Friends With Those He Fought

Of all the writings of Bill Buckley, none were finer than his short obituaries. He wrote nearly 500 of them -- for world rulers, political opponents and intimate friends; and, in many cases, for people who combined all three roles into one. Here, for example, is an extract from his obituary for William Sloane Coffin, the legendarily militant left-wing chaplain of Yale University, who died in April, 2006.

Buckley is telling the story of his last meeting with Coffin, a final debate between the two legendary talkers:

"I climbed the steps at the Yale Law School Auditorium to extend a hand to Bill Coffin-- who brushed it aside and embraced me with both arms. This was a dramatic act. It was testimony not only to Coffin's wide Christian gateway to the unfaithful, but also to his extraordinary histrionic skills. I'd have lost the argument anyway. I have defended my political faith as often as Coffin did his own, but you cannot, in the end, win an argument against someone who is offering free health care and an end to nuclear bombs. But there was never any hope for survival after his public embrace ?

"Our disagreements were heated, and it is through the exercise of much restraint that I forbear doing more than merely recording that they were -- heated; on my way, heatedly, to recording that Bill Coffin was a bird of paradise, and to extending my sympathy to all who, however thoughtlessly, lament his failure to bring the world around to his views."

In Buckley's later years, these obituaries appeared more and more often, as, one by one, his many, many friends passed from the scene. Each was graceful, generous and imbued with a deep awareness that our common humanity unites us more than political differences can ever divide us.

As I read them, I often found myself thinking: Who will speak so finely about Buckley himself, when his time comes?

I need not have worried. In the hours since Bill Buckley's death on Feb. 27, at the age of 82, a surge of tributes has filled the airwaves, newspapers and internet. Over Buckley's long lifetime, the public mind had somehow apprehended and appreciated the great soul of the man.

This appreciation is not easy, since many of Buckley's finest actions were done in secret. I think, for example, of a conservative journalist threatened with prison because he had failed for years to file a tax return. Buckley hired his lawyer, negotiated with the IRS and paid his back taxes. Or of the disgraced congressman, caught in a sex scandal, abandoned by everyone he knew -- almost everyone, that is, until he found in the mail a large, unsolicited cheque from Buckley.

If Buckley's charities were often unknown, his wit, his style and his unstinting support for younger people were all legendary. He won the love of his friends and the admiration of his enemies. The historian Rick Perlstein, a savage critic of American conservatism, paid this final tribute to Buckley:

"He did the honour of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie ? He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire."

That is exactly right. The irenic later Buckley ("irenic" was one of Buckley's many pet linguistic obscurities; it means "peaceful" -- but who would have to go look up the word "peaceful"?) should not be allowed to displace the fiercer younger Buckley in our memories.

Asked why Senator Bobby Kennedy would not appear on Buckley's TV show, Firing Line, Buckley answered, "Why does baloney avoid the grinder?" Interviewing the socialist and pacifist Norman Thomas, Buckley sneered at those who went "weak in the knees" if the U.S. dropped napalm on the Viet Cong.

More than a TV personality, more than a writer, Buckley was a political man. He lived long enough to see the triumph of his politics in 1980 and again in 1994.

Then he lived longer still. The conservatism Buckley epitomized has now passed its zenith. The movement he created has become, in many ways, decadent, even obsolete. And we who follow in Buckley's footsteps are left with a question, without Buckley's wisdom to help us answer him: If we would be true to his magnanimous spirit, should we continue after his departure to say what he said? Or should we instead do what he did, and adapt enduring truths to new circumstances?

One of the writers Buckley most admired, G.K. Chesterton, warned a century ago against conservatives who "want to conserve everything -- except their reasons for conserving anything." It would be the most mocking of tributes to a great man and great political innovator if we tried to honor Buckley's memory by mummifying Buckley's movement against the need for change.