For decades, William F. Buckley Jr. was a one-of-a-kind character: an author and columnist, and a celebrity intellectual. He hosted a TV debate show, “Firing Line,” and was often a guest on late night television. But beyond that stardom and upper-crust accent was something consequential: Bill Buckley was a conservative who sought to propel the nation to the right.
“Buckley invented cultural politics,” said former New York Times Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus. He says we are still living in the world created by Buckley, who died in 2008. (He would have turned 100 this year.)
I asked, “Is there a line from Buckley to McCarthy, to Goldwater, to Nixon, to Reagan, to Gingrich, to Trump?”
“You have just drawn the fever chart or outline of the modern Republican Party in America,” Tanenhaus replied. “He’s the founder of the movement we have today.”
Tanenhaus’ sweeping new biography is “Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America.”
Random House 
Buckley’s beginnings can be traced back to Yale University, which now houses an extensive archive of his personal papers.
Buckley burst onto the national scene in 1951 with his book, “God and Man at Yale,” which took on his alma mater as a thicket of secular professors and liberal elites.
Tanenhaus said, “He was 25 years old, handsome Ivy League graduate who has everything going for him, but he’s also gonna reveal the secrets of the ivory tower.”
In 1955, he founded National Review, seeking to provide conservatives with coverage of their ideas and debates. (I once worked there as a Buckley fellow and reporter).
Though he never held office himself, Buckley caused a stir when he ran for mayor of New York City in 1965, and mused that if he won, he would demand a recount. “He was really turning the party inside out,” Tanenhaus said. “He was going to make the Republican Party the voice of the excluded middle class.”
But as he built his new coalition, he also drew scrutiny and denunciations, especially on race. In the Fifties and Sixties, Buckley opposed key civil rights legislation, and supported segregation.
And he had his critics. Buckley’s views were rebuked at high-profile debates, be it with James Baldwin or Gore Vidal.
Tanenhaus says, by the late sixties, Buckley was seen as a central force, boosting Richard Nixon and, in 1980, Ronald Reagan, who won the presidency
“Bill Buckley reached his peak under Richard Nixon, because Nixon needed Buckley,” Tanenhaus said. Reagan, however, did not: “Reagan was a great pragmatist, and he knew that Buckley was still a movement guy.”
Then came a new generation of louder, brasher conservatives, starting with Rush Limbaugh. And in Washington, there was Newt Gingrich, who won the Speaker’s gavel in 1994.
Asked what he believed Buckley thought of the rising stars of the right in the 1990s, Gingrich said, “I think we amused him. He was proof that conservatism could be smart, and that you could win the argument. Buckley was a model of thinking about things and to say things that are true but not acceptable.”
Gingrich, now a close ally of President Donald Trump, says the flame of Buckley still flickers inside the GOP. “Much of the critique that Buckley made at Yale of the intellectuals is the underlying fuel for Trump’s assault on the Ivy League,” he said.
I asked, “You see echoes of Buckley in what President Trump’s doing with the universities today?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the difference in your view between Buckley’s conservatism and President Trump’s conservatism?”
“Trump is the most effective anti-liberal in my lifetime,” Gingrich said. “I think Trump focuses on doing and achieving more than on knowing. I think Buckley thought his role was to be a genuine intellectual. And that meant, obviously, he wouldn’t be a particularly good politician.”
Tanenhaus says William F. Buckley Jr’s legacy is complicated. His civility certainly stands out: “He wants to defeat you, but he’s gonna defeat you with his vocabulary. And that is an aspect of democracy that’s been lost.”
Yet, for the biographer, there is also an inescapable conclusion: Buckley paved the way for Trump: “If Trump is able, if he succeeds in some of the big things he means to do, then he may emerge as the single most powerful figure to come out of the movement William F. Buckley Jr. created all those years ago.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America”
For more info:
Story produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: Jennifer Falk.
