Getting on a Firing Line program with Bill Buckley (1925-2008)

"We've got a class of college students lined up," said Bill Buckley, "I hope they'll have some sharp questions, when I'm done." His guest on Firing Line was to be the Australian prime minister, and it was a lunch beforehand at a restaurant near the Parliament building in Canberra in around 1970. It immediately occurred to me that Buckley and his producer from New York may have been led astray by one of the differences between British and American English and I said: "If they are college students they are probably quiet 12 to 16 year olds from a posh high school, not the lively 17 to 22 year olds you may be thinking of."

Buckley said "Darn it, of course." And after about one and a half second's thought he said: "Would you stand in?" And so, less than an hour later, I got to stand in for a class of "college students" on a Firing Line program where I think I made only one substantial intervention, but he thanked me generously afterwards, saying I'd given him a break at an important point in the program. I earned $100 (big money in those days) in $20 bills, and an invitation to look him up when I was in New York.

I took him up on it in 1980, and he immediately remembered me and how I'd come on his program, and he invited me to a dinner that evening at his home - then a large, dark, but dowdily elegant ground floor apartment an easy walk from my midtown office up Park Avenue, somewhere in the 60s or 70s. There were a handful of other guests - perhaps eight people total. I don't remember much about the dinner except that Buckley was quietly witty at several points but by no means dominated the conversation. It was a relaxing enjoyable affair with a bunch of right leaning writers.

Here was a man who was a prodigious writer and a consummate editor, and a sharp TV host who took on a herculean work schedule, yet he was also able to laugh a lot, relax, make thousands and thousands of friends, and get rich, live the good life, sailing, skiing, traveling to wonderful places, enjoying fine food and company.

He had many of the affectations of an aristocrat yet he was actually very democratic - famous for stopping to talk to the mailman or cab driver. He laughed and loved, and was loved a lot.

In his work Buckley set and cultivated high standards of writing and argument, and promoted a good and generous conservatism. What a man! What a life!

Editor, TOLLROADSnews 2008-02-27