Contemplating the Former Brilliance of Bill Buckley

By John Nichols

February 27, 2008, The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=291671

Much attention has been afforded in this presidential
campaign debating season to the attempts of the various
contenders to utter memorable lines, most of which have ended
in forms of failure perhaps best summed up by Hillary
Clinton's stabs at biting humor in her last two debates with
Barack Obama. Only Democrat Joe Biden's putdown of Republican
Rudy Giuliani's disaster-mongering campaign theme ("a noun, a
verb and 9/11") came close to making the mark.

But there really have been no 2008 equivalents of Ronald
Reagan 1984 mockery of Walter Mondale's "youth and
inexperience" or Lloyd Bentsen's devastating "you're no Jack
Kennedy" line in his 1988 vice presidential dust-up with Dan
Quayle.

And there certainly has been nothing so delicious as William
F. Buckley's best line from his 1965 New York mayoral
campaign debate with memorable Republican John Lindsay and
forgettable Democrat Abe Beame.

Buckley, the veteran National Review editor, PBS "Firing
Line" host and author of everything from ideological tomes to
spy novels who has died unexpectedly at age 82, was known for
more than a half century as one of the republic's abler
practitioners of the English language and polemicist's craft.

But never were his skills so amply on display as during
Buckley's sole foray into electoral politics.

Heading the metropolitan ticket of New York State's
Conservative Party, which had been created three years
earlier to challenge the liberal Republicanism of New York
Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Congressman Lindsay, Buckley
mounted his unlikely campaign as a no- hoper. He acknowledged
as much at the time of his announcement - which roughly
paralleled his relocation from his home in suburban
Connecticut to a proper voting residence in the city he
sought to lead - when the conservative commentator was asked
what he would do if he was elected to lead the liberal city.
"I'd demand a recount."

Perfect response.

Almost as perfect as Buckley's zinger in that televised
debate with Lindsay and Beame.

Even against the charismatic Lindsay, it was Buckley who
owned every platform on which the candidates appeared. His
confidence as a debater thrown up against two more
experienced political campaigners was startling, and yet
entirely appropriate.

Offered an opportunity during a key debate to use time that
had been allotted him to present a rebuttal, Buckley did what
no politician has the courage or the wisdom to do. He turned
the moment with microphone down. Instead of repeating points
he had already made, Buckley said, "I am satisfied to sit
back and contemplate my own former brilliance."

During the many years of our acquaintance, which began when I
was researching a book on writers in politics, Buckley and I
spent a good deal of time dissecting that 1965 campaign,
which saw the commentator-turned-politico secure a credible
13.4 percent of the vote. Buckley argued that his ideas had
touched a chord with disenchanted electors in the
overwhelmingly Democratic city. And, surely, some of his
ideas were appealing. While Buckley preached some standard
tough-on-crime lines, he also criticized what would come to
be described as "the war on drugs." He proposed congestion
fees to keep cars off crowded Manhattan streets. At his best,
he offered a rare mix of libertarian idealism and pragmatic
common sense that had appeal far beyond the closed quarters
of a conservative movement that had just lost badly with 1964
Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

With the movement he did so much to shape on its heels,
Buckley was more intellectually bold and ideologically
adventurous in those mid-1960s than he would be later in a
life when his would come to be known as a defining voice of
modern conservatism. His ideas were dynamic in those days,
much more so than when he found himself trying to describe
the stumbles of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as
pirouettes.

But the real appeal of that 1965 campaign, which Buckley
chronicled with arch wit in a brilliant political book,
Unmaking of a Mayor (Crown: 1966), was found in his smart
wordplay and flamboyant style. Candidate Buckley was slyly
self-deprecating and yet lavishly self promotional - often at
the same time. Even those who might never have considered
supporting the Conservative candidate relished his debate
appearances and hung on his every word in television
interviews.

Buckley was, as he suggested in one of the finer debate
performances ever seen on an American political stage,
"satisfied to sit back and contemplate my own former
brilliance." So were the rest of us when Buckley was alive.
So we shall be now that that the commentator who has left
such a rich legacy of written and recorded work - and
political playfulness -- has passed.

_____________________________________________

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