Forty-six years ago, the corporate lawyer, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., just months away from being nominated by Richard Nixon for a place on the Supreme Court, wrote a confidential memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce in which he encouraged current business leaders and trade groups to inject themselves more firmly in politics. In his memo, Powell claimed that what he called “the apathy of business”—its normal state of disengagement from politics—was increasingly untenable. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” Powell wrote. Business needed to respond forcefully, for the “survival of what we call the free enterprise system” was at stake. The old formula, in which business interests “tried to maintain low profiles, especially with respect to political action” was no longer feasible in a new era that called for “hard-nose contest with their critics.” If what Powell called “the business system” was to flourish, it would have to get over “a disposition to appease” and stop shunning “confrontation politics,” which had, regrettably, become a necessary tool in the battle to save itself and the country.
The Powell Memo is the culmination of a long-term strategy of fighting—rather than accommodating—the New Deal order.
What was significant about the Powell Memo was not just that it encouraged business leaders and organizations to engage in anti-governmental politics, but that it also counseled them to enter into the culture wars. Powell emphasized that his colleagues should fight in the arena of popular culture. He demanded ideological “balance” on college campuses and in the media (which, he noted, were fundamentally businesses dependent “upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive”). Claiming that the media had puffed up Ralph Nader into a “legend,” he called for equal veneration for business leaders. He highlighted the importance of “television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people” and devoted a whole section to this topic in a portion of the memo titled “What Can Be Done About the Public?”
In September 1972, after Powell joined the Supreme Court, his confidential memo was made public. The investigative reporter Jack Anderson broke the story of Powell’s memo in three of his “Washington Merry-Go-Round” columns, calling it “a blueprint for an assault by big business on its critics,” which reflected a “militant political action program.” (Anderson lifted the phrase “political action” directly from Powell.) Ever since, commentators have pointed to it as an important turning point in the conservative counterrevolution. The Powell Memo changed America and ignited a right-wing political movement, according to Jerry Landay, in a hyperbolic assessment that is not out of line with the views of many commentators.