In 2016, What Would Bill Buckley Do?
If you think you know what he’d have to say about Clinton vs. Trump, then you didn’t know him.
By Kevin D. Williamson — September 23, 2016
Last night, the editors and friends of this magazine gathered in San Francisco for the annual William F. Buckley Jr. Prize dinner, this year honoring former secretary of state George Schultz for — as the understated invitation put it — “his role in defeating Communism.”
(Other than that, what did the Republicans ever do for us?)
I did not know Buckley — “Bill,” as he insisted — very well. I had had the pleasure of encountering him briefly before coming to work for National Review, and a few months into my employment here I attended what turned out to be the last editors’ dinner at his home. In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance describes a painfully familiar situation in which he is invited to a dinner for which his background left him unprepared. The cliché in these situations is not knowing which fork to use; Vance was nonplussed when after asking for white wine he was asked which kind of white wine he would like — he did not know that there was more than one. I knew which fork to use by the time I met Bill, but I felt a little like Vance must have felt. Of course, like a lot of young conservatives, I’d thought I would grow up to become Bill Buckley, until I was old enough to understand that nobody grew up to become Bill Buckley, including Bill Buckley, who was just that way.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/440349/print
