On Monday, October 12, Majority Leader Harry Reid addressed the Senate. “Last week, Rush Limbaugh went way over the line,” he said. “While I respect his right to say anything he likes, his unpatriotic comments I cannot ignore. During his show last Wednesday, Limbaugh was engaged in one of his typical rants. This one was unremarkable, indistinguishable from his usual drivel, which has been steadily losing listeners for years, until he crossed that line by calling our men and women in uniform who oppose the war in Iraq, and I quote, ‘phony soldiers.’ This comment was so beyond the pale of decency, and we can’t leave it alone . . .”
Reid informed his colleagues that he had written an official letter of complaint to Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel Communications, Limbaugh’s syndicator. In it, he once again charged that Limbaugh had called troops who oppose the war “phony soldiers” and called on May to repudiate the comments and ask Limbaugh to apologize. Forty Democratic senators and one independent, Socialist Bernie Sanders, signed this letter.
Limbaugh was almost delirious with joy. Not since the Clinton administration had he had an opportunity like this. Reid, who boasted that he had once been a Capitol Hill policeman (which had inspired Rush to nickname him “Dingy Harry”) had dragged the entire Democratic Senate into his absurd charge. Charging Limbaugh with disrespecting American soldiers was like calling the Pope an atheist. Getting all the senators to sign such a letter made it look as though Reid was afraid to take on Limbaugh without a posse. Worst of all (or, best, from Limbaugh’s point of view), by sending the letter, the Majority Leader came across as a tattle-tale.
Rush wasn’t in any danger. Mark Mays was his syndicator, not his boss. But that wasn’t the point. Here was an opportunity not simply to dismiss Reid, but to humiliate him. Limbaugh read the letter on the air, called it a “historic document,” and announced that he was going to auction it off on eBay. Bidding would last a week, and in the meantime he would keep the letter locked in a titanium case “manufactured by Halliburton.” He added that he would match the winning bid, all proceeds going to one of his favorite charities, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The winner would be announced on Friday, October 19, at 1:00 p.m.
At noon that day, Harry Reid took the Senate floor and capitulated. “This week, Rush Limbaugh put the original copy of [my letter to Mark May] up for auction on eBay . . . and I think very, very constructively, let the proceeds of that to go to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation that provides scholarship assistance to Marines and federal law enforcement personnel whose parents fall in the line of duty. What could be a more worthwhile cause? I think it’s really good that this money on eBay is going to be raised for this purpose.” Reid then tried to take credit for the auction. “There’s only a little bit of time left on it, but it certainly is going to be more than two million. Never did we think that this letter would bring money of this nature.” Limbaugh read this on the air with sarcasm that would have melted Halliburton’s imaginary titanium case. The letter was sold to a woman named Betty Casey, for $2.1 million. Rush matched it and sent a check for $4.2 million. It was a lot of money, even for Limbaugh, but the outcome was priceless. Dingy Harry had made Limbaugh’s day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SOUTHERN COMMAND
I
n early 2008, in midst of the primary season, the
New York Times Magazine
asked me to write about Senator John McCain’s campaign. McCain was the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but his candidacy was engendering strong resistance from the Limbaugh right. His long-standing policy was to refrain from endorsing a primary candidate, but he let his opinions be known. In early January, for example, after a strong showing by Mike Huckabee in Iowa, Limbaugh dismissed him as a populist, not a conservative. Limbaugh didn’t love any of the remaining candidates, either, but Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani all had one great virtue in his eyes: they were not John McCain. He had been in trouble with his party’s right for years. His maverick image was, after all, a repudiation of much of the GOP orthodoxy. It had made him popular with reporters and liberal colleagues in the Senate, but not with the Republican base. He knew he had to mend some fences, and he did, most famously by going down to Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 2006, to ask for the blessing of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the man he had called “an agent of intolerance” in 2000. Not only did McCain apologize, he hired one of Falwell’s closest lieutenants, Brett O’Donnell, the coach of Liberty’s nationally known debate team, as a campaign aide.
