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February 27, 2008

William F. Buckley - R.I.P.

Mostly the point of this post is to direct you to Vichy Democrats Thersites D. Scott's post on the subject. But first I'd like to offer a couple comments on what Scott has to say.

A harmful, fascinating, brilliant, well-intended, generally sincere, and -- I'll take the plunge -- admirable guy.

I absolutely agree with that summation. Although I rarily agreed with him, that was never what I found so admirable about him. To say that Buckley was brilliant is a wee bit of an understatement. But it was how that brilliant mind weilded an exceptionally dry and gifted wit that I found endlessly entertaining. He clearly enjoyed matching wits with others in direct debates and I very much enjoyed watching, largely because he always seemed able to raise the level of his game, at least the witty side of it, in response to direct challenges, and the stiffer the challenge the more he raised his game.

I can't remember any of his one-liners, but Scott quotes one in his post. What I do remember is that it was those one-liners that invariably hooked me on what otherwise would have been dull, dry and excessively wonky debates which PBS used to host fairly regularly way back in the day.

One last observation: Newt Gingrich isn't a fraction of the intellect that Buckley was. Either that or Newt just can't mask the fact that he's a self-serving prick.

Posted by Kevin at February 27, 2008 01:11 PM