items/200601050002.

Project for the New American Century, http://www.newamericancentury.org.

Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, Advisory Board, http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/about/bennett.shtml.

Americans for Victory over Terrorism, Claremont Institute, http://www.claremont.org/scholars/scholarID.37/scholar.asp.

Center for Security Policy, Advisory Council, http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/Home.aspx?CategoryID=47&SubCategoryID=50.

Person Profile: William J. Bennett, Media Transparency, http://www.mediatransparency.org/personprofile.php?personID=1.

Distinguished Visiting Professor Colloquium Series, 2000-2001 Marymount University Catalog, http://www.marymount.edu/cat/2000/dvp.html.

William J. Bennett, "Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top 100 Schools," Intercollegiate Studies Institute,1998, http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/news/pressroom/college_guides/isi/bennet.htm.

"Appendix," Privatization of Public Education, People for the American Way Foundation, April 20, 1999, pp. 21.

Walter Olson, "William Bennett, Gays, and the Truth," Slate.com, December 19, 1997.

Joshua Green, "The Bookie of Virtue," Washington Monthly, June 2003, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0306.green.html.

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