KEVIN LYNCH: Environmentally Sound
Buckley, James L.
thatshewillbethenextcorpseinThoseWhoTrespass. O'Reilly's claim to run a "no-spin zone" is,...
...ambassador to the United Nations...
...After summoning reporters to the Senate Caucus Room, he called on President Nixon to resign "as an extraordinary act of statesmanship and courage...
...And even more significantly, how can a new generation create the conditions for every human being to enjoy the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...Do start with Chapter Sixteen and then go back and read thefirstpart.Thisway,youwillbringtoKitman'sbest writingthementalfreshnessitdeserves.Hisdescription of the typical political guest--"think-tank turret gunners who make the rounds of news shows, spinning their yarns"--is perfect...
...First,andinmyjudgmentforemost,theytakeon the critics, the naysayers who either dismiss Western ideals or create existential standards that suggest the past offers little guidance for the present...
...He could find fulfillment doing other things...
...What does Kitman think the future holds for O'Reilly...
...peaceiswar;entertainmentisnews--sinceitisactually all spin...
...However, he does, as he says, have an "exotic brother...
...Roger Ailes finally got him to stop coming into the office on his day off, but hissisterworriesaboutwhatamajorillnesswoulddo to his need for total control...
...Peter Jennings: No...
...In the Name of Humanities AT A RECENT MEETING with an administrator at a Chineseuniversity,Iwasaskedtodescribethe components of an ideal college curriculum...
...AfterleavingtheSenate,hereturnedbrieflytoprivatebusiness,butwassoonbackinWashingtonfollowing the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, serving as Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance...
...Watching the show is like being in a Laundromat with all the machines on spin cycle...
...HE MAY HAVE been Mr...
...He looked at me quizzically and said, "We too believe in scientific study, but I don't understand the need for the humanities...
...Its alumni include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts, who was nominated to the D.C...
...Tobesure,itwasn'tsomethinghesetouttodo.If his life had gone according to his plan, he would have remainedalawyerinthefamily'soilexplorationbusiness, which would have enabled him to spend time withhiswifeandchildren,aswellasmanyhoursbird 7 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R A P R I L 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E W Gleanings From an Unplanned Life: An Annotated Oral History by James L. Buckley (ISI BOOKS, 308 PAGES, $25) Reviewed by Kevin Lynch Kevin LynchlivesinArlington,Virginia...
...In addition to having one opponent who was a borderline hysteric, Buckley was also helped by the political climate of those times...
...Heis,however,justified in his claims to be balanced because "he has a chiponbothshoulders...
...By the end of this book, the reader has many reasons to say what its author never would: James Buckley is a man with so much to be proud of...
...Unafraid to B O O K SI NR E V I E W 7 2 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R A P R I L 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute, professor emeritus at New York University, and author of Decade of Denial (Lexington Books).Renewing American Culture: The Pursuit of Happiness by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch and Scott T. Massey (M&M SCRIVENER PRESS, 203 PAGES, $28) Reviewed by Herbert London...
...Matters that should have been carefully deliberated were freA P R I L 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 1 B O O K SI NR E V I E W quently rushed through without any debate...
...The humanities have become the intellectual orphaninAmericanuniversitiesincreasinglyobsessed with vocational aspiration...
...However, all is not lost...
...The differenceis,it'sallO'Reilly'sspin...
...As a concluding coda they offer 36 propositions to achieve these ends...
...Theodore Roosevelt Malloch and Scott T. Massey have written Renewing American Culture: The Pursuit of Happiness, a book designedtosparkadialogueaboutthehumanities.As the authors note, their thesis is predicated on core principles, how they may be renewed, and ultimately the manner of dissemination...
...You can lose,andBilldoesn'tliketo.RogerAiles:Notifhehad to spend any of his own money...
...Based on my four decades of university experience, Iexplained the need for a balance of three general disciplines: natural science, social science, and the humanities...
...Though it has been more than 30 years since Buckley served in the Senate, the reader can't help wondering if that vote stillcauseshimsomesleeplessnights.Thereaderalso can't help wondering how a man this excruciatingly honest ever got elected to the Senate...
...I'm uncomfortable with the word `proud,'" he says, and then offers a more suitable formulation: "What aspect of your Senate career do you least regret...
