Columnists: The Sniper

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Fever Swamps. Buckley can be effectively pithy. When the British Labor government decided to equip police with breathometers to check drivers for drunkenness, he commented: "People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government." Or he can set sail on splendid seas of invective. "The Bishop of Woolwich, who is England's Bishop Pike only more so, announced recently from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral that he had recently traveled to America and there found that 'every Christian I met' was opposed to the war in Viet Nam—a statement which, if true, suggests that the bishop was given a Potemkin tour of the U.S., visiting only the fever swamps of the Christian left; or, and this is more likely and more charitable, that the bishop does not know a Christian when he sees one, even as, one must conclude on reading his books, he does not recognize Christianity when he sees it."

Buckley's enemies bring out the best in him. He is less interesting when he starts singing the praises of his friends such as Barry Goldwater, Senator John Tower, Everett Dirksen ("moving through the crowd like the eye of a hurricane, an oasis of calmness"), Walter Judd ("Is there anywhere a more impressive American?"). Of all of Buckley's hang-ups, two of the worst have been Moise Tshombe, whom Buckley thought the U.S. sold out, and Senator Thomas Dodd, whom Buckley thought the Senate sold short. "I, for one, announce," he inaccurately predicted, "the beginning of a very long period of bitterness against the gang of flagitious moralizers who conspired against a brave and simple man of distinguished public record and found him guilty by bill of attainder."

Sometimes Buckley caters to the repressive streak common to many U.S. conservatives. During his campaign for mayor of New York in 1965, he gave a speech to the police telling them how much they had been maligned by the press. Heavily criticized for his jocular references to questionable police practices, he did not back down a bit. "The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs," he said testily. "I suppose they will have to use poison ivy."

Idea Broker. Buckley is a gifted polemicist; a philosopher he is not. A friend of his and a fellow conservative, M. Stanton Evans, editor of the Indianapolis News, thinks he could be if he put his mind to it. "But he has left the metaphysics to others," says Evans. "He has concentrated instead on a high-level conservative journalism, acting as a broker and analyst of ideas rather than as an originator of them." Buckley is not interested in lingering long over any one idea. Rather, he tosses them out, shoots them down, then goes off to stalk others without leaving many traces behind. His hearers or readers are momentarily stunned, surprised, even awed. But later they often have a hard time recalling just what it was he said.