A man and his movement

When I was younger, I wanted to grow up to be William F. Buckley Jr. In high school, I had a subscription to National Review, and I still remember the day that one of his columns drove me to the dictionary to learn what solipsist meant. So it was with great interest that I dived into Sam Tanenhaus’ new biography Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (Random House, 1,040 pp.).

This biography was almost 30 years in the making. Tanenhaus interviewed Buckley for his 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers, and Buckley offered unrestricted access to his papers if Tanenhaus wanted to follow up with a biography about him. Buckley, who died in 2008, wouldn’t live to see the book.

Buckley Sam Tanenhaus

With his abstruse vocabulary and love of sailing, Buckley may have come across as a New England aristocrat, but his father was a Texas oilman and his mother a debutante from New Orleans. In his formative years, he spoke little English due to having Mexican nannies and a French tutor: This polyglot upbringing left him with his trademark accent and speech patterns.

When Buckley was 10 years old, a tutor wrote, “If he can conquer his impatience and hastiness he should go far.” Tanenhaus claims young Bill never managed to conquer either, but he went far anyway. We’re taken from Buckley’s precocious childhood to his university years that led to his first book, God and Man at Yale. We see his vigorous defense of Joe McCarthy and his promotion of Barry Goldwater. Along the way he launched his magazine National Review and the public affairs show Firing Line.

He was tireless in his attacks on what he saw as the world’s twin evils: communism and liberalism. He never managed to write a systematic treatise on the meaning of conservatism, but his greatest gift to the movement was developing and promoting new conservative voices.

Despite the book’s heft, Tanenhaus’ account of Buckley’s life is a readable and engaging work, especially for anyone interested in the history of American conservatism. But at times, Tanenhaus lets his left-of-center convictions color the narrative. For example, he endlessly dissects Buckley’s opposition to civil rights, but only mentions in passing Buckley’s later admission that he was wrong. He also repeats the misconception that American soldiers were losing ground in Vietnam. And while this book contains a wealth of detail, it feels strangely incomplete. We get day-by-day accounts of some events, but Tanenhaus glosses over the last 25 years of Buckley’s life, years which coincide with Reagan’s presidency.

It’s almost as if Buckley’s relentless productivity wore the author out.