Jeffrey Hart, a longtime friend of William F. Buckley and a National Review editor, has an affectionate, rewarding remembrance of the great man in the new American Conservative. I liked the gossipy stuff, like:
On the second floor, the chalet had a large living room, also Buckley’s office, where he worked mornings, and his studio. He painted in oils when the spirit moved him—mountains, sailboats, unrecognizable portraits. Buckley had many talents in addition to being perhaps the most important journalist of his time, but to put it bluntly in the interest of truth, his paintings were awful.I heard that once, before I had begun to ski at Gstaad, David Niven had told Buckley that Marc Chagall was coming, admired Buckley’s spy novels, and would like to see him. “Fine, love to meet him,” said Bill. “Wait a minute, Bill,” said Niven. “Chagall is a real artist. World famous. You wouldn’t take him to your studio, would you?” “Of course not,” replied Buckley. Niven and Chagall arrived at the chalet and Buckley took him right to the studio. Chagall looked around at Buckley’s paintings and said in French, “The poor paint.”
But what a painful point on which to end the essay ... and, for that matter, for Buckley to leave this life:
At about the same time this column appeared, an article about Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus ran in The New Republic. Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, had long been a friend of Buckley, has written a good biography of Whittaker Chambers, and is said to be finishing a biography of Buckley. At the conclusion of Tanenhaus’s article, Buckley said more or less explicitly that support for Bush had destroyed the conservative movement. Tanenhaus observed, “Buckley has criticized Bush for trying to go it alone and chided neoconservatives who vastly overstate the reach of U.S. power and influence.” He continued:Beyond this, Buckley recognizes, as Bush’s defenders have not, that the trouble originates with the Iraq war, not with its opponents. When I asked him recently if Iraq is the Republicans’ Vietnam, he said, ‘Absolutely.’ It is a serious admission for one who knows that Vietnam destroyed cold war liberalism and, with it, the Democratic Party’s control of national politics. Iraq now threatens the right and the GOP, Buckley says, with the ‘identical’ fate. No wonder, then, that in a July interview with CBS News, he said that if Bush were the leader of a parliamentary government ‘it would be expected that he would retire or resign.’History will remember William F. Buckley’s founding of the American conservative movement, but it should also credit him for this: by the end, he had the honesty to say publicly that it was probably finished.
You laugh when I say the twin legacies of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee will be important to the future of post-Bush conservatism. But Bush and the GOP leadership have done so much to discredit conservatism that our tribe will be hungry for new ideas to redeem what will remain of the movement after 2008. Ron Paul is old and marginal, and Mike Huckabee may not be able to transcend his roots among Evangelicals -- I think he can and will, but for the sake of argument, let's say he's stuck. Still, the ideas both men's campaigns were based on will come to matter a lot more to the GOP's future than it seems today.
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Um, Tom, are you aware that this is an opinion blog, and I'm quoting a personal remembrance that appeared in a magazine of opinion? Go read the original Tanenhaus piece at The New Republic's site if you want to. It's quite good.
From today's NYT coverage of the memorial service yesterday at St. Patrick's:
nytimes.com/2008/04/05/nyregion/05buckley.html
2,200 Fill St. Patrick’s for Buckley’s Memorial
...at least 2,200 people, filling every seat, gathered for a memorial service for Mr. Buckley, who died on Feb. 27 at the age of 82.
Some were famous — the writer Tom Wolfe, the actor Tom Selleck, the television hosts Chris Matthews and Charlie Rose, the former mayor Edward I. Koch and the former senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic candidate for president. Most were not famous. The memorial, announced weeks in advance, was open to the public...
The Rev. George W. Rutler, who celebrated the memorial Mass, spoke of Mr. Buckley’s playfulness, recalling a conversation between Mr. Buckley and a television host who referred condescendingly to sailing, one of Mr. Buckley’s loves. Is there any real difference, the host said sarcastically, between sailing east to west and west to east?
Father Rutler — without benefit of Mr. Buckley’s customary clipboard, arched eyebrow or silken voice — evoked Mr. Buckley (and got a laugh) with the words: “Yes. They are in *opposite* directions.”
