Crossfire

William F. Buckley Jr. Discusses N.Y. Senate Race and Presidential Politics

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Tonight, "National Review" founder William F. Buckley Jr., a pioneer of the modern conservative movement, gives his take on the heated New York Senate race, the road to the White House, his new book, and more.

ANNOUNCER: From Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press; on the right, Robert Novak. In the CROSSFIRE, syndicated columnist William F. Buckley Jr., founder of "The National Review" and author of "Let Us Talk Of Many Things."

NOVAK: Good evening, welcome to CROSSFIRE.

It was 1950 when William F. Buckley Jr. graduated with honors from Yale. Not your ordinary graduate. The next year he published "God and Man at Yale," then set about transforming a conservative remnant into a vibrant conservative movement, founding "The National Review" in 1955. Bill Buckley even ran for office once, for mayor of New York City, no less, but mostly he needled politicians, sometimes even the politician he liked the most.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FIRING LINE")

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The first time that it was expressed was in 1932, in the charter of the new Communist Party of Panama that they put as one of their top objectives, the taking over of the canal.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., HOST: Are you saying the communists invented patriotism in Panama?

REAGAN: No, no.

BUCKLEY: Yes -- well, you really tried to say that, though.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: That exchange was from his TV program "Firing Line," on which he regrettably pulled down the curtain in December after a run of 33 years. Mr. Buckley also announced last month that he is ending his 50-year career as a public speaker. But do not despair, Buckley's nationally syndicated column continues, and now we have his 46th book, "Let Us Talk Of Many Things," a wonderful collection of his consistently delightful speeches since 1950. We'll talk about the book later.

But first, we interrogate Bill Buckley on how his fellow Republicans are doing, George W. Bush against Al Gore, and Rudy Giuliani against, well, all sorts of problems -- Bill.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Mr. Buckley, welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

BUCKLEY: Thank you, nice to see you.

PRESS: Excellent collection of speeches, encyclopedic, I might add, as well.

BUCKLEY: I'll recite from them, if you like.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESS: I'm sure you're ready to.

Before we get into the meat of this, I'd like to ask you to chew on something a little more mundane.

BUCKLEY: Sure.

PRESS: As Bob mentioned, you did run for mayor of New York City, your brother was senator from New York, you know the scene better than anyone else.

Is -- wouldn't the best thing for Rudy Giuliani himself and for his party would be for Giuliani to get out of the race, like now?

BUCKLEY: Yes, I think he should get out. What is now called into question in my judgment is his judgment, is the protracted delay. The way in which he initiated the exchange with his wife has caused people to say, this guy isn't all that impressive. That's the judgment I get, and the longer he goes without doing something the likelier it is that his -- that Hillary Clinton will profit from it. So I think what he held out reputation of a decisive man who acts with a pretty sound judgment most of the time is pretty well gone now.

PRESS: Is there a lesson here on top of another scandal that all of us can remember not so long ago that when we are judging public officials we have to distinguish public behavior from private behavior and consider one and not the other?

BUCKLEY: That question, of course, always comes up. One likes to think that there is a residual anxiety by people if their leaders behave promiscuously. About 10 years ago, there was a poll and the poll said that 20 percent of Democrats would not vote for somebody if they knew that he had, in fact, been guilty of adultery. This came up at the time that Clinton was accused, you remember, during the primary in New Hampshire.

Now, I think that -- I think they've become jaded on that point. But in the matter of Giuliani, what they're staring at, I think, is less that he did it, or allegedly did it, than that he was so insensitive as to drop news of it when his wife was completely unprepared for it. So, that coming on top of various mistakes that he made involving the police the last few years, and one of them he dropped, his popularity, by 11 percent. So, he's not -- he simply isn't the figure that he was a few months ago.

NOVAK: Quite apart, Mr. Buckley, from his personal peccadillos, I was present at the creation as you were in a much more intimate way in 1962 when the New York Conservative Party was formed, and it came up from just a despised little band of renegades to an active partnership with the Republican Party.

No Republican since Jacob Javitz in 1974 has been elected statewide in New York without the Conservative nomination, and the Republicans were ready to drop that partnership for a candidate who is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, on social issues indistinguishable from Mrs. Clinton. What do you make of that?

BUCKLEY: Well, I think that if in fact they went along with Giuliani under the circumstances they would really have destroy the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the reason the Conservative Party was to offer some sort of an alternative. Now, even if it's sort of symbolic, my recommendation to Michael Long was...

