David Frum

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David J. Frum
Born 1960
Birth place Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Education University of Toronto Schools (1978); Yale University (1982); Harvard Law School (1987)
Circumstances
Occupation Journalist, author, political speechwriter
Family son of Barbara Frum and Murray Frum
Spouse Danielle Crittenden
Notable credit(s) Senior editor at the American Prospect[1]; previously a senior writer at the Washington City Paper; work has also appeared in The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and Salon; frequent guest on BloggingHeads.tv

David J. Frum (born 1960) is a Canadian-born neoconservative and journalist active in the both US and Canadian political arenas. A former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush, he is also the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency. His editorial columns have appeared in a variety of Canadian and American magazines and newspapers. [2]

Contents

[edit] Background

Born to a Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Frum is the son of the late Barbara Frum, a well-known veteran journalist. His father, Murray Frum was a dentist who later became a multi-millionaire as a real estate developer. David Frum's sister, Linda Frum is a journalist. David Frum is married to writer Danielle Crittenden, the stepdaughter of former Toronto Sun editor Peter Worthington.

At age 14 he was a campaign volunteer for a socialist candidate, taking an hour-long bus/subway/bus ride each way to and from the campaign office in western Toronto. He would read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, a paperback edition his mother had given him. "My campaign colleagues jeered at the book — and by the end of the campaign, any lingering interest I might have had in the political left had vanished like yesterday’s smoke."[3]

He graduated from the University of Toronto Schools in 1978 where he was the School Captain. He then attended Yale University in 1982 where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. While at Yale he was in the Directed Studies program, a type of "great books" course.[4] He went on to Harvard Law School in 1987. Frum has described one of his study methods while at law school:

When I was in law school, I devised my own idiosyncratic solution to the problem of studying a topic I knew nothing about. I'd wander into the library stacks, head to the relevant section, and pluck a book at random. I'd flip to the footnotes, and write down the books that seemed to occur most often. Then I'd pull them off the shelves, read their footnotes, and look at those books. It usually took only 2 or 3 rounds of this exercise before I had a pretty fair idea of who were the leading authorities in the field. After reading 3 or 4 of those books, I usually had at least enough orientation in the subject to understand what the main questions at issue were — and to seek my own answers, always provisional, always subject to new understanding, always requiring new reading and new thinking.[4]

He served as an editor on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992, and then as a columnist for Forbes magazine in 1992-94. From 1994 through 2000 he was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research.

Following the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Frum was appointed to a position within the White House. Still a Canadian citizen, he was one of the few foreign nationals working within the Bush White House. He served as Special Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Speechwriting from January 2001 to February 2002.

Frum strongly supported John Roberts, George W. Bush's nominee for Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. However, like many conservatives, he opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, on the grounds that she was insufficiently qualified for the post, as well as insufficiently conservative.

David Frum now speaks on behalf of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, as well as the Fraser Institute, a like minded think tank based in Canada. On October 11, 2007, Frum announced on his blog that he was joining Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.[5] [6]

[edit] Writings

His first book, Dead Right, was released in 1994. He is the author also of What's Right (1996) and How We Got Here a history of 1970s published in 2000.

In January 2003, he released The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, the first insider account of the Bush presidency. Frum is widely cited as having authored the phrase "axis of evil," which he discusses in his book. In fact, though, his original phrasing was "axis of hatred". As the title suggests, Frum also discusses how the events of September 11, 2001 redefined the country and the President. Frum writes, "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man."

Frum's latest book, An End to Evil, was co-written with Richard Perle. It provided a defense of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and advocated regime change in Iran and Syria. Furthermore, it called for a tougher policy with North Korea, as well as advocating a tougher U.S. stance against Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations in order to "win the war on terror" (the book's by-line). Fareed Zakaria critiqued it in a New York Times Sunday Book Review essay,[7] writing that "To transform the world, you do actually need to engage in it."

Frum writes a weekly column for Canada's National Post newspaper and is a commentator for American Public Radio's "Marketplace." His writings appear frequently in the New York Times, Italy's Il Foglio, and the Daily Telegraph. He also writes a blog, David Frum's Diary at the National Review Online Web site.

[edit] Political views

On abortion, Frum has stated that he "is not pro-life" and "think[s] abortion ought to be legal in the first trimester and generally illegal thereafter", but believes in state-by-state regulations on the matter.[8]

[edit] Non-political views and interests

Frum has written in his blog that he enjoys reading history (among his favorite historical figures are Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln), particularly histories of The American Civil War (he has also visited Civil War battlefields[9]). In fiction, "Marcel Proust is my all-time favorite novelist, the one I could read and re-read endlessly."[4]

[edit] Criticism

 It has been suggested that some of the information in this article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) be merged into other sections to achieve a more neutral presentation. (Discuss)

David Frum has attracted criticism because of his stand on the Iraqi War and his criticism of those who do not support it. In 2003 he wrote:

"War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them."[10]

His position caused conflict among conservatives.[11]

Frum has also been accused of misrepresenting Canadian crime statistics in order to incorrectly portray crime in Canada as increasing while the crime rate in the United States is dropping.[12]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ View Author | The American Prospect
  2. ^ David Frum: Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute website, 2005
  3. ^ [1]Frum, David, "Campaigns Past", posting ("untranslated" from his Il Foglio column) at David Frum's Diary blog at National Review Online Web site, October 30, 2007, accessed January 3, 2008
  4. ^ a b c d [2]Frum, David, "David's Bookshelf Year End", posting at David Frum's Diary blog at National Review Online Web site, January 1, 2008, accessed January 3, 2008
  5. ^ David Frum, "Rudy & Me," post at David Frum's Diary blog
  6. ^ Disclosure at the end of "Make speech free, and all else follows", published in the National Post on October 20, 2007.
  7. ^ Showing Them Who's Boss
  8. ^ David Frum He has also recently released a new book called Comeback. "Partial Birth II", National Review, November 12, 2003. Retrieved on April 23. 
  9. ^ [3]Frum, David, "David's Bookshelf 50" post at David Frum's Diary blog at National Review Online Web site, October 27, 2007, accessed January 3, 2007
  10. ^ David Frum. "Unpatriotic Conservatives", National Review, March 19, 2003. Retrieved on 2008-04-25. 
  11. ^ Mail 264 June 30 - July 6, 2003
  12. ^ [4]The Ottawa Citizen; February 15, 2006; By Dan Gardner

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