Christopher Buckley, son of conservative icon and National Review founder William F. Buckley, has left the magazine his father founded following a firestorm after he endorsed Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama instead of Republican Sen. John McCain.
He resigned but by his account it sounds like they couldn’t wait to get him out the door and, in all but official language, was fired.
To McCain supporters, Buckley’s exit will be the welcome departure of someone who wasn’t loyal to the party and acted like a RINO. To some conservatives, it’ll be yet one more indication of the split between traditional conservatives ideologically descended from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and Bush and modern conservatives who are more focused on winning than adhering to traditional conservative tenets and traditional respectful political behavior. To Democrats, it’ll be a sign of a split within the GOP that could become truly raw if McCain is defeated.
Here are some extensive excerpts from Buckley’s piece in The Daily Beast with a few comments.
Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.
My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1969, Pup wrote a widely-remarked upon column saying that it was time America had a black president. (I hasten to aver here that I did not endorse Senator Obama because he is black. Surely voting for someone on that basis is as racist as not voting for him for the same reason.)
In other words, those were the days when people could differ with someone and not demonize, negatively define and whip up hatreds against them. William F. Buckley created his magazine during a time didn’t have the current talk radio-style political culture. And now we’re in an even uglier era, where members of the crowd can yell “Kill him!” when a political opponent’s name is mentioned.
My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much. My father was also unpredictable, which tends to keep things fresh and lively and on-their-feet. He came out for legalization of drugs once he decided that the war on drugs was largely counterproductive. Hardly a conservative position. Finally, and hardly least, he was fun. God, he was fun. He liked to mix it up.
So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.
And he asks: just what IS modern conservatism?
While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.
Thanks, anyway, for the memories, and here’s to happier days and with any luck, a bit less fresh hell.
Does the GOP want a big tent? Or a pup tent?
UPDATE: Lowrey has responded:
I’d like to clarify this “firing” business. Over the weekend, Chris wrote us a jaunty e-mail with the subject line “A Sincere Offer,” in which he offered to resign his column on NR’s back page and said that if we accepted, there “would be no hard feelings, only warmest regards and understanding.” We took the offer sincerely. Chris had done us the favor of writing the column beginning seven issues ago on a “trial basis” (his words), while our regular back-page columnist, Mark Steyn, was on hiatus. Now, Mark is back to writing again, and—I’m delighted to say—will be on NR’s back-page in the new issue.
Just one other point: Chris says that his Obama endorsement has generated a “tsunami,” that e-mail at NRO has been running “oh, 700-to-1” against him, and that there’s a debate about whether to boil him in oil or shoot him. Chris is either misinformed or exercising poetic license. We have gotten about 100 e-mails, if that (a tiny amount compared to our usual volume), and threats of cancellations in the single digits (we never like to lose any readers, but circulation is way up this year). No doubt part of what upset these readers was the dim view Chris expressed of them in his first Daily Beast post. So it goes. It’s an intense election season and emotions are running high. We continue to have the highest regard for Chris’s talent and wit, and extend to him warmest regards and understanding.
The problem for Lowrey and the National Review: there have been several conservatives making high profile breaks with the McCain camp. Rightfully or wrongfully, accurately or inaccurately, this will be pointed to now for a long time of a symbol of how modern conservatism fired its founding family. P.S. The late William F. Buckley disagreed with his own magazine in his final years as well.
UPDATE II:
—Steve Clemmons:
His announcement created a storm among National Review editors. According to reports, he offered to resign. And it took a nanosecond for the magazine to accept that resignation.
Some will think that this is good. I don’t. It’s not wise to have such rigid ideological lines in publications that fair-minded thinking can’t be supported, debated, and embraced in process if not in substance.
Bill Buckley opposed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. He was an independent thinker who also would have difficulties with the Republican party that has been recently sculpted.
The father would not have accepted the resignation of the son — and instead might have debated him in a set of catchy columns.
National Review just made itself less relevant to the future of the nation.
would certainly agree that no one should be sacked for such an action. If the parties are big tents, they should be able to “contain” (in the psychoanalytic sense) internal disagreement. So I support Buckley the Younger in his complaint – and his indignation at being assaulted by former comrades.
But I have to say I am surprised by his shock and by his assertion that that most ot the extreme hatred only goes one way (right to left). He evidently didn’t read my email (lucky for him) when I left the left, but I can assure him it wasn’t pretty. Apostate are reviled. The extremes are extreme. That’s the way it goes.
….… I have to say – to each his yurt. The Democratic Party that put Joe Lieberman in the dumper for being a Scoop Jackson liberal is about as small a tent as you can imagine. In other words, pick your poison.
Further down the page at NRO, meanwhile, Andy McCarthy speculates that Buckley has been tricked into making the endorsement. Obama, he proposes, is not actually the good writer who so impressed Buckley, and “Dreams From My Father” was ghost-written by — who else? — William Ayers.
Seems like the way to win back the alienated members of the conservative intelligentsia, no?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.