Ed Feulner: The Quartermaster of American Conservatism

A s his many obituary tributes have shown, Edwin J. Feulner (Ed to the thousands who knew him as a friend) had an enormous number of political, academic, and social achievements to his credit — the most important of which to him was a long and happy life with his lovely wife, Linda, who encouraged, strengthened, and occasionally restrained his energetic pursuit of an America inspired by an active conservative soul rather than an exhausted liberal conscience. He lived to see this triumphant vision enjoy several decades of dominance in American and world politics and be eventually (and inevitably) challenged by a resurgent progressive movement. At which point he rolled up his sleeves and set about to reconstruct the conservatism needed to solve very different problems from those he had put to flight 20 years before: the decay of America’s confident Tocquevillian society undermined by “free stuff,” broken borders, and a metastasizing bureaucracy, as well as the fragmentation of Western civilization in a hostile disorderly world.

The outcome of that battle remains uncertain, but Ed left us the organizations, the structures, and the links between conservatives of very “diverse” kinds that together give us a rational hope of eventual victory.

Clare Boothe Luce famously remarked that great men are usually memorialized in a single phrase, such as “Lincoln freed the slaves.” If Bill Buckley founded the American conservative movement and Ronald Reagan led it to a world-historical victory, Ed Feulner was the quartermaster of American conservatism. If that sounds overly modest, let me remind you that the quartermaster is the man who ensures that the troops are clothed, fed, and watered, that they are well armed and their ammunition is at hand, and that they have the means to get to the battlefield — as well as to get away from it. (Ed often admonished against our leaving our wounded behind for the enemy to dispatch. He recruited stretcher-bearers too.)

Consider: Ed was present at the birth of almost every conservative institution created in his lifetime (except perhaps for this one): from an Intercollegiate Studies Institute chapter he founded at college to the Philadelphia Society to the Heritage Foundation, which he steered to become the single most influential think tank in Washington. His two big insights in his early days on Capitol Hill and at Heritage were that politicians needed research that was timely and “actionable” (one of his favorite words) and that a think tank needed a mass supporting membership to keep it in touch with public as well as donor opinion. He succeeded so well in both that he built the Heritage Foundation into an institution with a budget of about $100 million that has provided three Republican presidents with “actionable” programs for government: from the 1980 Mandate for Leadership to Project 2025 under his successor Kevin Roberts. These are astounding achievements.

Ed also ensured that Heritage was the cooperative center of a universe of conservative professional and voluntary bodies at home and abroad (including the aforementioned Philadelphia Society of right-minded American academics as well as the international Mont Pelerin Society of classically liberal scholars). He held office in these organizations from time to time and was always a force for their working together, diagnosing the latest errors of international progressives, promoting “solutions that worked” from Chile to Singapore to the City of London, helping to create a practical, flexible, and easygoing “Conintern,” and racking up air miles. That’s how Heritage ended up with an Asian Studies Center and a Margaret Thatcher program, too. Even stern critics of “Conservatism, Inc.” — when they turned their minds from forgetting the end of the Cold War and the salvation of billions of people in the third world from grinding poverty — could usually recall that they themselves had risen to prominence by the “winding stair” of programs and institutions that Ed and Heritage had quietly built at conferences and airport lounges. American conservatives have a lot of like-minded friends around the world as a result.

How do I know all this? I was introduced to Ed by our good mutual friend, Bob Schuettinger, at the meeting that elected Ed to the presidency of Heritage (I cast no vote), and we went off for a drink afterwards. I wished him well, and he said, “Stay in touch.” We did so for the next 50 years. He hired me as editor of Policy Review in 1979, which meant that I was one of about six people in the Heritage Foundation’s leadership when the organization had 35 full-time staff. It was hectic, but it was filled with fun. How else would I have received an invitation from the president of the United States to attend a “stroking” session in the Oval Office? That was a highlight, but I don’t recall any dull moments. (Working with Ed led me to future meetings with Reagan, to a job in Downing Street, to Mrs. T’s memoirs, and to a book on the three heroes of the Cold War in the 20th century. You never knew where it would take you next.) Then and later, when I left Heritage for journalism, I watched its steady rise with admiration but not with surprise. I had seen how it was done — so that when a buoyant Ed told me only a few months before the 2016 presidential election that he had been asked by candidate Donald Trump to develop his policy platform à la the 1980 Mandate for Leadership, I thought to myself for the first time: “Trump is gonna win.”

Well, the storm of battle is still raging, but God has called home the quartermaster, and from now on we’ll have to do the logistics as well as the philosophy. Ed has left us a darned good heritage, and we owe it to him to be worthy of it.

My condolences to Linda and to Ed’s children and grandchildren. Rest in peace, old friend. For those who remain: onward.