Buckley, Obama: Would they be friends?

I don’t know if famed conservative commentator William F. Buckley, who died Wednesday at the age of 82, had much contact with presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama. But I suspect the two might have gotten along quite nicely. That thought occurred to me Thursday afternoon as the Enquirer Editorial Board conducted a phone interview with Sen. Obama. I asked the senator how he would make his case to conservative voters and embrace the nation’s diversity of opinion. He replied that he’d welcome conservatives to the table to help develop “practical, common-sense, non-ideological approaches to policy making.”

That’s a refreshing thought, although the proof is clearly in the pudding and Obama’s track record, he admitted, is as a “progressive/liberal.” Still, this is the guy who rattled Democrats by unabashedly having nice words for Ronald Reagan – a president, by the way, who some observers believe Obama resembles more than he does John F. Kennedy. “I am not somebody who believes one party has a monopoly on wisdom,” Obama said. “I’m a proud Democrat, but I’m not an ideologue.”

You certainly can argue that Buckley was an ideologue – he almost single-handedly created the modern American conservative movement – but not in the pejorative sense we’ve infected that word with. Buckley was a major player in an era – an era we sorely miss – in which political discourse could often be conducted with decent civility by opponents actually respecting each other’s views while disagreeing strongly – even vehemently at times – with them. Buckley debated with rapier wit, and reveled in thrust and parry with those who could capably disagree with him. Obviously, this was the era before the likes of Bill Cunningham.

In a tribute to Buckley posted online Thursday by The New Republic, biographer John B. Judis reminds readers that Buckley was “a rebel, but not a heretic.” Buckley, he writes was a man of “wide-ranging and close friendships,” and many of his dearest friends were the leading liberals of the day – John Kenneth Galbraith and Norman Mailer, to name two. Today, what passes for political debates seems to comes from ideological fringes – left, right or nondirectional – populated by characters pursuing agendas that perhaps only a psychoanalyst could begin to understand. The aim is not to enlighten, but to demonize, dehumanize and humiliate the “stupid” people on the “other” side.

Buckley operated on a much higher plane. His final column for the National Review, a sort of linguistic analysis of a Clinton-Obama debate, was remarkable for its civility and perceptiveness. If Obama becomes president, I like to think that William F. Buckley would be among the sort of folks he’d want to bring to the table – perhaps to drink some fine wine, listen to some J.S. Bach, and help figure out where we all go from here.