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Don't Pigeonhole Buckley

To the Editor:

For those who think they know what made William F. Buckley tick (Oct. 3 letter), here are some interesting quotes from Buckley spoken during the last two years of his life. They come mostly from his National Review, but also from interviews, including one to Judy Woodruff and Heidi Przybyla, published in Bloomberg.com.

Buckley criticized the neo-conservatives who supported the Iraq invasion and spreading American values around the world: "The neo-conservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country."

Buckley said he didn't have a formula for getting out of Iraq, but said "it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure."

And speaking of our 42nd president: "Bill Clinton is the most gifted politician of, certainly my time ... He generates a kind of vibrant goodwill with a capacity for mischief which is very, very American." Buckley said he doubted that " ... anyone could begin to write a textbook that explicates his (Clinton's) political philosophy because he doesn't really have one."

Buckley said he did have a few regrets, the most important of which was his magazine's opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. He said, "I think that the impact of that bill should have been welcomed by us."

Incidentally, a former editor, and later the publisher of Buckley's National Review (1985-1993), Wick Allison, has just endorsed Barack Obama for president in D Magazine (Dallas). According to Allison, "today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world 'safe for democracy.' It is John McCain who says America's job is to 'defeat evil,' a theological expansion of the nation's mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth. This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse." Allison then switches to his candidate, Barack Obama: "It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers."

MICHAEL J. GORMAN Editor's note: The writer is a retired NYPD Lieutenant and an attorney.