Fox News. - Roger Ailes: off camera

Roger Ailes looked across his desk at me and said, Some people say that Im simple, and some people say that Im complex. What do you think?

Good question. For months, Ailes and I had been meeting regularly at Fox News headquarters in midtown Manhattan, at his home in Putnam County, and at public and private gatherings. He allowed me to sit in on his meetings, introduced me to his family, and gave his inner circle the green light to talk to me. In that time I got a closer, more prolonged look at Roger Ailes than any journalist ever has. He was naturally curious about what I had concluded. Simple or complex?

The answer itself isnt simple. Ailes, in his years as a political consultant, created images for a living, and his own narrative is constructed from the sturdy materials of American mythology. In our first meeting, he said he had dug ditches as a kid and would be happy to go back to it if the whole media empire thing ever fell apart. Ailes is no more likely than I am to dig ditches (and a lot less likely to need to) but I got his point. He is a blue-collar guy from a factory town in Ohio who has stayed close to his roots. That day, and subsequently, I found him plainspoken, wryly profane, caustic, and anxious for me to know that he doesnt give a good goddamn about fancy parties, political correctness, or the esteem of the Manhattan media bien-pensants. After I had known him for a while I asked what he would do if he were president of the United States. He said that he would sign no legislation, create no new regulations, and allow the country to return to its natural, best self, which he locates, with modest social amendments, somewhere in midwestern America circa 1955. In 2011, he won a Horatio Alger Award, and said, People who believe they can win will eventually win. What could be simpler than that?

Still, Ailes is not another working-class stiff who got ahead through hard work and the power of positive thinking. For fifty years, he has navigated the waters of show business, national politics, and big-time media. He taught Dick Nixon new tricks, stepped in as Reagans emergency debate coach when the Great Communicator needed help communicating, and held George H. W. Bushs hand all the way to the White House. He more or less invented modern political consulting and made a small fortune along the way. When he left politics, he talked his way into the number one job at CNBC and then convinced Rupert Murdoch to gamble a billion dollars, give or take, on an idea and a handshake. The gamble became Fox News, one of the most lucrative and influential news organizations on the planet. The last time they met, Barack Obama, not a Fox News fan, called Ailes the most powerful man in America. If a Machiavelli society gave an award, it would be on Ailess mantel, next to the Horatio.

Writing about a man as wily and charming as Ailes is a challenging business, and from the outset we established ground rules. He cooperated with me, but the book is not authorized. I checked his quotes for accuracy (which is my practice in any case) but he had no control over the manuscript. When he said something was off the record (which he rarely did) it stayed off; everything else was fair game.

Ailes opened up Fox News, which is usually about as reporter-friendly as Teheran. I spent time with Fox executives and on-air personalities, toured usually off-limits venues, and spent many hours with Ailes himself. He was open with me, although I never thought he was telling me everything. He intends to write an autobiography someday, and I imagine he is holding something in reserve. The result, this book, is not a formal biography. It is a record of almost a year spent watching Roger Ailes in action.

My access came at a price. It always does. The dynamic between a writer and his subject, especially one as controversial and powerful as Roger Ailes, necessarily contains elements of mutual seduction and self-interest and sometimes mistrust. Ailes didnt want to be eviscerated by a reporter. I didnt want to get conned by a master image maker.

Roger Ailes has his admirers, some of them surprising, and his detractorsentire organizations dedicated to discrediting him and all his works. I talked to a great many people on both sides. But Ailes is the main character, and I have left him front and center, allowing him to speak for himself. Ailes is a fascinating man, full of contradictions and surprises. He has certainly transformed American media and political discourse. How has he done it? What will he do next? What stokes his competitive fires and occasional rages? How to reconcile his acts of exceptional loyalty and private generosity (even to rivals) with his impulse to present himself to the world as a nasty, ruthless leg breaker? What makes Roger runand where, if anywhere, is the finish line? Is he, in the end, simple or complex? It remains an excellent question. As Ailes himself might say: I report, you decide.