'W.' Bush and William F. Buckley

Sam Tanenhaus's new Buckley biography glosses over an important chapter...

Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. comes in at 1,040 pages. The author devotes an entire 2 paragraphs to Buckley’s late in life opposition to neoconservatism that came in the wake of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. On these matters Buckley was thought to have been influenced by his friend Taki Theodoracopulos, a co-founder of The American Conservative. Yet the magazine Buckley himself founded never wavered—during the Cold War, National Review made common cause with the neocons and after 9/11 NR lost all sense of proportion, publishing David Frum’s hit piece on “Unpatriotic Conservatives” and, later, a Rich Lowry cover story proclaiming imminent victory in Iraq.

In a column published the day after W. delivered his second inaugural address, Buckley looked askance at the president’s revival of Wilsonianism, writing, as a “realist” no less,

…even granted the difficulties in applying the Bush code everywhere, the American realist inevitably asked himself questions, upon hearing the soaring, Biblical rhetoric of the president. How to apply the presidential criteria?

Okay. Never mind the tyrannies in spotty little states in Africa. Those cases are so hard as to make very bad law. A foreign policy that insists on the hygiene of the Central African Republic may be asking too much.

But what about China? Is it U.S. policy to importune Chinese dissidents “to start on this journey of progress and justice”? How will we manifest our readiness to “walk at [their] side”?

China, so massive, is maybe too massive a challenge for our liberationist policy, even as the Central African Republic is too exiguous. Then what about Saudi Arabia? Here is a country embedded in oppression. Does President Bush really intend to make a point of this? Where? At the U.N.? At the Organization of African Unity? Will we refuse to buy Saudi oil?

The sentiments of President Bush are fine, and his sincerity was transparent. But in speaking about bringing liberty to the rest of the world, he could have gone at it more platonically: but this would have required him to corral his enthusiasm for liberty everywhere with appropriately moderate rhetoric.

This he seemed resolute in not doing.

An exchange with with George Will on ABC in 2005 offered a sense of Buckley’s thinking post-Iraq:

Will: Today, we have a very different kind of foreign policy. It's called Wilsonian. And the premise of the Bush doctrine is that America must spread democracy, because our national security depends upon it. And America can spread democracy. It knows how. It can engage in national building. This is conservative or not?

Buckley: It's not at all conservative. It's anything but conservative. It's not conservative at all, inasmuch as conservatism doesn't invite unnecessary challenges. It insists on coming to terms with the world as it is…

By February 2006, Buckley was acknowledging what it took his fellow Republicans many more years to admit (some still haven’t), that, as he put it, “One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” He continued by noting that W.,

…will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

Buckley’s first biographer, John Judis, wrote in 2008 that, “Buckley chided conservatives or neoconservatives who refused to recognize that circumstances had changed — who invoked the old bogeymen or invented new ones.”

For such a simple recognition of reality Buckley endured attacks from troglodytes like Podhoretz. But at the time, Buckley was praised by antiwar progressives, such as those at Common Dreams, which praised his “Cronkite Moment” in reference to news anchor Walter Cronkite’s condemnation of the Vietnam war. “The effect,” of Buckley’s declaration, “on the conservative movement, and the Bush administration, could be considerable,” wrote the liberal columnist Pierre Tristam.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t—but it deserved more than 2 paragraphs.

James W. Carden is editor of TRR.