Will, George F. (1941—)

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Will, George F. (1941—)

Political commentator, columnist, and amateur baseball historian, George F. Will is known for the way he imparts a conservative spin to his opinions about the intersection of American culture and politics in the closing years of the twentieth century. Best known for his syndicated column in the Washington Post and for his regular contributions to Newsweek, Will is also a frequent panelist on televised political commentary programs, such as ABC's This Week with David Brinkley. As R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. wrote in his review of The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994, "George F. Will has always been a sober, civilized man with serious political principles buttressed by wise historical thoughts."

Born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1941, George F. Will was educated at Trinity College (B.A. 1962), Magdalene College of Oxford University (B.A. 1964), and Princeton University (M.A., Ph.D. 1967). Several collections of Will's newspaper and magazine columns have been published including: Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986-1990 ; The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses, 1981-1986 ; The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions ; and The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts. One of Will's biggest crusades has been against big government, notably as a supporter for term limitations for U.S. Senators and Representatives. Reflective of public frustration with the American political system during the 1980s and 1990s, Will consistently pushed for term limits believing, as Peter Knupfer notes in the Journal of American History, these limits will "restore democratic institutions to deliberative processes and to leadership by public-spirited amateurs" who are more interested in the public good than in political careers. Will's writings on term limits are found in numerous columns and in one book, Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy.

Although he generally adopts a conservative position, he is by no means a typical Republican looking to either weaken government or weaken the Democratic Party. As a self-styled conservative, Will reshaped the way people viewed the spectrum of American political thought by insisting that conservatives move away from narrow self-interest toward an interest in the public good. Will's thought urges conservatives to reconsider their assumptions and adopt ideas steeped in the "tradition of U.S. socio-political thought: the relation of individuals to the larger community, the ways of nurturing a dynamic democracy and the proper role of government," in the words of Marilyn Thie in America. From this position, Will wrote many columns on what he saw as wasteful government spending, government inefficiency, and political gridlock. Will came to believe one of the biggest problems for American culture was the public's heavy reliance on—and demands on—its government. If the government is misfiring in itself, then its ability to serve the public is highly problematic, Will believed.

Beyond his primary focus on politics and American culture, Will also wrote on a range of subjects that included pornography, journalistic ethics, advertising, the environment, and especially the game of baseball. Relating the myths of American life, such as the American dream and the great American pastime, to the realities of contemporary American life remains one of Will's contributions to cultural discourse. Besides several columns for a variety of periodicals, his book publications on the myths of American baseball include Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and Other Reflections on Baseball (1998) and Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (1990).

—Randall McClure