But McCain had his limits. In the 2000 primary, Limbaugh had sided with George W. Bush, and, ever since, Rush had immiserated the senator with parodies and skits about his lack of conservative principle. In one of these, Limbaugh intimated that McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham were gay lovers. In another he mocked McCain’s incendiary temper and impugned his honesty. McCain, raised on the Annapolis Honor Code (formally, the Cadet Honor Code), was incensed by such personal attacks and refused to reach out to Limbaugh. He thought he could get nominated and elected without the enthusiastic support of the party’s conservative base—which turned out to be correct in the first instance and a serious miscalculation in the second.
My plan was to fly out to Wisconsin to meet and interview McCain during a campaign stop, and then fly down to Florida to talk to Limbaugh. I was at New York’s LaGuardia Airport waiting for a flight to Milwaukee when McCain’s office called. The interview was off. The candidate was too busy. Scheduling conflicts. Last-minute hitches. They were very sorry. Don’t worry, they’d call me with another date.
I flew directly to Palm Beach, checked into an airport hotel, and went to bed. The next morning I awoke to a front-page story in the
Times
about the relationship between McCain and a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, that strongly implied they had had an affair. Now I got it. The McCain campaign had found out about the article in advance, tried to keep it out of the paper, and, failing, declared war on the
Times
. My interview was just collateral damage.
Limbaugh’s chief of staff, Kit Carson, had sworn me to secrecy before giving me the address of the studio. On the air Limbaugh refers to it, with mock grandiosity, as a fortified underground bunker. It turned out to be the top floor of a modest, nondescript office on a broad boulevard lined with palm trees. The lobby was unmarked and unguarded. A small elevator took me up to a deserted, antiseptic waiting room with a gleaming wood floor, leather armchairs, and an American flag in the corner. The only decoration was a small, framed photograph of Limbaugh, captioned “America’s Anchorman.”
I was buzzed in to the control room by Brian, the broadcast engineer, who shares the narrow space with Dawn, a court reporter from Pittsburgh hired by Limbaugh for transcription duties after he went deaf, and James “Bo Snerdley” Golden, a large, powerfully built man who wore a Huey Newton-style beret and matching attitude. “Are you the guy who’s here to do the hit job on us?” he demanded in a deep voice.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“That’s what I figured.” He glared at me, gave it a second, and then broke into raucous laughter.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” said Dawn. “We don’t get many reporters here.”
“None I’ve ever seen,” said Brian.
“The media doesn’t know about this place,” said Dawn. “They don’t know where we are. Even during Rush’s big drug story, when they staked out the whole town, including his house, they never found us here.”
“I’ll never talk,” I said. Golden snorted with what I took for good-natured skepticism.
For the next three hours we sat and watched
The Rush Limbaugh Show
. Radio studios are Limbaugh’s natural habitat. He has probably spent twenty thousand hours in front of a microphone since he first went on the radio as a teenage disc jockey. Today’s show was typical—ten thousand words of live, unscripted comedy and commentary, interspersed with commercials. During breaks Limbaugh scanned the Drudge Report and other Web sites for fodder, read e-mails from friends and experts who follow the show and offer advice, and spoke on the phone with staffers in New York.
After the broadcast, Limbaugh waved me into his studio and offered me a seat directly across from him. The show is webcast live to subscribers, but there is nothing particularly video friendly about it. Limbaugh was dressed for audio, in a golf shirt, shorts, and loafers without socks. His cochlear implant was clearly visible. Before the interview, his staff told me that the acoustics in the studio make it easy for him to hear but that he also reads lips.
On the air, Limbaugh had been animated, bouncing in his chair and waving his arms for emphasis. Now he was he was polite and subdued. I couldn’t tell if he was drained from the performance or merely resigned to getting grilled by a stranger with a notebook.
I started by asking Limbaugh what he thought about that morning’s article in the
Times
, but he waved it away. “This isn’t personal between us,” he said. “I’ve never even met McCain. I’d probably like him if I met him.”
“What would you want to ask him?”
“Well, I’d be curious to know about his experiences at the Hanoi Hilton. Then I’d ask him: Senator, how could you vote to limit free speech?” This was a reference to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, which Limbaugh believes is an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment and a boon to Democrats. “Next, I’d ask him: Senator, how could you have so badly misread the public on the amnesty bill? Why do you want illegal immigrants in the country? Is it because of pressure from the agriculture lobby? Or because you think they will become Republican voters?”
