Mel Bradford

Bradford was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up there. He studied English at University of Oklahoma and completed his bachelor's and master's degrees. He then continued his education at Vanderbilt University and graduated with a Ph.D. He stayed in academia and taught at several institutions of higher education, including United States Naval Academy, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, and, primarily, the University of Dallas from 1967 until his death. In U.S. presidential elections Bradford campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, George C. Wallace in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, and Pat Buchanan in 1992. He died in 1993 after undergoing heart surgery. ==NEH Nomination==

In 1980, Bradford was initially tapped by President-elect Ronald Reagan for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. According to David Gordon, "Reagan's wish to elevate him to the prestigious post did not stem solely from Bradford's academic credentials. The president and he were acquaintances, and he had worked hard in Reagan's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Influential conservatives such as Russell Kirk and Sen. Jesse Helms also knew and admired Bradford." He was even accused of comparing Lincoln to Adolf Hitler. The neoconservative choice, William Bennett, was substituted for Bradford on November 13, 1981. Author Keith Preston later described the successful effort to cancel Bradford's nomination as symbolic of the cosmopolitan neoconservatives descended from liberalism establishing hegemony over the Republican Party and American conservatism, displacing more traditionalist and regionalist thinkers with ideological roots in the Old Right. A letter supporting Bradford's nomination, sent to President Reagan during the controversy, was signed by John East, Jesse Helms, John Tower, Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, Jeremiah Denton, Dan Quayle and James McClure and eight other Republican senators. Gerhart Niemeyer, Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, William Buckley, M. Stanton Evans, Andrew Lytle, Harry Jaffa ("Bradford's principal intellectual antagonist"), Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, ==Bibliography==