Introduction

William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) changed the world. I was at his side during the years the world noticed it. George Will once said, “without Buckley, no National Review [the magazine he edited for 25 years]; without National Review, no conservative takeover of the Republican party; without that, no Reagan; without Reagan, no victory in the Cold War.” I came into Bill Buckley’s life in 1969, half-way through that march of accomplishments. I came of age, and middle age, along with the conservative movement that he midwifed. He was my boss and my mentor. He discovered me, tapped me as his heir--and then changed his mind. I had to find a new voice, as a writer and a historian, while both of us reconfigured our relationship, and while the world changed again, in ways nobody had guessed.

This is my story of a remarkable man. Bill Buckley was a famous man—at the top of his game, he was at the top of the world. His television show aired in a hundred markets, his syndicated column ran in hundreds of newspapers, his books appeared regularly on the best-seller list. Presidents and movie stars hobnobbed with him, world-famous musicians performed in his living room, comics imitated him. Much of that slipped away as he aged and tired, but when he died he was treated as a fallen head of state. “If I’m still famous,” he had instructed his son about his funeral, “ask the cardinal to hold it in St. Patrick’s; otherwise, tuck me away in Sharon,” the family’s Connecticut home. The memorial mass was in St. Patrick’s, with 2200 mourners.

He was also vital. What he liked he loved, and what he loved he had to share with colleagues, friends, and casual acquaintances. His delight was a boy’s even when the taste was a connoisseur’s and the judgment a man’s. At the end of one of his books about sailing, the on-board representative of the owner of the yacht he has rented tells him there is some weakness in the mast, he should let up on the last leg. Bill’s attitude was, that’s the owner’s problem; I rented the boat, we’re in the Atlantic Ocean with a good wind, let her rip. He brought that avidity of appreciation to ideas, words, music, food, gadgets; to his friendships.

This is also my story of the conservative movement, and of the world in which it came to power, with the potential for accomplishments and the certainty of failure that power entails. In the age of Obama conservatism is in retreat—though perhaps its retreat began with Bill Clinton, or the Bushes, father and son—but it will be back, and its ups and downs are of interest to conservatives, their enemies, and ordinary Americans. When I met Bill Buckley, there were still Soviet troops in Berlin. Ten years later, they were in Afghanistan. Ten years after that, the Berlin Wall collapsed. Twelve years after that, the World Trade Towers collapsed. The conservative movement helped elect presidents, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. Like a typhoon, the turn of the millennium threw amazing sea creatures on the beach: prophets (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), freaks (Monica Lewinsky), monsters (Pol Pot). Working for Bill Buckley at National Review, I covered these and many other figures and events. I shook Castro’s hand; Reagan laughed at one of my jokes, and Margaret Thatcher repeated it. One of my friends got anthrax after 9/11. You had to be interested in history from 1969 to 2008; to borrow a line from Christopher Hitchens, it was interested in you.

This is, finally, my story of a relationship. Bill was a generous and devoted man; he was also willful, capricious, impulsive. The former qualities generally prevailed over eruptions of the latter, but the latter could give you a wild ride. I went on a number. One fine day he announced that I would succeed him; another, he announced that I would not (there were other little surprises in store besides those). I was the more susceptible because I was thirty years younger than he was; because I was looking for someone to look up to; because it took me thirty years to realize that friendship is one of the few solid things you can have in this world, and rare enough.

The story includes the teller of the story. When I met Bill Buckley I was a teenager—a young man from the provinces. In forty years I have fallen in love many times—with writing; with Bill and his magazine; with my wife; with a man who has been dead for two hundred years (though he is still alive). I am unusually impressionable, and I keep better than average track of my impressions. They are the substance of my life, and the medium of this book.

This story is especially for the young. Those who are too young to remember Buckley will meet an arresting and significant figure; they may also learn, from the evolutions of my career, some points of use for their own. My life has not been quite what I expected it to be, but then nothing ever is; we make the best of new opportunities. Finding your own place in the world is a neat trick. I offer my experiences as stimulus and guidance.