Summary of Ross Douthat: The Exit Interview

Overview of Ross Douthat: The Exit Interview

In this New York Times Opinion conversation, Ezra Klein interviews Ross Douthat as he prepares to leave the Times for 60 Minutes. The discussion traces Douthat’s career from early-2000s blogging to modern media, while also exploring how American politics, religion, and conservative intellectual life have changed over the past two decades. Major themes include the rise and decline of blogging, the shift from an evangelical to a more post-Christian right, the growing role of Catholics in conservative thought, and why Douthat thinks journalism is moving toward more interviewing, video, and uncertainty-driven formats.

Douthat’s Path Through the Media

From Atlantic staffer to blogger to Times columnist

• Douthat describes himself as someone who lived through both the end of old magazine-era journalism and the rise of the internet.
• He started at The Atlantic doing traditional editorial work, then blogged on the side during the early 2000s.
• Traditional institutions eventually absorbed bloggers because they saw the internet-born voices as the future.

What made blogging distinct

• Blogging was a response to a moment of high demand for political commentary after 9/11 and the Iraq War.
• It was:
  • more immediate than print opinion,
  • more conversational and argumentative,
  • built on linkbacks, quote-posting, and sustained back-and-forth.
• Douthat argues that early blogging was often healthier than today’s social media because it rewarded direct engagement with opponents rather than dunking for one’s own audience.

How Politics Changed

The Republican Party’s transformation

• Douthat says one of his major “wins” was anticipating the GOP’s populist-nationalist turn.
• He and Reihan Salam had argued for a more working-class, family-oriented conservatism.
• Trump, however, reshaped the party through:
  • trade nationalism,
  • anti-elite rhetoric,
  • a stronger defense of Social Security and Medicare,
  • and a more visceral cultural politics than policy intellectuals had predicted.

Why the right split

• Douthat sees a major divide between:
  • national greatness / hawkish conservatism of the Bush era,
  • and Trumpian post-liberal nationalism.
• Many former hawks and neoconservatives became Never Trumpers because Trump rejected their assumptions about virtue, seriousness, and foreign policy.
• He notes the irony that some of the rhetoric of the Iraq-war era resembles today’s populist nationalist language.

Religion, the Right, and the Left

From evangelical to post-Christian conservatism

• In the Bush era, evangelical Christianity was central to Republican politics.
• Douthat argues that today’s right is more “post-Christian”:
  • less explicitly religious,
  • more focused on strength, hierarchy, and enmity,
  • and often only loosely attached to Christianity.
• He sees a tension between a Christianity-centered conservatism and a more “pagan” or dominance-oriented right.

Catholicism’s rising influence

• Douthat thinks Catholicism has become especially attractive in elite right-wing intellectual circles because it offers:
  • deeper tradition,
  • stronger intellectual structure,
  • and a more coherent framework than fragmented Protestantism.
• But he also notes that evangelical Christianity remains stronger at the mass level.

The left’s religious turn

• Douthat says the left, after years of confidence in secular progress and “trust the science” liberalism, now seems spiritually unsettled.
• He points to:
  • renewed interest in religion and tradition,
  • moralistic progressive rhetoric with quasi-religious energy,
  • and public figures who use explicitly Christian language to frame liberal politics.
• He argues that the “great awokening” had the emotional force of religion but lacked metaphysical grounding, which may have contributed to its darker turn.

What Douthat Thinks Media Does Well and Poorly

Strengths of modern journalism

• The best journalism, in his view, is increasingly about:
  • investigation,
  • interviewing,
  • describing reality accurately,
  • and openly acknowledging uncertainty.
• He thinks 60 Minutes is well suited to that mission.

Weaknesses of modern journalism

• He is skeptical of any institution that claims pure neutrality or “the view from nowhere.”
• He believes audiences now expect bias to be acknowledged rather than hidden.
• He also thinks the media can become too focused on persuasion or affirmation instead of genuine inquiry.

Why He’s Going to 60 Minutes

• Douthat says the move is partly about doing more interviewing, which he finds difficult but illuminating.
• He thinks interviews help reveal what is actually going on in a world that feels increasingly opaque.
• He sees 60 Minutes as a chance to:
  • reach a different audience,
  • do deeper reporting,
  • and engage the messy reality of the world rather than just interpret it from a column.

Uncertainty, UFOs, and AI

• Douthat says he is increasingly drawn to topics that sit at the edge of what journalism can verify:
  • UFOs/UAPs,
  • AI consciousness,
  • technological disruption,
  • and other claims that are strange but potentially investigable.
• He emphasizes that he is interested in these subjects not because they are mysterious, but because they may still have real answers that journalism can help uncover.
• He also thinks AI and digital culture are reducing the dominance of the written word and increasing the value of:
  • spoken conversation,
  • live performance,
  • and direct human presence.

Books Douthat Recommends

• Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
  A memoir he recommends for readers who want to remain “very, very literate.”

• A biography of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson
  He gives this a strong general recommendation.

• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
  The most recent book he read to his children, and his final recommendation.

Key Takeaways

• Blogging helped reshape political media by making commentary more conversational, immediate, and interactive.
• Douthat sees modern conservative politics as increasingly post-Christian, emotionally combative, and less tied to older evangelical structures.
• The left, in his view, has also become more spiritually restless and less certain of its old secular-progressive confidence.
• Journalism is moving toward more interviews, video, and explanation in a world of greater uncertainty.
• Douthat’s move to 60 Minutes is framed as both a career shift and a response to the changing nature of media itself.