A writer should be judged by his writings as well as his life story. Leo Brent Bozell III certainly has a story to tell. But how will it sell in South Africa?
There has been much discussion about the US government’s decision to declare South Africa’s ambassador Ebrahim Rasool persona non grata. This came almost immediately after Rasool’s critique during a webinar in which he said US President Donald Trump was leading a global supremacist campaign.
Rasool’s departure from the US fed growing speculation about who the new US ambassador to South Africa would be. Since Trump’s victory in the election, Breitbart News editor Joel Pollak’s relentless self-promotion campaign had seemed to have given him the pole position for the job, at least by his lights.
But that only lasted until Leo Brent Bozell III was nominated by Trump for the job instead. Bozell had been slated to take over the directorship of the US Agency for Global Media, but Elon Musk’s relentless cutting back of the government had led to that position being eliminated with the apparent closure of the agency.
Not surprisingly, Bozell’s nomination then became a news story, at least as far as South Africans were concerned, almost — but not quite — on a par with Rasool’s unexpected departure from the US.
Integral to such discussions about ambassadorial appointments, for many, is that there is a somewhat inflated view of what ambassadors do, or how important they really are in the grand scheme of things. Part of that comes from movies such as “Rules of Engagement” and series like “The Diplomat”. In such products, an ambassador is depicted as either an austere figure with powers beyond the reach of mere mortals, including a speed-dial number on his smartphone so he can order in Seal Team helicopters for a quick air strike or a rooftop rescue mission.
Sometimes, they are portrayed as oleaginous characters quite prepared to throw others under the bus in the event of diplomatic or personal difficulties. If neither of those two fancies fits, yet another common view is that ambassadors spend their time playing golf, attending black-tie dinners and having quiet entre nous encounters in expensive, secluded restaurants with shady characters who have dubious deals on offer.
But the reality is rather different most of the time. Judging from the way some political appointees initially misunderstand the job, some of those vying for such appointments are less than fully attuned to the actual job, unless they are career foreign service officers who have served in various embassies during their careers or have friends who have done so.
Of course, there was a time when many ambassadors might be the sharp point of the lance for US intentions abroad, a kind of unofficial pro-consul, verging on the manner of General Douglas MacArthur during the early years of post-war Japan.
That era pretty much ended from about the time Ambassador Graham Martin was evacuated by helicopter from the US embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), as the South Vietnamese government and army were melting away back in 1975. Nonetheless, even with less freedom of action and influence, now, some non-career ambassadors (or ministers) have wielded great influence in countries of interest to the US.
Such individuals usually had already achieved major public stature because of their previous careers. Names that come to mind include the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the urban sociologist (and later, Senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who were dispatched to India. Or Prof Edwin Reischauer (a renowned East Asia historian). And, of course, there was also financier (and bootlegger) Joseph P Kennedy Sr, who served in the United Kingdom, although his views about Britain’s ability to hold out against Hitler was counter to the president’s, and so he was recalled.
But to my mind, the most interesting non-career diplomat was Townsend Harris. Who, you say?
Court of the shogunate
Two years after a US naval flotilla succeeded in 1854 in opening Japan to foreign trade and relations, the US president appointed a Democratic Party stalwart, Townsend Harris, as the country’s first minister to the court of the shogunate in Edo (Tokyo), although he was forced to reside in Shimoda, a small settlement south of the city.
Harris’ experiences were retold very Hollywood-style in the 1954 film “The Barbarian and the Geisha”. Harris, a solid citizen businessman and philanthropist (he founded Brooklyn College as a free university) was portrayed in the most unlikely, over-the-top manner by none other than John Wayne. Despite that, the film is a hoot to watch, even if it doesn’t teach very much about diplomacy.
As the US representative to Japan’s leaders, Harris had been charged with negotiating a formal trade treaty between the two nations. In his diary, he lamented that his very detailed reports to Washington (carried homeward by the very occasional whaling or trading vessel that arrived in Tokyo Bay) about his progress in negotiations elicited no responses — after more than a year into his assignment. Let that sink in — long, long months of total silence from Washington. It was almost as if he was freelancing as a diplomat.
