In Memoriam: Walter Shapiro

One of the great political reporters of our time, and a warm, generous friend with a memorable sense of humor.

My friend and Washington Monthly/New Republic colleague Walter Shapiro passed away this weekend. Walter was a superb journalist and a generous and kind soul. He was also one of the funniest people I have ever known—the butt of his witticisms usually himself. At one Washington Monthly conference four decades ago, when Walter was called upon to speak after his mentor (and mine), Monthly founder Charles Peters, he began by saying: “I feel like a tongue-tied preacher following a stemwinder by Aimee Semple McPherson.”

I urge you to read Walter’s classic December 1972 Washington Monthly article, “Democracy In Action: One Who Lost,” about running for Congress that year in Michigan’s second congressional district. Here’s a choice excerpt:

I had a dream of the kind of campaign it would be. I even half-believed that I could bring together many of the disparate elements in this crazy-quilt district. I would be a youth candidate, bringing together college students and young factory workers by stressing that voters under 30 are the most underrepresented minority in America. [1972 was the first year in which 18 year-olds could vote, thanks to passage the previous year of the 26th amendment to the Constitution.] I would be a populist candidate, challenging the powers of the giant corporations, as well as rallying against “tax loopholes.” I would even try to attract conservative votes by emphasizing my concern with the size and the unresponsiveness of the federal bureaucracy.

But rather than becoming the spellbinder of the union halls, rather than transfixing PTA meetings with my eloquence, I found that the only new group I could attract to my “emerging populist majority” was a few Monroe County chiropractors…. My speech to the assembled chiropractors neatly ducked the minor problem that they were militantly opposed to drugs and abortion—the legalization of which were major planks in my program. “I’ve been to Washington,” I told them, “and I’ve seen the powerful lobbies at work. Of all these lobbies, the one most dedicated to thwarting the public interest is the American Medical Association.”

Walter brought that same self-effacing humor to his career in journalism. Like Walter, I experienced some difficulty holding onto a job over the past decade and a half, as one magazine or web publication after another showed us the door whenever it hit a bad financial patch. Walter and I had both come up under a more generous salary structure that no longer existed in journalism, and as a consequence we were vulnerable to being identified as luxuries our employers could no longer afford. At such unfortunate moments I would seek Walter’s counsel. He always said the same thing. “It’s like being a general in battle,” he said. “When your horse gets shot out from under you, you find another.” In addition to everything else, Walter was eminently practical.

About a decade ago, Walter and I spent about three weeks trying to start a web magazine of our own. It was going to be called The Liberal Imagination, it was going to have a skeletal staff, and it was going to cost a little over $1 million per year to run. We had in mind the perfect investor, and we spent one summer afternoon trying to persuade him to back our effort. He declined. But it was fun being partners, however briefly, in this imaginary venture. Walter’s enthusiasm was infectious.

I don’t think there was a soul on earth who didn’t love Walter. Appreciations have been posted by Roll Call’s Jason Dick, by Chuck Schumer, by Jeff Greenfield, by Michael Waldman, by James Hohmann, by Jill Lawrence, and by Joe Klein. There are also tributes by James Fallows and Matthew Cooper posted simultaneously on the websites for The Washington Monthly and The New Republic, and obituaries in the New York Times and Washington Post.

That’s what’s mainly on my mind today. But I also posted, on The New Republic, an appreciation of President Joe Biden, who withdrew this weekend from the presidential race. Biden was someone I spent most of my professional life underestimating, and nobody was more surprised than me when he turned out to be among the very best presidents since Franklin Roosevelt. You can read that piece here.