...His office was inundated with more than 25,000 letters,mostofthembitterlyangry.Italsoaffectedhislife in the Senate, where allies denounced him and longtime opponents applauded him...
...Mostofthem,ifnotonforoneday,feelthereissomebodystandingontheirairhose.Billdoesn'thavethat...
...And there are other accomplishments, such as hisproposalthatthefederalincometax tables be adjusted annually for inflation, which was finally enacted after he left the Senate...
...Here he had, among other assignments, the delicate task of persuading Pakistan that it should restore its security ties with the American government...
...Hewasinquiring,atthebehestofanofficialinReagan's JusticeDepartment,whetherhewouldbeinterestedin becoming a judge...
...Nice, but he should not be confused with Frank Capra's Mr...
...O'Reilly's claim to run a "no-spin zone" is, says Kitman,"abrilliantOrwellianconceit--blackiswhite...
...Afterhisvictory,heevengotsomegoodpress,includingaprofileintheDailyNewstitled"Mr.NiceGoesto Washington...
...Among its findings: James Buckley "has emerged by consensus of liberals and conservatives alike as the finest appellate judge...
...Untilthen,theNixonteamthought itcouldalwaysrelyonaloyalcadreinCongresstosupportthepresidentnomatterwhat.Buckley'selectrifyingcallimmediatelychangedthat.Butitalsocosthim...
...There was the mire in Vietnam and the kids were rioting on thecampuses.Alongwiththethemesheaddressedin his previous campaign, he stressed the need for a return to law and order (though judiciously stopping short of demanding the bayoneting of student protesters...
...He's as happy beating the crap out of an anonymous single personasanentireaudienceandguest.Imean,hecanjust joust his paperboy, and he'll feel fulfilled...
...Thistime,hewasinathree-wayraceagainstaliberal Republican and a liberal Democrat, with the latter concentrating on the big issue: the danger of a Buckley victory...
...I'm serious about this book's arrangement...
...To my surprise, they have answers...
...Brother Bill was running for mayor of New York City in 1965 on the Conservative Party ticket, and he persuaded Jim to be his campaign manager, saying it wouldn't take much of his time, about "a couple of mornings a week...
...This time he faced a formidable opponent, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an academic who had gained national prominence as the outspoken U.S...
...they ask...
...At one campaign stop as the election neared, he decided the time for mincing words was over...
...The true import of what he had done must have struck home when Ted Kennedycrossedthestreettocongratulatehim.Looking back on it, Buckley doesn't offer any pieties about followingtheimperativesofhisconscience.Hesays,"I feelenormouslysadaboutthatwholeaffair...
...Circuit upon Buckley's retirementin2000...
...Unfortunatelynotonlyisthecaseforthehumanities not made in China, it is not made in the United States...
...Nevertheless, his response is still surprising...
...Willhegointopolitics?Kitman:Onlyifheseesit his duty to Stop Hillary...
...It is in this part of the book, concerning his years on the bench, that Buckley is the most revealing...
...Threeyearslater,Billcalledagain,thistimetosay the Conservatives wanted Jim to run fortheSenate.Heacceptedandrana campaignthat,inadditiontoemphasizingthethemesoflessgovernment and more free enterprise, expressed his concern for the environment and the problems that blacks continued to face...
...In the mid-eighties, another telephone call came from his brother Bill...
...Smith...
...Moynihan won, but Buckley doesn't seem to have many regrets about leaving the Senate...
...His Achilles' heel is the "Wally Pipp syndrome," the fear of being replaced permanently as YankeesfirstbasemanPippwasreplacedbyLouGehrig for the next 2,130 games...
...Some might call this an early manifestationofwhathascometobe known as compassionate conservatism,butitisdoubtfulJimBuckley wouldhaveanyusefortheterm.That conservatismiscompassionateis,for him, something so axiomatic that there is no need to belabor the point...
...After debating with himself about his qualifications, he eventually said yes and was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the DistrictofColumbiaCircuit,consideredbymanytobe, after the Supreme Court, the most important court in the country...
...Even after all these years, it remains a stunning act...
...watching in leafy northwest Connecticut...
...It was satisfying but also frustrating...
...This he can answer: "my willingness to take unpopular positions that I believed to be right...
...He said if Buckley won, children would be bayoneted in the streets...
