William F. Buckley was once seated at a conference table taking questions from an audience when a man asked him, “why is it when I see you on TV you’re always sitting down? Can’t you think standing up?”
The room fell silent.
Buckley looked angry, serious, ponderous.
He took a few moments to gather his thoughts.
“It’s very hard standing up… carrying the weight of what I know,” Buckley replied with his magnetic, trademark arrogance.
That was the same Bill Buckley who once talked lightheartedly about the best way to put peanut butter on a piece of toast.
“First you put just a tiny thin layer of butter on the toast and then you put on the peanut butter,” he explained in a gleeful way that contrasted with the somber public personality most associated with Bill Buckley.
William F. Buckley Jr., arguably the father of modern conservatism, would have been 100 years old on November 25.
Buckley was a writer and even served in the CIA, but it was his years as host of the public television show known as Firing Line that made him a household name in the United States.
The show came of age in the mid-1960s at just about the time that American families were excitedly buying their first (black and white) televisions.
Buckley would sit in a chair facing his “guest” – actually more aptly a political combatant – invited on the show to try to spar with Buckley’s keen verbal brutality.
Buckley, his ears twitching, his eyes opening wide as his forehead rose in anticipation, would raise a sensitive subject just to trigger his guest.
Buckley would then sit back in his chair with a steely, cold, provocative stare, and just listen, silent, his legs crossed, a clipboard on his lap, a stopwatch attached to the clipboard.
He looked all-preppie Yale with his Oxford cloth buttoned-down collared shirt and skinny tie under a conservative gray suit.
Buckley was a New York City native, born 100 years ago this week, the middle of ten children to Aloise Steiner and lawyer and oil developer William F. Buckley Sr.
He grew up in a strict Catholic household, first in Connecticut, then Paris and London later, was homeschooled through the eighth grade, and attended a Jesuit high school.
One of his brothers, James, became a U.S. senator from New York and a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
He married Patricia Taylor, whose Vassar roommate was one of Buckley’s sisters. They had one child, a son, Christopher Buckley, (author of the satirical novel “Thank You for Smoking”).
Buckley served in the Army during World War II before going to Yale, where he engaged in debate and conservative political commentary.
He graduated from Yale with honors in 1950.
Afterward, Buckley worked at the Central Intelligence Agency for two years.
In 1955, Buckley founded National Review, a magazine that stimulated the growth and development of the conservative movement in the United States.
In addition to editorials in National Review, Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale (1951) and more than 50 other books on diverse topics, including writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing.
He once joked that one could get same sensation as sailing by standing in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills.
His works include a series of novels featuring fictitious CIA officer Blackford Oakes and a nationally syndicated newspaper column.
In 1965, Buckley ran for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party line, finishing third.
From 1966 to 1999, he hosted 1,429 episodes of Firing Line, the longest-running public affairs show with a single host in U.S. television history.
Through his work on the show, he became known for his Northeastern elite accent and diverse, fluent vocabulary.
Buckley is widely considered to have been one of the most influential figures in the conservative movement in the United States.
He began what led to Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater and his handbook “Conscience of a Conservative” that led to the seizing of power by the conservatives from the moderate establishment within the Republican Party.
From that emerged Ronald Reagan.
Buckley was a smoker, which he later described as a dangerous habit.
Smoking was what killed him. He died from complications of emphysema February 27, 2008 at his Stamford, Connecticut home.
Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, who served from 1995 to 1999 as speaker of the U.S. House, paid tribute after Buckley’s passing.
“Bill Buckley became the indispensable intellectual advocate from whose energy, intelligence, wit, and enthusiasm the best of modern conservatism drew its inspiration and encouragement” Gingrich said.
“Buckley could have been the playboy of the Western world, but he chose instead to be the St. Paul of the conservative movement,” said Lee Edwards of The Heritage Foundation.
Buckley, a devout Catholic, revered his mother, to whom he wrote when he was 16, “Probably the greatest contribution you have given me is your faith. I can now rely on God in almost any matter.”