One eulogist, Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state, related a sailing story, too, about Mr. Buckley’s losing a race that he thought he would win. The story somehow combined Xerxes, Themistocles and e-mail.
Dr. Kissinger’s gravelly voice choked with emotion several times.
“Over a decade ago,” he said, clearing his throat, “Bill and I discussed the relationship of knowledge to faith. I surmised it required a special act of divine grace to make the leap from the intellectual to the spiritual. In a note, Bill demurred. No special epiphany was involved, he argued. There could be a spiritual and intellectual drift until, one day, the eyes opened and happiness followed ever after. Bill noted that he had seen that culmination in friends. He did not claim it for himself.”
The other eulogist, Christopher Buckley, noted that if his father’s columns, books and other papers were stacked one on top of another, they would rise 550 feet, or some 220 feet above the spires of St. Patrick’s...
Mr. Buckley revealed that at his father’s wake, treasured items were placed in the coffin: his father’s favorite rosary, his television remote control and a jar of peanut butter.
“No pharaoh off to the afterlife goes better equipped than he does,” Mr. Buckley said.
He added that his father was once asked in an interview in Playboy magazine what he would want for an epitaph. He replied, “I know that my redeemer liveth.”
“Only Pop could manage to get the Book of Job into a Hugh Hefner publication,” Mr. Buckley said...
Matt
How often do you hear of a disgraced conservative: "Well, the problem wasn't conservatism, it was the people who botched the implementation."
I forget who said it first, but I agree: At this point some of you guys are sounding like Communists: 'Communism would work, but Russia and China and North Korea and Cambodia and all those other places it devolved immediately into totalitarianism...they weren't really communism. Let's try it again!'.
Not all of you guys, mind you. There are plenty of people who recognize there is (was) some sort of serious problem within the party itself that allowed all those non-conservatives to be painted as one. But there are lots of 'conservatives' running around insisting that they've been repeatedly tricked.
Of course, I'm of the opinion that when the party does look itself in the mirror, it might find that there's nothing there. Whereas I'm sure everyone else here thinks there is, although they might disagree with what it will be. But, regardless, it needs to happens.
Mark in Houston
And that wing is the one that ends up in the driver's seat at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, regardless of whether they are "crunchy" enough for your tastes or would make Russell Kirk happy with their lifestyles or viewpoints. In practice, conservatism is for the most part a mere solicitude for tidy incomes, because that's what those with tidy incomes want it to be.
As I've been saying, what should really be scaring the Republicans is the abandonment of the party by business interests, because, when they leave, you're dead. They're the only people who can throw enough money to hold your exceedingly unrelated party together.
What really scares us Democrats, of course, is the fact they're showing up over here with bundles of cash.
There was a piece by Jon Rauch, I think, that observed, "Conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed." Great line, solid observation -- except that it really is possible for a certain kind of conservative to look at the GOP and point out how it has essentially been about boosting the free market, and not much else identifiably conservative. The problem with this analysis is it forces conservatives who make it to recognize that the US is not by their standards a particularly conservative country.
File under -
Bill and Ted's Pole-Schuss Journey, Chapping His Quiddick, or, Frederica von Gstaad
- this passage from a post by Kara Hopkins at the new paleocon frat-blog @TAC, at The American Conservative:
amconmag.com/blog/2008/04/07/gentle-regrets/
"Jeffrey Hart's vivid remembrance of William F. Buckley is circulating around the internet and igniting discussion, not least for its candor about WFB's opposition to the Iraq War and estimation of the damage lockstep support of the Bush agenda has done to conservatism.
>
"Speaking of Buckley's across-the-aisle friendships, Jeff forwarded an amusing postscript that he didn't include in his TAC piece:
Ted Kennedy was staying with the Buckleys in their chalet, which was some distance from Gstaad.
Kennedy asked if he could borrow one of the cars a drive into town.
'Hell no,' said Pat Buckley. 'There are two bridges between here and Gstaad.'
I don't know Kennedy's reaction or whether he got the car.
"If only Mr. Buckley had exercised similar discretion with the keys to his magazine."
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