It was 20 years ago that radio talk-show host and former Nixon speechwriter John McLaughlin took four partisan Washington journalists and let them have at it in front of TV cameras.

“The McLaughlin Group” was born and so was a new form of public-affairs television, often derided by critics as “shout shows” and verbal mud wrestling.

But McLaughlin, who looks back on his show’s two decades with a 20th anniversary special this weekend, makes no apologies for the way his rock-’em, sock-’em style pumped up the volume of televised political discourse.

Before he started “The McLaughlin Group” on a local Washington station in 1982, Beltway talk shows were a “hermetically sealed environment for a special elite group,” he says. “It was dry. What we showed you was you can have analytic reasoning that can be passionate.”

Not only did the show catch on among political junkies, but McLaughlin’s catch-phrases (“Issue two!” “Let’s get out of it”) and stentorian speaking style eventually made him a pop-culture icon that Dana Carvey parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

McLaughlin and members of the “Group” even have played themselves in movies, including “Independence Day” and “Mission: Impossible.”

Chris Matthews (MSNBC’s “Hardball”), Robert Novak (CNN’s “Capital Gang”), Lawrence Kudlow (CNBC’s “Kudlow & Kramer”), Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke (Fox News Channel’s “The Beltway Boys”) all developed their TV chops while serving as panelists on “McLaughlin.”

“We have quite an alumni,” McLaughlin says. “I’m quite pleased with that.”