The liberal conservative

By common consent, William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday, was the father of modern conservatism.

By common consent, William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday, was the father of modern conservatism. But he also ended up as one of the Bush administration8217;s most trenchant critics. His death not only represents the loss of one of America8217;s leading intellectual figures but also underscores the extent of the collapse of the conservative movement that has so decisively shaped politics for decades.

Like no other personality, Buckley pulled together the disparate strands of the conservative movement to endow it with panache, self-confidence and a sense of being on the cutting edge. An avid sailor, a writer of numerous spy novels and the host of the first of the political talk shows, Firing Line, Buckley quickly became a celebrity who made conservatism respectable.

This was no small feat in postwar America. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the widespread acceptance of the New Deal, conservatism looked like a relic of the past, consisting of a bunch of isolationists and anti-Semitic cranks. The journalist Murray Kempton, who later became a close friend of Buckley8217;s, summed up the dominant liberal thinking at the time when he observed, 8220;The New American Right is most conspicuous these days for its advanced state of wither.8221; Buckley changed that.

With the appearance of National Review in 1955, he began to give conservatism a makeover. No doubt Buckley8217;s greatest flaw was his embrace of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his refusal to acknowledge McCarthy8217;s malevolence. But Buckley himself was a tolerant figure whose best friends such as the radical journalist Dwight Macdonald were often on the left. He never confused, as today8217;s conservatives often do, shared political views with actual friendships.

A year after graduating from college, Buckley pioneered the depiction of American liberals as a smug, self-satisfied elite in his famous 1951 book, God and Man at Yale. At National Review, he brought on a passel of former Trotskyites turned conservatives, such as Willi Schlamm and James Burnham, who churned out essays attacking the news media and universities as being filled with doctrinaire liberals. Sound familiar?

Ever since, conservatives 8212; whether it8217;s Ann Coulter or Dinesh D8217;Souza 8212; have continuously denounced traitorous liberal elites. But they are bargain-basement Buckleys. The difference is that Buckley8217;s criticisms were grounded not in personal venom but in analysis. In the 1960s, after all, liberals really did have the upper hand in politics; they dragged the US into Vietnam and oversaw the rise of the Great Society, which became a big conservative bugaboo.

Even as debate raged, however, Buckley never became a hater. He possessed a benignant temperament that his successors lack. His most famous proteges 8212; writers Garry Wills, Joan Didion and John Leonard 8212; eventually decamped for the left. Buckley8217;s response was to quip, 8220;I hadn8217;t realised that I was running a finishing school for young apostates.8221;

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In the end, Buckley8217;s judicious temperament and inquisitiveness meant that he himself became something of a heretic, ironically at the moment the right seemed to be at the peak of its power. When I met Buckley, then nearing 80, for lunch at where else? the New York Yacht Club in 2004 to interview him about neoconservatism, he was plainly sceptical of the idea that the Middle East could be turned overnight into a bastion of democracy. As the Iraq war became more of a morass, Buckley declared that the 8220;insurrectionists in Iraq can8217;t be defeated by any means that we would consent to use,8221; and that in a parliamentary democracy President Bush would have had to step down.

Sam Tanenhaus, who is writing a Buckley biography, noted in the New Republic that Buckley also had begun to question 8220;the wisdom of having opened the gates quite so wide.8221; Into his movement had stepped neoconservatives and evangelicals who were bent on that most unconservative of propositions 8212; a war to spread peace in the Middle East. The younger generation now running National Review largely has adopted that neoconservative worldview, much to the older generation8217;s chagrin.

The poignancy of Buckley8217;s predicament came home to me that blustery spring day outside the Yacht Club when two young foreign tourists recognised him and took a picture with him. Buckley was elated. The old, familiar grin surfaced for a moment. A troubled expression then returned, we shook hands, and he melted into the crowd. I had the sense that he feared being forgotten. But it is conservatism that is marooned by his death. Perhaps his memory can serve as a beacon for the movement he once guided to return to the solid shores of his 8212; dare one say it? 8212; liberal conception of conservatism.

Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at the 8216;National Interest8217; and the author of 8216;They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons8217;