Ben Wattenberg, Neoconservative Author and PBS Host, Is Dead at 81
He was not on the list.
Ben Wattenberg, author and demographer, TV host and public intellectual, died Sunday at the age of 81. The early tributes share one resounding theme: The native New Yorker loved America dearly, and that love shone throughout his work.
“He took immense pleasure and pride in his work,” wrote his son (and sometime collaborator) Danny. “It was exactly the work he wanted to be doing, which helps explain why he did it with such tireless energy and gusto. He relished debate, especially when he knew it was only a matter of time before vindication was his. . . And, boy, did he love America.”
Wattenberg got his vindication time and again — one of many
reasons The Post ran his column for nearly 20 years.
A loyal Democrat — indeed, a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson — he spent his life fighting against the left’s takeover of his party and standing up for the greatness of America, flaws and all.
His book, “The Real Majority” — co-written with political activist Richard Scammon — looked at the 1968 presidential election to preview what became the Reagan coalition. Liberals thought young people, minorities and the underprivileged were the voters to court. Not so “Majority” argued: The center is the only position of true political power — and that center was the “unyoung, unpoor, and unblack.” The typical American voter is “the 47-year-old wife of a machinist living in suburban Dayton, Ohio.”
You see why Wattenberg wound up being President Reagan’s favorite Democrat.
He also debunked “population explosion” hysteria, a driving concern of the 1970s left, by resorting to hard fact. The data, he showed, pointed to plummeting fertility rates worldwide — which would cause very different problems.
Indeed, he warned time and again, the United States needs a regular flow of new immigrants to keep the country strong despite its too-low native birthrate.
If only we had more thinkers willing to brazenly upend the status quo. But not everyone can be a Wattenberg.
“He was a firecracker,” wrote a much-younger cousin, Stephanie Gutmann. “He was always exciting and full of news. He was contentious, impatient, funny and loyal to things and people he loved. He was a happy warrior.”
America has lost a good one. May he rest in peace.
Joseph Ben Zion Wattenberg was born on August 26, 1933, to
Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in The Bronx. He grew up in the Sholem
Aleichem Houses, which was built by Yiddish socialists in the 1920s, and
attended DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1955, he graduated from Hobart College
with a major in English. From 1955 to 1957, he was in the US Air Force, based
in San Antonio. His first writing position was as a marine expert and edited
Rivers & Harbors and Water Transportation Economics, and the McGraw-Hill
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. In 1975, Hobart College awarded
Wattenberg an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and gave the commencement address
to the graduating class that year.
Wattenberg first came to national attention in 1965 with the
book This U.S.A.: An Unexpected Family Portrait of 194,067,296 Americans Drawn
From the Census co-authored with census director Richard M. Scammon. The
authors utilized data from the 1960 Census to support the theory that the
United States had entered a golden age by citing decreases in the rates of
divorce, traffic deaths, drug addictions, and school dropouts as well as
greater economic and educational opportunity for African Americans. Critics of
the book cited the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War to call it
propaganda of the American society. His process of layering data with narrative
led to the creation of the term "data journalism". The publication
caught the attention of Lyndon B. Johnson and Wattenberg became a White House
speechwriter in 1966. He later became an advisor to Hubert Humphrey's 1970
Senate race and Senator Henry M. Jackson's contest for the 1972 Democratic
presidential nomination, and Democratic Party presidential primaries of 1976,
and served on the 1972 and 1976 Democratic National Convention platform
committees.
In 1970, Wattenberg teamed up again with Richard M. Scammon
to write The Real Majority. The authors analyzed electoral data including, the
1968 presidential election, polls, and surveys to argue that the American
electorate was centrist, and that parties or candidates, to be viable, must
appeal to the "real majority" of the electorate at the center. The
real majority was described as “middle aged, middle class and middle minded”
and therefore politicians ought to move to the middle to remain in touch with
mainstream America. As a Democrat, Watternberg intended the analysis to be
embraced by his party; instead, the cultural touchstones of race, crime, and
poverty were the basis of the campaign strategies of the Richard Nixon
administration in the 1970 congressional elections and 1972 presidential
election.[citation needed] After the defeat of Senator George McGovern in 1972,
Wattenberg helped found the Coalition for a Democratic Majority which focused
on pocketbook issues and centrist themes to move the party back to the center.
Wattenberg was the host of a number of PBS television
specials, including Values Matter Most, The Grandchild Gap, America's Number
One, Ben Wattenberg's 1980, The Stockholder Society, A Third Choice (about the
role of third parties in American politics), Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall
of Socialism, and The Democrats. He hosted the weekly PBS television program,
Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, from 1994 to 2010, and previously hosted PBS
series In Search of the Real America and Ben Wattenberg At Large.
Wattenberg was the son of real-estate attorney Judah Wattenberg and Rachel Gutman Wattenberg. He was the younger brother of actress Rebecca Schull. He had four children, Ruth, Daniel and Sarah with his first wife, the former Marna Hade who died in 1997, and Rachel with his second wife, Diane Abelman. Wattenberg died on June 28, 2015, from complications following surgery
