PUBLIC NUISANCES
PublIc nuIsAnces R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. William f. buckley, RIP It was in those years that Buckley was every-where assisting in the founding of conservatism’s student wing, the...
...intelligentintellectualsonboththeleftandtheright...
...It also launched Bill as an enduring national figure...
...The explanation is Watergate...
...He buzzed the Titanic from a submarine, and his drift from politics continued...
...He entertained the idea of mounting a Conservative Party campaign in 1970 for Robert Kennedy’s old Senate seat, and using the Senate as a springboard to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...He visited my pals on the world champion Indiana University swimming team, reminding me that his Yale room-WASHINGTON illiam f. buckley, Jr...
...At first he was an energetic herald of the new conservatism, a rigor-ist for the conservative position...
...William f. buckley, RIP It was in those years that Buckley was every-where assisting in the founding of conservatism’s student wing, the Young Americans for Freedom, its ideological forum, the American Conservative Union, and the Conservative Party of New York...
...Through all the ideo-logical backsliding of the Nixon years Bill stood by the president...
...withdrew...
...The experi-ence left him permanently disappointed in Nixon and stunned by the brutality of politics...
...He had a prevenient sense for shifts in the Zeitgeist...
...He had to visit a bar named “The Stardust,” telling me that it was the site where Hoagy Carmichael wrote, said Bill, “the great-est jazz song of the twentieth century...
...I had just founded my anti-radical magazine at Indiana University and invited him to lecture...
...He encouraged other conservatives to join the Nixon Administration...
...At the height of Bill’s political phase he beheld dreams of the presidency...
...From that point on, the liberals’ template was set...
...He and his colleagues wrote important books that served as the foundation of their movement and made them and their political leader, Senator Barry Goldwater, popular figures in the early 1960s...
...And at a reception given for him by my fellow students he fit right in...
...He played the harpsichord, painted (I have an oil of his in my library) and sailed trans-atlantically...
...Not often recalled is how Bill’s life changed over his half century on the national scene...
...All of that—and he ran a third-party race for mayor of New York...
...In his 82 years, Bill covered a lot of ground...
...Even members of the liberal media nodded in respect, at least until Goldwater allowed himself to be drafted as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964...
...who died Wednesday, appropriately enough in his study, was one ofthemoststupendouseducatedAmericans of the 20th century...
...With it and his weekly television show, fame enhaloed him...
...One could not walk through an airport with him or down a street in a major urban center without encountering auto-graph seekers...
...His cofounders at National Review were among the first to go...
...Some respect was shown...
...Without him this change would have been either impossible or much delayed...
...When he began his campaign to advance modern conservatism he was surrounded by learned, highly Bill had many gifts, and one was a sense of the times in which he lived...
...The feat will not be duplicated...
...Now even his adversaries are gone...
...Recently Norman Mailer and Arthur Schlesinger Jr...
...Such ideas were viewed disdainfully by the reigning orthodoxy, liberalism, but by the 1980s Buckley’s positions had pretty much defeated liber-alism wherever democratic elections could be held...
...Burnham and Kirk died long ago...
...Oftenheturneduponcollegecampuses,whichis where I met him at the beginning of a friendship last-ing forty years...
...Alongwithfoundingapoliticalmovementhebecame a national figure as much for his superior sophisti-cation as for politics...
...By 1968 he had trimmed back his conservative orthodoxy and actively counseled the Nixon campaign...
...Bill had many gifts, and one was a sense of the times in which he lived...
...Bill just burned himself out, and—devout Catholic that he was—in his last months longed for the hereafter...
...He held minor posts in the Administration...
...Conservatives were stupid, war-mongers, and bigots, through the Reagan years, the Gingrich years, and right up to the present...
...mate was also an Olympian...
...In a new and authoritative history of modern conservatism’s evolution, Alfred Regnery describes Bill’s 1965 mayoral race as one of the three great political campaigns that put modern conservatism on the map, along with Goldwater’s 1964 defeat and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory...
...For years, he lectured and debat-ed a couple of nights a week...
...That is precisely what he did and more...
...He had a prevenient sense for shifts in the Zeitgeist...
...As his friend, the writer Taki Theodoracopulos put it, Bill “was looking forward to being united with Pat,” his recently deceased wife...
...But in the early 1960s this was not the liberal consensus...
...After the excite-ment of his mayoral race, however, he became much more political...
...Practically all the great figures of the ideo-logical battles of Bill’s life are gone...
...Bill stuck by Nixon until the autumn of 1973...
...And so the baton is passed...
...He began what was soon one of the most popular syndicated columns and in 1966 a weekly television debate series that became public television’s longest-running talk show...
...PublIc nuIsAnces R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Watergate dampened his ardor...
...In fact, he became more of a fixture in the Nixon Administration than he would become in the administration of his close personal friend, Ronald Reagan...
...His old debating opponent John Kenneth Galbraith died a few years back...
...Increasingly in the 1970s and 1980s I think he recognized that high intelli-gence was leaving the world of political thought...
...He brought together serious intellectuals, for instance James Burnham and Russell Kirk, to found whatbecamemodernconservatism’sfirstgreatorgan of opinion, National Review...
...On the conservative side it passes from Buckley to Ann Coulter...
...He was among the founders of the American conservative movement that crept out of the New Deal W years advocating market economics, traditional social values, and aggressive resistance to commu-nism...
...78 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 R. eMMeTT TYRRell, JR...
...His arrival was a whirlwind...
...Alas that was not to be...
...In an era when intellect still flourished Buckley was the finest debater in the country...
...As the years went on, they all passed away...
...His biogra-pher, John Judis, tells us that Bill resolved to write a novel, sail his sailboat across the Atlantic, and per-form Bach on his harpsichord with a professional orchestra...
...I do not know as much about the liberal side...
...APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 79...
...A professor nearby confided, “That man will beforeveryoung.Hewilllooklikethatasanoldman...
Vol. 41 • April 2008 • No. 3
