Melvin E. "Mel" Bradford was a conservativepolitical commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas. Bradford is seen as a leading figure of the paleoconservative wing of the conservative movement. He died just as the term paleoconservative was being coined and preferred the term traditional conservative. In his preface to Reactionary Imperative, he wrote "Reaction is a necessary term in the intellectual context we inhabit in the twentieth century because merely to conserve is sometimes to perpetuate what is outrageous." Bradford's conservatism was rooted within the heritage and traditions of the American South. He studied at Vanderbilt University and wrote his doctoral thesis under the Southern Agrarian and Fugitive PoetDonald Davidson, and thus was admitted to the succession of this movement to recover the Southern tradition. Bradford was first and foremost a literary scholar and a student of rhetoric. He was known in literary circles for his work on William Faulkner, where Bradford stressed the importance of the Southern setting and the primacy of community in understanding the action of Faulkner's novels and stories. He "had no truck with critical efforts to portray Faulkner as alienated from the South. To the contrary, he saw the novelist as thoroughly embedded within his native region." Outside of literature he wrote extensively on the subjects of history and culture. Bradford specialized in the history of the American founding and Southern history in the United States. Bradford also advocated the constitutional theory of strict constructionism. "The original understanding of the Constitution, Bradford maintained, conformed much more closely to the Southern position than to Lincoln's acts of usurpation." Bradford also frequently wrote for Modern Age, Chronicles magazine and Southern Partisan magazine.
In 1980, Dr. 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." The selection met with intense objections from neoconservative figures, centering partly on Bradford's criticisms of President Abraham Lincoln. They circulated quotes of Bradford calling Lincoln "a dangerous man," and saying, "The image of Lincoln rose to be very dark" and "indeed almost sinister." He was even accused of comparing Lincoln to Adolf Hitler. "Bradford rejected Lincoln because he saw him as a revolutionary, intent on replacing the American Republic established by the Constitution with a centralized and leveling despotism." Another issue was Bradford's support for the 1972 presidential campaign of George C. Wallace. The neoconservative choice, William Bennett, was substituted for Bradford on November 13, 1981. 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, and "dozens of others" were also named as supporters. Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Michael Joyce and William Simon were among Bennett's supporters.