...Rather than a history of Western civilization--to cite one example--professors choose to teach an area of specialization, e.g., the French Revolution...
...The consequence is that context, relationships, and the flow of historyarelost.Studentsarerudderlessinaseaofnarrowlyfocusedofferings...
...While Buckley didn't have experience in Washington, he was a veteran lawyer and businessman whose work had taken him around the world...
...The campaign also made Conservative Party leaders aware of Jim Buckley...
...Thoughhedidn'twintheelection,he proved an able candidate, prompting the Conservatives to ask him to run again for the Senate in 1970...
...This disclosure comes more than halfway through this most unusual and fascinating book-based on interviews with James Buckley commissioned by The Historical Society of the District of ColumbiaCircuit--andbythistimethereadershould have had a good insight into the character of the former New York senator...
...No one, most especially the Buckley brothers, expected Bill to win, but the campaign proved entertaining to the voters and media of New York City...
...Furthermore, damage has resulted from a faculty disinclination to teach general courses...
...From the beginning, the environment was a priority, making him one of the first conservative political figures, if not the first, to embrace an issue that one would think would be a natural for conservatives.Why,inaburstofego,heisevenwilling to acknowledge that he had a "definite impact" on environmental bills during his years as senator...
...Circuit and insights into the judicial philosophy that guided him during his 15-year tenure...
...He was also the first to callfortuitiontaxcreditstocoveraportionofthecostofhighereducation.But anyone assessing Jim Buckley's Senate career would have to say that its signature moment was the statement he made, in March of 1974, in the midst of the Watergate crisis...
...But the judge has to add his own comment, and it is along the lines the reader has come to expect: "That happens not to be the case (and I am in a far better position than the Washingtonian to make that judgment...
...Malloch and Massey recognize that without deep intellectual and creative energy the efflorescence of life-affirming choices is limited...
...Butthen,lestanyonefindhimguiltyofbeingtooprincipled, he goes on to point out a time when he voted for a bad bill out of political prudence...
...He sees O'Reilly as a non-conformist in a business that demands so much conformity that we ended up with "a generation of telegenic and totally uninvolved journalists...
...But, Ailes added, he could retire and write, because "he doesn't have that fear of not being on TV that most celebrities have...
...In 1996, four years before he retired, Washingtonian magazine published an article on the judges of that court...
...The comparison doesn't quite make it: Murrow was a classic down-the-line liberal and O'Reilly, though he occasionally deviates, is too much of a conservative ever to be allowed to share Murrow's demigod status...
...Moreover, the core principlesofWesterncivilizationtransmittedthroughhistory, philosophy, and literature have been trivialized by anemphasisonrelativismandspecializedcourses.The foundationalvaluesofourWesternheritagehavebeen put in the cauldron of semiotics and emerged as selfcentered opinion...
...Environmentally Sound HARD AS IT IS TO BELIEVE,thevotersofNewYork, thestatethatinrecentyearshasadornedthe U.S.SenatewiththetwingiftsofChuckSchumer and Hillary Clinton, once sent that esteemed body a man who is ill at ease when asked to name his proudest achievement in the Senate...
...Liberals would have to acknowledge that O'Reilly's NewJournalismisMurrow'sOldJournalism,andas most of them lack Kitman's fairness, they would be loath to do so...
...New York voters were not sending an innocent to Washington...
...Two years later, in 1976, he ran for re-election...
...In the interviews and in his own annotations, he offers details about the workings of the D.C...
...When asked what he would do if he did win, Bill famously replied: "Demand a recount...
...He won with about 40 percent of the vote...
...The cure, he believes, is not exactly more O'Reillys, but more journalistic idiosyncrasy, a quality he dubs "O'Reillyismo" and compares to the opinionated, often heretical ideas of EdwardR.Murrow.Althoughthetwomencouldnot be more different in personality, Kitman contends that the quiet, urbane Murrow was just as angry as O'Reilly and just as ready to defy the powers that be, as when he criticized J. Edgar Hoover, Douglas MacArthur, Nationalist China, and the tobacco interests at a time when they were television's biggest advertisers and he himself was a heavy smoker...
...What needs to be preserved...
...It was notunusualforasenatortoknownothingmoreabout a bill than the recommendation from his legislative aide on how he should vote...
Vol. 40 • April 2007 • No. 3
