He Knew He Was Right

Buckley was saddened when the conservative movement began to flounder over the last couple of years. Conservatives, he said, using a favorite word, "have become slothful." In a 2006 interview with CBS, he called the Iraq War a failure. Were there a parliamentary system in the United States, he said, the prime minister would have been forced to retire or resign. The modern-day conservative establishment is reverential about Buckley. Last week, radio talk-show king Rush Limbaugh ranked Buckley as a "founding father." He went on and on about how Buckley had inspired him to "read, write, speak the English language as best I could, to expand my vocabulary." Limbaugh said that when his father asked him how he planned to make a living, Limbaugh replied: "Well, I want to be like Bill Buckley. I want to be able to sit around and write and think and speak." After Limbaugh became a talk-radio icon, Buckley invited him to dinner at his house on 73rd Street. Limbaugh recounted that he was "shaking on the phone at this invitation … In my mind, it was like being summoned as close to God on Earth as you can get." Buckley, typically, was gracious with Limbaugh. The Buckleys were "fans," Limbaugh recounted. Limbaugh added Buckley would "chide" him with "a little note," when he "thought we were incorrect or whatever."

Buckley was much too polite to do more than chide. But one wonders what he really thought of the braying of the talk-show conservatives, the vitriol of Ann Coulter or the immigrant-bashing of Lou Dobbs. Limbaugh says he would ask Buckley, "'What do you think is the right way to handle a situation like this?' and he would tell me. It was like having another father." But what would Buckley have made of this headline on the Rush Limbaugh Web site: "Rush nukes the liberal notion that modern-day conservatives lack William Buckley's 'civility'"? Way to nuke 'em, Rush?

As he entered his 80th year, Buckley began to slow down. Every three weeks, he would take the train to Boston, to sit with his old liberal friend and fellow charming egoist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who was slowly wasting away and died in April 2006. Buckley himself suffered from emphysema and diabetes, and was not happy when the doctors told him to stop drinking and smoking. Last April, he was stricken by the death of his beloved Pat. The dinner parties ended; Buckley rarely appeared in public. But he was "not morose," says Chris. "To the end, he had a spring in his step." At times, when the younger Buckley seemed gloomy, his father told him, "Remember, despair is a mortal sin." Buckley prayed every day, "and in that sense," says Clarke Reed, "he was always ready."

A few days before Buckley died, Bruce Levingston, the concert pianist who had so often played in the Buckleys' living room, called his friend: Levingston had planned a "musical evening" for Buckley. Levingston was getting ready to play Carnegie Hall, and he wanted to try out a program, a piece by Scarlatti, a Baroque composer who also wrote for the harpsichord, at Buckley's home. "That will be splendid, assuming I'm alive!" said Buckley, with a laugh. He lives on.

With Pat Wingert, Fareed Zakaria and Weston Kosova

© 2008