Rich Lowry

Richard A. Lowry (; born August 22, 1968) is an American writer, and the former editor and now editor-in-chief of National Review, an American conservative news and opinion magazine. Lowry became editor of National Review in 1997 when its founder, William F. Buckley Jr., selected him to lead the magazine. Lowry is also a syndicated columnist, author, and political analyst who is a frequent guest on NBC News and Meet the Press. He has written four books.

Early life and education Lowry was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, the son of a social worker mother and an English professor father. After graduating from Yorktown High School in Arlington, Lowry attended the University of Virginia, where he studied English and history. He was editor of the Virginia Advocate, the school's conservative monthly magazine.

Career After graduating, Lowry worked for Charles Krauthammer as a research assistant, and, later, as a reporter for a local newspaper in northern Virginia. At the time, Buckley said of Lowry, "I am very confident that I've got a very good person."

Lowry writes a syndicated column for King Features and an opinion column for Politico.

As a political commentator, he regularly appears on various cable shows and network Sunday shows, including NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, and FOX News Sunday.

In a September 2024 interview with Megyn Kelly, while discussing the Springfield, Ohio, cat-eating hoax, social media users accused Lowry of calling Haitian immigrants in Springfield "niggers". Lowry denied that he used the slur, saying he instead mistakenly combined the words "migrants" and "immigrants".

Books Lowry has written three non-fiction books. His New York Times best-selling book, Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years is a polemic against former President Bill Clinton, whom he characterizes as "Navel-Gazer-in-Chief". In June 2013, he published the Abraham Lincoln political biography Lincoln Unbound.

In November 2019, he published The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free. In a review in Foreign Affairs, Georgetown University Professor of Government Charles King criticized the book, arguing that Lowry's definition of a nation is vague, ahistorical and contradictory – "few of Lowry's statements would pass muster with historians" – and that Lowry's assertions about the unity, homogeneity and fixity of units such as Ancient Egypt, Korea, Japan and China "should be an embarrassment" to "any serious thinker." Pulitzer Prize winner Carlos Lozada was harshly critical of the book in a review for The Washington Post, describing it as an attempt to sanitize President Donald Trump's variant of nationalism and "part of a larger effort on the right to create an after-the-fact framework for Trumpism, to contort the president's utterances and impulses into a coherent worldview that can outlast him – a sort of rescue mission for the conservative movement."

Lowry's first novel, the political thriller Banquo's Ghosts, was co-written with Keith Korman and published in 2009.

Personal life In June 2011, Lowry married Vanessa Palo at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan. The couple have one daughter.

Works