William "Bill" Kristol (23 December 1952-) was Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle from 20 January 1989 to 20 January 1993, succeeding Craig L. Ruller and preceding Roy Neel.
Biography[]
William Kristol was born in New York City, New York in 1952, the son of neoconservative journalist Irving Kristol. In 1976, Kristol worked on Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Democratic US Senate campaign, and he joined Ronald Reagan's administration in 1985 and became Chief of Staff to Secretary of Education William Bennett. Under George H.W. Bush's administration, Kristol served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, and The New Republic saw Kristol as "Dan Quayle's brain". In 1994, Kristol cofounded the conservative news magazine The Weekly Standard, financed by Rupert Murdoch. Kristol was key in urging the Republicans to kill Bill Clinton's healthcare plan rather than amend it, and he was also a leading proponent of the Iraq War and the Second Lebanon War. Kristol became a political commentator on several mainstream television outlets such as ABC and CNN, and he concurrently continued his political involvement, serving as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain's 2008 presidential bid (and suggesting Sarah Palin as a running mate, which he later regretted), and supporting Mitt Romney in 2012. He was vehemently opposed to Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, and he criticized his troop withdrawals during the Syrian Civil War and Afghanistan War. In 2020, shortly after the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Kristol switched to the Democratic Party.