JOB DESCRIPTION

:

Political commentator. Fill

radio air time three hours a day, five days a week, with content that will build ratings, lure advertising dollars.

Rush Limbaugh is, first and foremost, a show business entertainer. He must woo, and wow, an audience hour after hour, day after day, or he is out of business.

A government expert talking calmly about federal policy might better improve the level of political discourse in this nation – if millions of people actually listened. But they won’t, because sooner or later, it’s boring.

Rush must, above all else, be interesting to a restless nation with increasingly shorter attention spans.

One way to get attention is to deal in extremities, not niceties. Environmentalists are whackos, congressional Democrats are imbeciles, feminists are Nazis. President Obama doesn’t think for himself, his teleprompter tells him what to say. People who hold opposite positions don’t just have different opinions, they are ignoramuses who want to tear down the very foundation this nation is built on.

For Rush – and for the 600 radio stations that carry him and for the radio syndicate that pays him $5 million a year, and for the advertisers that pay for such exposure – the only true sin would be a boring show.

He is extremely successful at what he does. Just filling three hours of air time day after day, year after year, is an immensely difficult task. Limbaugh not only does it, but he also has the most listened-to program in America. It airs live in most markets from noon to 3 p.m. Eastern time, a period that – pre-Rush – was fairly quiet for radio, which has long prospered on the early morning and late afternoon drive time.

On the attack

President Obama’s election has given Limbaugh more attention, more authority and – arguably – he has become the prominent voice of the Republican Party.

How did he reach this point?

Given Limbaugh’s style, he is much better on the attack than in support.

“What Bill Clinton did for him in 1993, Barack Obama is doing for him now,” said Steve Shine, who, as Allen County Republican chairman and former radio station owner, understands where politics and radio intersect. “It gives him a target. …

“Whether or not you agree with him, he’s accomplished right now exactly what radio owners want to accomplish, which is to have the focus on your programming,” Shine said. “It’s all about ratings, and that’s where he’s able to deliver.”

Jonathan Tankel, an associate professor of communication at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, who wrote an entry about Limbaugh in the “Historical Dictionary of Radio,” agrees that Obama has been good for Limbaugh.

“Obama is a godsend for Limbaugh since he no longer has to prop up George W.,” Tankel said. “Rush as radio programming is built for attack, while Rush as political theorist (as in justifying an increasingly unpopular war) begins to lose that middle ground of his audience.”

The exact number of listeners is subject to debate, and Limbaugh detractors challenge his claims. But there is little doubt that he draws millions of listeners every day.

In Fort Wayne, he is by far the most listened-to program. Arbitron ratings show that during the Limbaugh show, WOWO-Radio, 1190-AM, has 71,500 listeners a day, drawing 12 percent of all the people listening to radio. Consider that the No. 2 station has a 6 percent share.

“He’s at the pinnacle right now ... because he’s so well prepared, and his ability to know the topic goes so far,” said Charly Butcher, a longtime local radio veteran and host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News on WOWO. (Full disclosure: I appear on Butcher’s show twice a week.)

A typical Limbaugh show focuses on one or two main issues with a few additional stories thrown in, often for humor.

To add variety, he uses character voices. A handful of listener calls are taken over the three-hour show. He throws in the occasional song snippet and audio clips from speeches.

But by and large, the Rush Limbaugh show is Rush Limbaugh, saying what he thinks.

The show is full of repetition – which accomplishes two goals. First, only a relatively few hard-core fans really listen to every word for three consecutive hours. Some listen over lunch, some have the entire three hours in the background at the workplace but are frequently interrupted.

Second, Limbaugh, like the conservative movement in general, has been particularly effective by making straightforward points and repeating them constantly.

For much of last week, Limbaugh’s focus was the AIG bonuses. AIG, according to Limbaugh, did nothing wrong. In fact, the fault behind the bonuses lies not with AIG but with Democrats, particularly Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Government officials are hypocritical to criticize the bonuses, he says, because they knew about them all along.

“Once again, we have the real architects of this disaster sitting around as spectators,” he says. “Folks, we are being played as the biggest suckers on earth.”

AIG comes up again and again.

“These people are the biggest frauds, artists of deceit,” he says, referring to congressional Democrats. “They all are acting, every damned one of them knew that it was coming. They are the architects of this.”

Criticism of the bailout, Limbaugh says, is a government cover-up to mask the real story: the amount of government bailout money AIG used to pay its own debtors, including no small amount to foreign banks.

Fortunately, Limbaugh – and only Limbaugh – isn’t joining the rush to castigate AIG.

Limbaugh wonders what it would like to be in the kind of mob out to get AIG, “a mindless, brainless twit, just following along.”

“We’re being truthful,” he insists – and insists and insists. “We attempt to ascertain truth. As you know, I resist the tug of popular sentiment. … I refuse to follow group behavior.”

Ironic, coming from a man whose followers are called dittoheads.

“I, ladies and gentlemen, am the only national figure not going along with the lynch mob mentality here.”

Like any good showman, Limbaugh is a master of self-promotion. “Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God,” is a frequent self-proclamation. Only Limbaugh will tell you the real truth.

His syndicated program is on the Excellence In Broadcasting network. That has a much better ring than its real syndicate, Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of radio giant Clear Channel Communications.

Limbaugh says he is “meeting and surpassing all expectations on a daily basis. Making it look easy.”

GOP leader

If Limbaugh does not direct the issues of the day for the nation’s hard-right conservatives, he certainly is in close touch with them.

Limbaugh started blaming Obama and Democrats for the AIG bonuses on Monday. By midweek, a number of Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators were doing the same.

How has he become the leading voice of the GOP?

Several reasons.

•He has a forum most politicians would die for: three hours of unfettered, direct access to the masses every single weekday.

•Limbaugh is resilient. His show has been going strong since 1984. He has a contract to take him through 2016.

•He doesn’t have to run for office. When politicians lose too many big races, their clout dies, and the voices of others gain more attention. Even losing a single race – a race the candidate should have won, losing big when it should have been close – can remove a politician from the national stage.

•Scandal doesn’t faze him. When a Republican like Newt Gingrich is caught in scandal, other Republicans force him out (though he is now making a comeback). But even though Limbaugh became involved in a scandal over abuse of prescription drugs, his audience still listened, so it didn’t quiet him.

•He has no institutional adversaries. Democrats challenge Republicans. No liberal political commentator has the forum – or the patience – to do anything but attack Limbaugh the way Limbaugh incessantly hammers liberals and Democrats.

•He is filling a vacuum. The party has no dominant voice among its elected officials.

“As there is virtually no congressional GOP leadership, chaos at the RNC … Limbaugh (and his clones) are the only nationally recognized Republican voices,” IPFW’s Tankel said.

But, as conservative Republican David Frum explained in a recent Newsweek story, Limbaugh’s lead role may not be the best thing for the party.

Limbaugh can hurt national Republicans the same way Matt Kelty hurt local Republicans. Many Americans are independent, and even many Republicans and Democrats don’t believe in everything their party supports. Many are closer to the center.

Limbaugh, however, is not only on the right, but on the right with a vengeance. His vitriol may appeal to his radio listeners, but it turns off a lot of people – Americans who want to see the parties work together for solutions instead of merely blasting on another.

Members of Congress aren’t just wrong, in Limbaugh’s view, they are “sounding like Communist dictators.”

A proposal to change how workers vote on whether or not to unionize won’t just make it easier for unions to win, it will mean that “one day Tony Soprano will walk in with a lead pipe and he will start beating up people to unionize.”

Great radio – but not necessarily great politics.