For Better or Worse, Roger Ailes Shaped Both American Politics & Media

Former Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes died following complications from a head injury sustained in a fall at his home last week. His death came three days after his 77th birthday.


Few people remember that Ailes cut his teeth as the producer of The Mike Douglas Show from its day as a local show in Cleveland before it aired nationally. It was on the set of The Mike Douglas Show that Ailes met Richard Nixon. If not for that meeting, Nixon would have never been elected President. It was Ailes who became Nixon's media adviser and would be responsible for his appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In in which he said, "Sock it to me?"




Say what you will of that moment. But if Nixon hadn't said, "Sock it to me? would Bill Clinton have played sax on The Arsenio Hall Show during the 1992 election? Would we have seen the spectacle of President Obama slow jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon? Probably not even if it did mean going through the long national nightmare that was Watergate.

Ailes played a role in getting Nixon elected and re-elected President, getting Reagan elected and re-elected President (who could forget his "It's Morning Again in America" ad during the 1984 campaign). After getting George H.W. Bush elected in 1988, Ailes gradually withdrew from electoral politics. One wonders if Bush would have won a second term had Ailes stayed in his corner. Perhaps we could have avoided Whitewater and the whole Monica Lewinsky spectacle.


Instead, Ailes would return to TV first as the President of CNBC during the early Clinton years before Rupert Murdoch tapped him to be the CEO of Fox News in 1996. As Charles Krauthammer put it, “What I’ve always said about the genius of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch is that they found a niche… that is half the American people.” Of course, the other half of the country hated Ailes for it even in death.


Of course, one cannot extol Ailes' virtues without acknowledging his vices. Unfortunately success has a way of not keeping one grounded. When one acquires as much power as Ailes did it is easy to treat people with utter disregard because of the belief there will be no consequences. Such beliefs become tragic flaws. His persistent sexual harassment of various female staff at FNC would prove to be his undoing last year when he stepped 10 months ago.


Nevertheless, Roger Ailes shaped American politics and media for the past 50 years and even his harshest critics play by the rules he wrote. R.I.P.