Nowadays, of course, ambassadors and their staffs are deluged with electronic and voice communications from home, daily — sometimes even on an hourly basis. The messages insist on updates about challenging economic and political conditions or updates on scheduling arrangements for VIP or other official visitors.
Then there are all the other administrative demands placed upon an embassy. Of course the staff do much of this work, but the ambassador’s name is at the bottom of official communications and so they are responsible for anything everyone else says or does. Much of an ambassador’s time is taken up with reading local publications, relevant US publications, even fiction about their host country, as well as meeting host nation citizens and settling intra-office disputes.
Naturally, today’s ambassador faces circumstances that differ enormously from Harris’. Bozell, too, will face those challenges once he arrives in Pretoria — assuming he is confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then by the full Senate and, finally, by South Africa’s government formally agreeing to the appointment.
Will Ambassador Bozell delight in taking an active role in all manner of discussions and decisions about contentious issues between the two nations? Will he make space in his schedule to engage in conversations on South African broadcast forums and debates? Will he seriously attempt to reshape the bilateral relationship — or, rather, will he follow Washington’s lead and rhetoric?
Alternatively, will he allow the staff to take the lead in fulfilling the agenda set by Washington, and keep some space in his diary to enjoy the country’s many scenic, gustatory, cultural and viticultural attractions?
To get at least a toehold at answering such questions, this writer read a shelf of Bozell’s writings. The collection comprises a memoir of his life that includes how he entered the world of conservative political activity, several collections of columns (partially ghost-written by Tim Graham) decrying the mainstream media and predicting the collapse of any trust in those so-called liberal media channels.
Also included in one of those collections is an essay describing the first time he and Donald Trump met — and how the writer and political activist sized up Trump — and seemingly how he had been sized up in return.
Shenandoah Valley
From his memoir, we learn Bozell grew up in a large, boisterous devoutly Catholic family that had been uprooted from suburban Washington to the rural Shenandoah Valley in Virginia where they lived as a land-rich but income-poor clan.
From his description of that life, there are even some faint echoes of the family sagas at the centre of “Brideshead Revisited” or “Downton Abbey” — but minus very much money. His father was a strong right-wing conservative with family ties to William R Buckley, the nation’s leading conservative intellectual, founder of their flagship magazine, The National Review, and ghost-writer of Senator Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative.”
Bozell Snr also founded the magazine Triumph, but it turned out to be a money pit, generating a nearly-constant undertone of financial dread amidst the Bozell family whirl.
The young Leo Brent Bozell III spent several years in high school in Spain, living among the Spanish rather than in the foreign community, at the encouragement of his father, who had also lived there for a period. Importantly, this took place in the authoritarian Spain of the dictator Francisco Franco rather than the politically rowdy country it is now. This expatriate experience seems to have had a deep influence on Bozell, furthering his embrace of familial ideals of a conservative, religiously flavoured life of order and hierarchical respect for a nation’s leaders.
In his early adulthood, after university, he joined with Terry Dolan, one of the leading proponents of the new style of right-wing, conservative political action groups, different from the older conspiratorial mutterings of groups like the John Birch Society.
Dolan had founded NCPAC — the National Conservative Political Action Committee — and brought together opinion research, targeted mass mailing techniques, an understanding of core issues motivating audiences, and an actual issues research component. It was at NCPAC that young Bozell’s hands-on political education began.
Following his attendance at one of Dolan’s boot camps for would-be political operatives, Dolan offered the young Bozell a series of jobs with exalted titles but middling salaries. Dolan’s mentorship set Bozell on his path as a polemicist and founder of the Media Research Center, a body he set up to track the utterances and writings of every reporter, commentator and news presenter to winnow out their not-so-secret support for left-liberal ideas, positions, biases and mistruths about conservatives.
