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Richard Viguerie, one of the most conservative thinkers in this country, has performed an important service for Howard Dean and John Kerry.

No, he hasn't become a liberal at this late stage. But he did develop the direct mail art that elected Ronald Reagan and enabled the GOP to take Congress in 1994. And he feels that liberals have since caught up.

“On balance, in my opinion, the liberals do a better job than conservatives with direct mail,” Viguerie said in August in a speech to the Direct Marketing Association's Nonprofit Federation.

For example: “Howard Dean raised the vast majority of his money through direct mail and the Internet. John Kerry has raised about 75% of his money through direct mail and the Internet. The Democrats have mailed every registered Democratic voter over the age of 40 and netted significant money this year.”

Viguerie, ever a political purist, went on to say that this success is “driven by the liberals' hatred of Bush, not by their ideas,” and wondered if they will be able to keep it up if Kerry wins.

Not that he's impressed by the efforts of either side these days. For one thing, mail and the Internet are being used solely for fundraising, not as a “marketing/advertising tool.” These media are thus living up to less than 50% of their potential, he said.

Viguerie noted that conservatives, who raise 90% of their money via direct mail, have used their letters not only to ask for funds but to educate people on the issues and promote their own politicians.

They also have embraced other “below-the-radar” media, like radio, cable TV and the Internet. But they have failed to enter the documentary arena.

“We don't make documentaries,” he said. “That's only for Hollywood liberals. However, we cannot leave documentaries to the left.”

Another reason for the limited progress on the direct mail front is “a lack of professionalism in the nonprofit community,” Viguerie said. “I wouldn't fly in an airplane with a pilot who had the skills of the average person in direct marketing.”

He added: “Would you go to a doctor who had read four or five medical books and attended a few medical conferences? Ask yourselves how many marketing people you know who have read Claude Hopkins, Ed Mayer, Dick Benson, Bob Stone, Al Reis, Jack Trout, David Ogilvy.”

Viguerie was a conservative when it wasn't fashionable to be one. When he started out in the late 1950s, the GOP was a centrist party and conservatives, because of a conglomeration of media in very few hands, “did not have access to America's microphones,” he said.

So Viguerie began to “think along the lines of the Catholic Church: The Christophers, whose motto is, ‘Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.’ And the conservatives' first candle was direct mail.”

Disagree with him about politics if you will. But there's no question that conservatives have made marked progress by appealing directly to the electorate.

“We went around the blockage of Walter Cronkite and his friends, the gatekeepers, and went right into people's homes,” Viguerie said.

Indeed, the right had a virtual direct mail monopoly during the 1960s and '70s. “It wasn't until election night in November 1980 that the liberals, within a few hours, all said, ‘Aha, that's what Viguerie and friends have been up to,’” he said.

Viguerie, whatever his misgivings about the current scene, is proud of this record.

“Our profession has changed American politics forever — and in my opinion, for the better,” he said.

The scorecard?

“We passed a lot of good laws and some not so good, we opened up politics, we empowered tens of millions of people, and we truly brought democracy to America.”