Norman Podhoretz, a longtime chief editor of Commentary magazine who once said he lost many good friends over his support for President Trump, has died.
Podhoretz was the father of New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, who is now editor of Commentary.
The elder Podhoretz was a writer for Commentary and served as the publication’s editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1995.
Podhoretz was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group.
His 2009 book “Why Are Jews Liberals?” questions why Jews for decades have been dependable Democrats, often supporting the party by margins of better than two-to-one, even in years of Republican landslides.
“If Donald Trump doesn’t win in 2020, I would despair of the future,” Podhoretz said a year before that election. “I have 13 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren, and they are hostages to fortune. So I don’t have the luxury of not caring what’s going to happen after I’m gone.”
He said his views caused him to lose friends who were anti-Trump, saying, “Some of them have gone so far as to make me wonder whether they’ve lost their minds.”
Initially a staunch liberal, Podhoretz moved Commentary to the left editorially when he took over the magazine.
However, he became increasingly critical of the New Left and gradually moved rightward as the 1960s wore on.
By the 1970s, he was a leading member of the neoconservative movement.
Podhoretz died from pneumonia in Manhattan, on Tuesday.
“What mattered most to him was writing. Great writing. Good writing. Clear writing. Honest writing,” his son wrote Tuesday in remembrance for Commentary.
“He was the most literate man I have ever known, possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the written word in our time and in times past, who found true moral, intellectual, and aesthetic purpose in the act of reading and deciphering and comprehending.”
