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From Tom Paine to William Lloyd Garrison, from William Jennings Bryan to Henry Wallace, American ideologues have been a humorless lot. In their devotion to a special set of principles, they have rarely cultivated the art of laughter—especially at themselves. It is perhaps symptomatic of the times that today's leading U.S. ideologue of the right is celebrated for his wit. At 42, William F. Buckley Jr. is that contradiction in terms, a popular polemicist.
Daily, Bill Buckley stands at some conservative Armageddon, but not as the leader of an army or even a division. Barry Goldwater's sobersided conservatives don't understand him; Robert Welch's conspiratorial John Birchers don't trust him. He may not be able to help it, but he is too clever, too humorous, too well read, too (in the current all-purpose adjective of the liberal Establishment) "attractive." He is a solitary sniper, taking skillful shots at the Great Society, at peaceful coexisters, at the heirs and assigns of John F. Kennedy, at Lindsay-woolsey Republicans. Sometimes even an enemy smiles as Buckley hits the mark; sometimes his own rhetorical smoke screen obscures the target. Yet he never tires of the battle. Or is it sport?
The Buckley substance is forgiven for the Buckley style. "He is as brilliant an adversary as he is bankrupt an advocate," says Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. To M.I.T. Political Science Professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield, "he is an exceedingly witty, attractive and rather insidious spokesman for a point of view for which I have few sympathies. But if we don't want to die of sheer boredom, the Buckleys should be encouraged." Buckley offers his own well-considered self-analysis: "I feel I qualify spiritually and philosophically as a conservative, but temperamentally I am not of the breed."
Lifted Eyebrow. Buckley is everywhere in evidence these days. He writes a thrice-weekly column, "On the Right," that is carried by 205 papers. If an editor decides he needs a conservative for proper balance on the editorial page, he turns to Buckley. "He makes other conservative columnists look like guys with grey hair and dandruff," says Atlanta Journal Editor Jack Spalding. Buckley also publishes National Review, a fortnightly magazine of opinion (circ. 94,000) that manages to make conservative thought easy to read and even—at times—entertaining.
He shows off his forensic marksmanship in a weekly TV debate called Firing Line, on which he confronts his adversaries with a polysyllabic vocabulary and an arsenal of intimidating grimaces. Does the occasion call for an eyebrow lifted in disdain, a mouth drawn down in disbelief, a popeyed leer of triumph at a point well scored? Buckley performs on cue. At a time when most TV performers play down to their audience, Buckley remains Buckley, and his program is all the more engaging for it.