Propaganda battles
Along the way, he was engaged in the propaganda battles that accompanied the Sandinista-Contra struggle for the future of Nicaragua. He tells of those adventures in both the political trenches as well as doing film work on location to support the Contras (the Reagan administration’s favourites) in that war-weary nation.
His essays emanating from the Media Research Center and its constant examination of the contents of reporting come close to but never actually charge the media with participating in a conscious, unified effort. As he wrote in “Weapons of Mass Distortion”:
“The political discourse in this country is spirited, and on many issues — the economy, the proper role of government, foreign policy, national security, social issues, and much more — conservatives can enjoy an energetic debate with liberals.
“Unfortunately, media bias is not one of those issues on which conservatives and liberals can engage in intelligent debate. Liberals continue to do what they have always done in the face of conservative critiques of the media: They simply refuse to acknowledge that any bias exists. No matter how many times the obvious is proven, and no matter how many ways evidence is documented, liberal elites offer denials and prevarications.”
Bozell, however, offers little about the exotic ecology of often-coordinated attacks coming from the other side of the political spectrum, what with the repetition of whole phrases, talking points and charges on Fox News, Truth Social and other right-wing outlets.
Importantly, this is how an increasing number of people are gaining their news, as viewership shifts away from the three commercial television networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), the Public Broadcasting Service, and CNN or MSNBC, as well as many of the country’s major print publications. (A growing number of print newspapers are now just an online presence or have ceased publication entirely.)
Many of the new outlets attracting viewers via social media and online channels have a distinctly conservative, right-wing, even libertarian slant. That shift helped bring about the rise of the man who has now appointed Bozell to be the US’s next ambassador to South Africa.
Toy projects
Bozell’s essays also attempt to argue (with some disappointment, apparently) that Trump (in his first term of office) was hardly the man who was destroying the texture of the federal government. As he wrote (and we quote at length):
“In May 2017 President Trump unveiled his fiscal 2018 budget proposal. He proposed to eliminate sixty-six wasteful federal programs for a savings of $26.7-billion. It was a paltry percentage (only in Washington, D.C., can ‘billion’ be defined as ‘paltry’), but these programs were boondoggles, the kind of programs enacted when bureaucrats decide the federal government is a sandbox for their favorite toy projects courtesy of the American taxpayer —which is to say you, and if not you, your progeny. Every single one of these programs deserved a budgetary firing squad.
“The Agriculture Department runs something called the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program. It also hosts the Rural Business-Cooperative Service. The Commerce Department is entrusted with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
“You’re paying for the Department of Education to run things such as the International Education and Foreign Language program and something truly existential called Strengthening Institutions. The Energy Department maintains the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program and the Title 17 Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program.
“At HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] you’ll find the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Homeland Security focuses on the Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis Program (because that’s key to homeland security). The Department of Housing and Urban Development hosts the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program Account. The Interior Department is entrusted with the Abandoned Mine Land Grants.
“The Justice Department runs exactly what you’d expect Eric Holder’s Justice Department to run: the State Criminal Alien Assistance program. The Labor Department gets into that act as well with the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Training program.
“Add to this the slew of useless and thoroughly obnoxious programs, such as the State Department’s $1.59-billion Green Climate Fund and the Global Climate Change Initiative, along with USAID’s foreign aid and earmarks worth $4.256-billion.
“Then there are the expenditures for not just unnecessary but also inappropriate and/or outdated and/or just plain offensive liberal projects such as the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (including PBS and NPR), and…
“The list goes on and on. There’s a simple test to gauge the value of a product: Imagine the market without it. Imagine the world without stupid agencies such as the Northern Border Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority and the Denali Commission. Nothing would change other than that thousands of useless federal employees would be forced to land real jobs.
“A total of sixty-six abuses of the American taxpayer. This is the very essence of Washington’s leftist elites and their signature arrogance.
“Their elimination was another key element of the Republican Party agenda: Give us the power and watch what we do!
“How many of these programs were eliminated by the Republican- controlled Congress?
“Not one.”
