There was a fascinating profile of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh in this weekend’s New York Times magazine.

I had no idea that Limbaugh went deaf about seven years ago. Nor did I realise the extent of his wealth: a contract worth about $38 million a year and five homes in a secluded beachfront estate with a half dozen flashy cars to match.

The angle of the Times piece is Limbaugh’s political clout and his planned assault on Barack Obama this fall. But what I found most interesting were his views on American conservatism, George Bush and John McCain:

Limbaugh admires many aspects of Reaganism, but he is especially animated by his belief in American exceptionalism. “Reagan rejected the notion among liberals and conservatives alike who, for different reasons, believed America was in a permanent state of decline,” he wrote to me in an e-mail message. “He had faith in the wisdom of the American people. . . . He knew America wasn’t perfect, but he also knew it was the most perfect of nations. Reagan was an advocate of Americanism.” In response to a separate question, he wrote: “America is the solution to the world’s problems. We are not the problem.”

Limbaugh said he believes that President George W. Bush is well meaning but far from the Reagan standard of excellence. “I like President Bush,” he wrote me, “but he is not a conservative. He is conservative on some things, but he has not led a movement as Reagan did every day of his career. Bush’s unpopularity is due primarily to his reluctance to publicly defend himself and his administration against attacks from the left. . . . The country has not tilted to the left in my view. What has been absent is elected conservative leadership from the White House down to the Congress.”

Needless to say, Limbaugh doesn’t see John McCain as the answer to this problem, and it infuriates him when McCain claims to be a Reaganite. “McCain and Reagan do not belong in the same sentence,” he wrote.