Good night, Mr. Buckley
Ward Sloane is a CBS News producer based in Washington.
Please don’t take this the wrong way.
As I read the first wires on the death of William F. Buckley this morning, I thought how appropriate that he should die during the year that the conservative movement seems fractured, a shadow of its once formidable presence.
Buckley was conservative before conservative was cool. He was brilliant, Ivy League, handsome and very, very, VERY articulate. And he was, well, so very self confident. All of his talent and style combined to rebirth the moribund conservative movement in this country. From his founding of the National Review to the day he stepped down from moderating his signature talk show, “Firing Line.” It is fair to say that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich all owe their place in American history to the man who once famously wrote that he didn’t know anyone smarter than himself.
Ronald Reagan was the man who is most associated with making the “L-word,” that is, Liberal, a dirty word. But it was Buckley who first started mocking and ridiculing liberals as being out of touch with mainstream America. Eventually he demonstrated through thoughtful and forceful debate that conservatism could not only survive, but thrive in the American marketplace of ideas. There are others who contributed, but Buckley was the vanguard.
(AP Photo/Lou Krasky)
As I read the first wires on the death of William F. Buckley this morning, I thought how appropriate that he should die during the year that the conservative movement seems fractured, a shadow of its once formidable presence.
Buckley was conservative before conservative was cool. He was brilliant, Ivy League, handsome and very, very, VERY articulate. And he was, well, so very self confident. All of his talent and style combined to rebirth the moribund conservative movement in this country. From his founding of the National Review to the day he stepped down from moderating his signature talk show, “Firing Line.” It is fair to say that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich all owe their place in American history to the man who once famously wrote that he didn’t know anyone smarter than himself.
Ronald Reagan was the man who is most associated with making the “L-word,” that is, Liberal, a dirty word. But it was Buckley who first started mocking and ridiculing liberals as being out of touch with mainstream America. Eventually he demonstrated through thoughtful and forceful debate that conservatism could not only survive, but thrive in the American marketplace of ideas. There are others who contributed, but Buckley was the vanguard.