The real irony, of course, is that the second version of the Trump presidency, now abetted by Elon Musk’s Doge partisans, is, in fact, attempting to carry out just the destruction of much of the federal bureaucracy Bozell had decried had not happened during Trump 1.0. Presumably, Bozell is cheering such developments, despite the upheaval to the US government and its services.
A new champion
But for sheer fascination, take in Bozell’s careful eye for detail in describing his first encounter with Donald Trump. This comes from the preface of his 2019 volume “Unmasked”. It is an astonishing look at how a veteran conservative political operative pivoted to embrace a new champion. Or, as Bozell wrote:
“He had that celebrity handle, ‘The Donald,’ but for most people he was just Trump, and I confess that I never cared much for Trump. Blowhard, raunchy playboy, controversial businessman, endless self-promoter, jerk — all these things defined the public Donald Trump as seen by his critics. Politics never seemed to be a top-shelf concern for this man, but when he did speak out, the narrative was doctrinaire liberal Democrat, championing Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton while celebrating Planned Parenthood, single-payer health insurance, environmental excesses, and the like.
“In recent years he’d been singing from a different sheet. He was becoming increasingly critical of President Obama, but it came with an inexplicable fixation on that damn birth certificate, which all along was the least provable and therefore most irrelevant accusation against the President.
“It was little more than a clarion call for conspiracy theorists and certainly unbecoming of a dignified contender.
“Trump had made noises about running in 2008, but virtually nobody took him seriously, and when nothing materialized, those who bothered to care chalked it up to another Trump publicity stunt. Again in 2012 he flirted with a presidential run. ‘I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election,’ he boasted. But again nothing. Bluster? Fear? The realization that he couldn’t win? No telling. Trump was Trump.
“But in 2014 and early 2015, things seemed to be changing. He was becoming more comprehensively outspoken in his condemnation of Obama and the Democrats, and though he didn’t seem to be wildly enthusiastic about the GOP, it was becoming evident that that was his destination. Word circulated that he was hiring staff in the early-primary states. More telling than this, Trump was doing deliberate outreach to some of the strongest voices in the conservative movement, such as my old friend talk radio giant Mark Levin, along with some of the most influential activist leaders in the movement, such as Citizens United head David Bossie, a longtime companion in the political trenches.
“It was Bossie who urged me to meet Donald Trump. I was skeptical. When I questioned Trump’s sudden conversion to the side of the angels, Bossie was quick to defend it: ‘He’s the real deal.’ When I questioned his seriousness of purpose, Bossie was equally enthusiastic. ‘I think this time he’s gonna do it!’ ”
Charismatic
Later on, in this essay, Bozell wrote:
“Trump was about the most charismatic man I ever met. Charismatic can mean different things, of course. St. John Paul II had a charisma that left a worldwide television audience hearing the roars of Santo Súbito! coming from tens of thousands attending his funeral. On the other hand, Vlad the Impaler probably exuded a certain charisma of his own as he ordered fields filled with thousands of Turkish prisoners shish-kebabbed into the soil. In Trump’s case, however, I had never expected to find the word associated with him in any capacity. I left lunch still believing he couldn’t win but now wondering just how far he might go if America got to know this Trump.”
And by the end of his piece, and having thought about his encounter with his new champion, in retrospect, Bozell concluded:
“Late into the night of November 8, Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern political history. The man who had told me nineteen months before, ‘I really do think I can win this,’ and who registered 3 percent in the polls the day he announced his candidacy, was elected as the forty-fifth President of the United States.
“It’s been only two and a half years, and President Donald J. Trump has changed America and stunned the world.”
In the months ahead, it will be fascinating to see how Ambassador-designate Bozell will evaluate the impact of Trump on foreign relations by the time Trump truly hits his stride as president — as well as how Bozell will determine the texture of his actions and his role as an ambassador in the Trump presidency.
And, of course, there will be the question of whether South Africa’s media outlets (and the government) will embrace him as an articulate spokesperson for Trump’s policies — or if, instead, they shun him as too radioactive to touch. DM