Breitbart for President

Relentlessly pursuing truth, determined to change the narrative

Kathryn Jean Lopez
Monday, May 02, 2011

Thank goodness for the royal wedding! It took U.S. media attention off Donald Trump for a few minutes. In case you missed it, the president of the United States actually made a statement at the White House about Donald Trump and his search for Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate, now made public by the president’s press secretary.

One assumes the presidential motivation in taking Donald Trump so seriously was not to help Trump with his endless free publicity for the Celebrity Apprentice finale later this month or to leverage his own post–Oval Office NBC deal, but to keep Trump front and center as the face of GOP 2012. Trump is currently polling well. He’s polling well because he appears to have a fearless relentlessness when it comes to Barack Obama. While most potential GOP contenders are comparatively on the sidelines, Trump shows some passion!

But Republicans would be wise to quit The Donald (and stop giving him any more attention) and buck up their real leaders and allies. People who are doing the heavy lifting of — to borrow a phrase — Winning the Future. People who get what the Fierce Urgency of Now is really about — both as a rhetorical phrase and as a pressing reality. And it’s not any personal or political campaign. It’s bigger than that. It’s about leveling the playing field in media, culture, and politics. It’s about preserving and always improving a country and culture worthy of defending — a country and culture that men have died defending. It’s about serving a cause greater than ourselves, one we’re not inventing as we go along.

Chief among these people: Andrew Breitbart. “Will the GOP stop playing Charlie Brown to the media’s Lucy?” the longtime new-media entrepreneur writes in his new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me while I Save the World!

When, on March 20, 2010, participants in a Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill were accused of calling members of the Congressional Black Caucus — most notably John Lewis, a Georgia veteran of the civil-rights movement — the infamous, demeaning N-word, Andrew Breitbart “smelled a rat.”

As he puts it: “The press went directly to petrified Republican leaders, who offered the predictable fearful apologies they weren’t qualified to give.”

In the meantime, Breitbart made an offer to Representative Lewis: “If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the Tea Partiers, or you pass a simple lie-detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.”

Breitbart later upped the ante, offering even more money. But no video ever turned up, and Representative Lewis never presented himself for his polygraph. Media and activists backed away from the reckless and untrue accusation.

“We called their bluff,” Breitbart recalls in his book.

“We even found four videos from the exact place and time showing Representatives Carson and Lewis walking briskly and unobstructed. Four videos. Four angles. No N-word. And even then the congressmen and the media refused to take it back. It was an epic victory for truth and absolute proof that the media are the problem.”

This is what Breitbart does. As he explains it: “The left does not win battles in debate. It doesn’t have to. In the twenty-first century, media is everything. The left wins because it controls the narrative. The narrative is controlled by the media. The left is the media. Narrative is everything.” And Breitbart is “at war to gain back control of the American narrative.”

If you know Andrew Breitbart, as I have for more than a decade now, you know the title of his book perfectly captures him. As I get older, I need more sleep; he seems to need less. Because he gets more outraged. And he never loses heart — or at least if he does, he has an excellent poker face.

“Telling the truth is fun,” Andrew writes. “Having an effect on the election cycle is fun. Getting into world-class battles with brand-name media players is fun. When you have the truth on your side, and the American people behind you, it’s fun!”

But it’s no game for the relatively young father of four, whose youngest son is named for National Review’s — and conservatism’s — founding father, William F. Buckley Jr. In his acknowledgments you see his true motivation. In the passage addressed to his children, he writes: “Too many people fought to create this country” for us “to squander it in a generation . . . I cannot stand on the sidelines as you and your generation are being handed the tab.”

And so Andrew is in it for the long haul: “It’s a long war. I know. I’ve lost friends. I have the scars. My wife married an almost inappropriately always-lighthearted guy fourteen years ago. Now she wakes up next to a firebrand who is one of the most polarizing figures in the country.”

And though Breitbart never consciously expected to be, like a lot of Americans who got involved in politics on a whole new level last year, he is totally Tea Party. Perhaps you’d describe him as angry, but he’s more accurately captured as determined and invested. Besides being a new-media leader who has taken more than his share of nasty attacks, he is also a bit of a motivational speaker: “I am optimistic that the Tea Party movement is reflective of a greater American sentiment that needs to try at least to save what is good and decent about the American experience. Again, it is a cultural battle. And while they cling to their media guns and their politically correct religion, truth will be our weapon.”

Andrew’s not running for anything. He’s just working to win, stakes bigger than any one campaign. What he brings to the table is a substantive version of what people are responding to in Donald Trump. He’s not shy. He doesn’t surrender. And, forever propping up other people, he doesn’t crave credit, only victory.

And that, my friends, is a key ingredient for defeating Barack Obama’s reelection effort in 2012.