Tucker!

1945 asked me to contribute some thoughts on one of our Worst Contemporary Americans, so I wrote a bit about Tucker’s foreign policy:

Tucker Carlson first broke from GOP foreign policy orthodoxy in 2004, when he declared that he had been mistaken about supporting the Iraq War. Prior to that point, Carlson had accepted the Bush administration’s weak case for war hook, line, and sinker, and used his media platform to lead attacks against anyone who doubted the wisdom of an invasion. From that point, Tucker Carlson maintained a studied distance from the war, supporting the troops but maintaining that the decision to invade was an error. Even then, Carlson’s record was mixed; he often took pains to distinguish his own skepticism about the war from anything that could plausibly be described as “leftist.” 

It’s certainly worth wondering how sincere Carlson’s anti-war sentiments were in 2004. While it was still difficult to make one’s way in conservative media circles by striking an anti-war pose in 2004, Carlson was not at the time part of the right-wing media ecosystem. Tucker Carlson was employed by CNN and PBS until 2005, and by MSNBC from 2005 until 2008. His shift on the Iraq War certainly made him more attractive to centrist and left-leaning news outlets, especially as Iraq descended into chaos and the case for war collapsed. Still, whether sincere or savvy, the decision to pivot on the Iraq War left Carlson well-positioned to ascend through conservative media circles as the war wound down and Barack Obama assumed responsibility for executing the nation’s foreign policy.