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May 13, 1988 - Image 46

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1988-05-13

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

PEOPLE

William Kristol, chief of staff for
U.S. Secretary of Education
William Bennett, says he has no
difficulty reconciling his
Judaism with his own, his boss'
or the Reagan administration's
conservative philosophies.

PLAYER

JAMES DAVID BESSER

Washington Correspondent

J

ews and conservatives sometimes
seem like strange bedfellows.
On one hand, Jewish Americans
are not immune to the pressures that
nudge people in the direction of con-
servatism as they add to their families, bank
accounts and birthdays. Even for some
onetime liberals, there is a comfortable in-
evitability to the process.
At the same time, the most ardent
Jewish neoconservatives sometimes feel
uncomfortable with their ideological
brethren. There are subgroups under the
conservative umbrella that still believe in
Jewish conspiracies for world domination.
Many more advocate things like school
prayer and a reemphasis on America's
"Christian heritage." Politicians and
preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell have made careers of cementing the
bonds between ideological and theological
conservatism, a process that sets most
Jewish nerves on edge.
William Kristol suffers no such ap-
prehensions. His conservative pedigree
tells part of the story; his father is Irving
Kristol, one of the major constellations in
the Jewish neoconservative universe. Ac-
cording to some published reports, Kristol
is more conservative than his father, an
assessment that he laughs off, but doesn't
deny.

46

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1988

More importantly, Bill Kristol is a true
believer. Amid signs that the luster of the
Reagan revolution has dimmed, Kristol
still relishes his role as right-hand man to
one of the most visible and controversial
Reagan warriors, Secretary of Education
William Bennett.
He doesn't lose sleep over the possible
side effects of the educational movement
he and Bennett are trying to forge. Poor
quality teaching and a failure to teach
educational basics, he suggests, are more
dangerous threats than school prayer.
Kristol's official title at Education is
Chief of Staff. "My job is to coordinate
things for the Secretary and advise him on
policy issues," Kristol says. "I also coor-
dinate things at the office of the Secretary,
which involves scheduling, speechwriting
— everything in which he has a direct per-
sonal interest."
But Kristol's role goes beyond that of the
army of under-secretaries and deputy
secretaries who crank the machinery of the
Department of Education. Kristol serves
as a kind of alter-ego for the controversial
Secretary of Education, an intellectual
sparring-partner as they try to apply broad
conservative principles to the complex
debate over the future of America's public
schools.
An interview with Bill Kristol in his
Washington office is an exercise in discon-
tinuity. The door that connects his office
with Secretary Bennett's should have been

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