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IMPRESSIVE WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.  WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. ...dead at 82 |
Even liberals appreciated
this icon of conservatism
of TheColumnists.com
To political liberals, middle-of-the-roaders and probably even some conservatives, he was a confounding man. William F. Buckley, who died Feb. 27 at 82, was a witty, urbane and immensely likeable man who became an icon to America’s conservative movement.
The Godfather of today’s right wing was a man who seemed to approach everyone with an open-hearted predisposition to like them. It’s not something you usually associate with right-wingers in this age of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Rich, smart and gifted with an outsized talent, Buckley was probably the most self-confident man of the 20th Century. Oddly, his self-confidence mixed with just a hint of arrogance gave him the ability to be gracious to everyone. He had nothing to prove to anyone, as far as he was concerned, because he was quite content with who he was. Faced with someone who argued with him in an interesting fashion, Buckley would invite him or her to his house and say, “Shall we have something from the bar?” before crossing verbal swords for the next hour or two. He would arch an eyebrow, grow wide-eyed at some outrageous claim from his adversary, and roll out a series of rococo sentences that would put a bishop to shame.
Buckley emphatically was not Limbaughesque.
He was educated at Yale and was a member of Skull and Bones,
whose members also included Al Gore, George W. Bush and John
Kerry. He had a sort of mid-Atlantic accent that wasn’t
exactly New England, wasn’t British, but was certainly upper-class,
whatever else it was. He was born in Connecticut to a family
that made its sizeable fortune in oil. On the surface, he would
be categorized as a New England aristocrat, and he was. But he
worked hard for Barry Goldwater in 1964, and launched the conservative
movement now ascendant in places such as Mississippi and Texas.
He was friends with the movie star David Niven and political
liberals such as Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
while at the same time maintaining a philosophical and political
stance that, for many, was simply beyond comprehension.
In the 50’s, he thought the south should stay segregated,
at least for a while longer. In 1954, he co-wrote with brother-in-law
L. Brent Bozell a book, “McCarthy and His Enemies,”
that declares: "As long as McCarthyism fixes its goals with
its present precision, it is a movement around which men of good
will and stern morality can close ranks.” He founded a magazine,
National Review, that rather consistently defended Sen.
Joseph McCarthy and devoted two issues to his memory when McCarthy
died in 1957.
Of his friend Schlesinger, Buckley once wrote:
"I was in a radio exchange with the senior U.S. liberal,
Professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who in a casual survey of technology
stunned me by saying that, in his judgment, `word processing
is the greatest invention in modern history.' Suddenly I was
face to face with the flip side of Paradise. That means, doesn't
it, that Professor Schlesinger will write more than he would
do otherwise?"
I met Buckley only twice--once when Buckley came to Sacramento,
where I was covering state government for The Associated Press
during the Reagan years, to commune with his favorite politician,
Ronald Reagan, and then in New York, when I was press secretary
to Wilson Riles, the California state superintendent of schools.
Wilson was a guest on “Firing Line,” the PBS interview
program Buckley ran for 23 years. On both occasions, Buckley
was exactly as billed--charming, curious, friendly, open to anyone.
Buckley’s normally gracious nature failed him utterly on
one occasion, however. In 1968, during the Democratic convention
in Chicago, someone at ABC television thought it would be a neat
idea to have Buckley on live with liberal author Gore Vidal to
offer their differing views on what was occurring. Oil and water,
and all that.
Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi."
Buckley lost it. "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me
a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face," he
told Vidal. Looking at the fuzzy black-and-white video clip 40
years later, you believe he meant it.
Buckley wrote a newspaper column, 50 books, lectured, was an
editor, hosted radio and television programs, and wrote for National
Review. He was precocious. He founded National Review
at age 29, when he was just five years out of Yale. The magazine’s
mission, it declared in its initial issue, was to “stand
athwart history and yell ‘Stop!’ ” His television
program included guests ranging from Jimmy Carter to Groucho
Marx.
This American aristocrat/intellectual was, of all things, a CIA operative in Mexico for a year. E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame, was his case officer. When Hunt’s Watergate-related legal bills exhausted his finances, Buckley lent--probably gave--him money.
He ran for mayor of New York in 1965. Asked what he would do in the unlikely event he won, he famously said he would “demand a recount.” (As it happened, a recount was hardly necessary. Buckley won 13.4 percent of the vote.)
Buckley had a vocabulary that would choke a hard drive. The New York Times copy editor who wrote the headline for his front-page obituary on Feb. 28 had a little fun with that. The headline read: “William F. Buckley Jr., 82, Dies; Sesquipedalian Spark of Right.” The obituary writer was kind enough to explain deep in the story that “sesquipedalian” meant “characterized by the use of long words.” Indeed.
In Buckley’s world, one did not boast about one’s abilities. Simply wasn’t done. But I suspect he harbored a not-always-terribly-well-concealed pride in his ability to deploy his resplendent vocabulary across a sheet of paper or a computer screen with the speed of a journeyman wire-service reporter. I recall one reference, supposedly offhand, to doing a column in 30 minutes or so. A sly boast, I believe.
Fast or slow, Buckley could write better
than almost anyone. Here’s an excerpt from an essay on sailing,
"Thoughts on a Final Passage":
"You have shortened sail just a little, because you want
more steadiness than you are going to get at this speed, the
wind up to twenty-two, twenty-four knots, and it is late at night,
and there are only two of you in the cockpit. You are moving
at racing speed, parting the buttery sea as with a scalpel, and
waters roar by, themselves exuberantly subdued by your powers
to command your way through them. Triumphalism ... and the stars
also seem to be singing together for joy."
The world will miss him.
©2008 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of William F. Buckley, Jr., is courtesy of Wikipedia. This column first posted March 3, 2008.
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