Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

The conservative activist William F. Buckley helped make the American right a respectable rival to liberalism in part by making peace with liberal doctrine, according to this searching biography. Journalist Tanenhaus (The Death of Conservatism) recaps Buckley’s career as founder of the National Review, host of the talk show Firing Line, author of splashy cultural critiques, and Republican Party kingmaker. Tanenhaus’s Buckley is a charming and good-humored man; a sharp debater and facile writer, though a shallow and often factually challenged thinker; and a loyal friend but a bad judge of character. (He once helped free a National Review reader jailed for murder who went on to attempt murder again.) A scion of oil wealth, Buckley built bridges between plutocratic conservatism and the populist New Right, a fusion that helped propel Ronald Reagan to the presidency. In Tanenhaus’s telling, Buckley embodies a gradual, grudging conservative accommodation with liberal fundamentals, moving from pre-WWII isolationism to support for anti-communist interventionism, from genteel apologias for Jim Crow to an acceptance of the civil rights revolution, and from denunciations of big government to tacit acknowledgment that big government was here to stay. Tanenhaus is clear-eyed about Buckley’s many failures but also does justice to his eccentric charisma, humanity, and wit. This elegant, capacious character study shows how Buckley’s spadework opened many of the fault lines that still fracture American politics. (June)