Partly due to Limbaugh’s opposition, McCain had recently repudiated his own pro-immigration bill, something that would undoubtedly hurt him with Hispanic voters. Limbaugh made it clear that he didn’t really care. He would prefer a Republican victory in the fall, but he wasn’t deeply invested in it. “It’s like the Super Bowl,” he told me. “If your team isn’t in it, you root for the team you hate less. That’s McCain.” The analogy made me laugh. I later learned that Limbaugh had told Charlie Rose the same thing about George H. W. Bush in 1992. Limbaugh, who began his career spinning golden oldies, has a weakness for recycling his own.
McCain and Limbaugh (like Bush) had father issues. McCain’s father, a four-star admiral, was a famously domineering and difficult man whose personality problems were exacerbated by alcoholism. McCain, like Limbaugh (and Bush), had been a school-hater; he proudly finished 894th of his 899 class at the Naval Academy. Limbaugh and McCain both cultivated a maverick style. But that’s where the similarities ended.
“I don’t look at McCain and see elements of myself,” Rush said. “I don’t think that way. If we met, I’m sure I’d find him genuine, but I’m not saying I would love to be friends with him. I think he’s too intense. Too intense to be president.”
Limbaugh’s idea of a sufficiently relaxed president is Dwight Eisenhower. “Ike was great. When he found out he couldn’t shoot Congress like he had Germans, he went to Augusta and played golf.” Of course, Eisenhower had been exactly the kind of moderate, compromising Republican that Rush despised, but I didn’t mention that. Sometimes you don’t want to let logic stand in the way of a good line.
I was aware that Senator McCain might not forgive the
Times
soon enough for me to write the article I had been assigned to write about him, and freelancers abhor (unpaid) vacuums. But talking to Limbaugh I saw an opportunity. He hadn’t been written about seriously in a national publication for almost ten years. As we were wrapping up our conversation, I asked if he would consider cooperating on an article about himself.
“In the
New York Times
?” Limbaugh said incredulously. “That, my friend, will never happen. Believe me, I know these people like I know every square inch of my glorious naked body.” He rose and extended his hand. “I enjoyed meeting you and I don’t mean to offend you, but if you think the editors of the
New York Times Magazine
are going to do a story on me that isn’t a hit job, you are naive.”
Brian the engineer offered to drop me off at my hotel, and I was waiting for him outside the control booth when Limbaugh came out of the studio. “I’ll bet you two tickets to a Yankees game, best seats in the house, that the
Times
will never agree,” he said.
“I don’t think I could afford the two best seats at Yankee Stadium,” I said.
“If I’m right, I’m right. If I’m wrong, you get the tickets. Don’t worry, I won’t be.”
“That would be unethical,” I said. “I can’t make a one-way bet with you.” At least not in front of witnesses.
“Fine, if they say no, you owe me a box of cigars.”
We shook on it.
On the way back to my hotel I asked Brian if he happened to know what kind of cigars Limbaugh smoked. “No,” he said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if they cost more than Yankee tickets.”
Luckily for me, Limbaugh was wrong. I sent Rush an e-mail (because of his deafness he rarely uses the telephone): “You owe me a ballgame. The magazine wants a full-fledged Limbaugh profile, 5,000 words at least, even more if the material justifies it.”
Limbaugh responded in character: “5,000 words won’t begin to cover it!”
I returned to Palm Beach in mid-March. By then the nomination of John McCain was a fait accompli. Limbaugh had never had the power to pick a Republican candidate, and 2008 was no exception. On the other side, though, the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama offered possibilities for mischief, ratings, and, perhaps, even affecting the outcome. The campaign had been contentious. In one of their debates, Obama had called Clinton “likable enough” in a dismissive tone some Clintonites found patronizing. In South Carolina, when Bill Clinton compared Obama’s victory to Jesse Jackson’s in 1984 and 1988, he was accused of making an invidious racial comparison. The longer the campaign went on, the more acrimonious and potentially harmful to the Democrats these disputes would become, and Limbaugh took it upon himself to prolong the agony.