NOVAK: The chairman of the Conservative Party.

BUCKLEY: Sorry, yes -- was to find some sort of invisible professor who is busy with his black board and just stick his name on the ballot so that at least the gesture will have been made. You don't have to have somebody who can go out and campaign for it, because if you do that, you run the risk of alienating the larger constituency by being effectively pro-Hillary. But they should have some -- and I think they probably will, by the way.

NOVAK: But the Republicans are ready to abandon the conservatives for Rudy Giuliani, because they thought he was the best candidate against Hillary. Isn't that the truth of it?

BUCKLEY: Yes, the Conservative Party is not anxious to do less well than it has in the last two rather illustrious showings, so there's a temptation that all of us are familiar with. The same thing happened in the Liberal Party in a different context. But the Conservative Party, I think, will survive the episode so long as they say, beyond this point, we refuse to go, in this case, partial-birth abortion.

PRESS: Let's jump to the national scene for just a minute. These political definitions, of course, are always relative. But during the primary, there were those who said that George Bush was not a true conservative, was not conservative enough. We heard it many times on this program, some who feel perhaps today that there is still no true conservative running for president.

Is George -- does George Bush qualify in your judgment to carry the conservative torch?

BUCKLEY: Do you mind if I repeat the distinction I think I made maybe on this program?

PRESS: Please.

BUCKLEY: George Bush is conservative, but he's not a conservative. There's that distinction. Ronald Reagan was a conservative. Jack Kemp was a conservative, i.e. people -- Goldwater was a conservative, somebody who fashioned their entire political career on the need to project and activate.

But the -- somebody who's just plain conservative means that he lists in the conservative direction and I think that's true of -- not only of George W., but it's true of the overwhelming majority of people who are in, quote, "conservative -- in the movement."

PRESS: Well, why is it, then, that he, do you believe, he seems to feel the need to distinguish himself? You know, he's the compassionate conservative. I mean, does he believe, does the party believe that the conservative label is no longer politically viable in a national election?

BUCKLEY: I found it distressing when he did that, because on the principle that you are identifying your own singularity against of that other Republicans, it suggests that among other things his father wasn't compassionate and then of course you ask yourself, what is compassionate? I said in my farewell speech that the Democrats are mostly engaged in having pleasant thoughts, and having had a pleasant thought they want to activate it into a political program.

Now, all of us have pleasant thoughts, but the notion that a pleasant thought should immediately become legislation is something that has to be avoided and Mr. Bush, I think, needs to take that precaution when he reiterates, I'm a compassionate conservative, inviting the question, you mean Reagan was not? Your father was not? Barry Goldwater was not? So, it really ends up as being a rhetorical flourish. But I think you're right to press for meaning in it.

NOVAK: What alternative does the conservative voter have? Does he really have an alternative in our former colleague Pat Buchanan?

BUCKLEY: Well, the conservative voter, as you point out in one of your columns months ago, is distinguished by the intensity of his desire for something. I don't think that Mr. Bush, by being a, quote, "compassionate conservative," is risking defection in the sense of people who are going to vote for the Democrat.

But what you lose is the vitality factor, the enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm is I think, necessary to generate the kind of potential which he would have if he sharply, persuasively distinguished himself from the -- let me say this about him, I don't know him -- I know his father, but I don't know him. I think there's a communicable affability there. I spent a long time saying is that a grin or is that a smirk.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCKLEY: I think it's more of a grin. NOVAK: I do too?

BUCKLEY: You agree?

NOVAK: Yes, I do.

BUCKLEY: And when he says thing, you end up kind of liking him, at least I do. I think that's a terrific asset. And up against that kind of solidity of his opponent, it's especially been transparent in the last few weeks, there has been a movement in the polls -- I hate talking about polls -- but I think that is a tremendous asset of George W. -- people like him.

NOVAK: You take Pat Buchanan seriously at all?

BUCKLEY: Well, I think it's conceivable he could affect the election. I'm told by people who study these matters that if this China vote goes in a particular way, what you might end up doing is mobilizing the Democratic dissenters who will be attracted to Pat.

NOVAK: Ralph Nader is another alternative.

BUCKLEY: Nader, yes, sure, sure. So in that sense, I think he's serious. I don't think he's any longer serious as good as (UNINTELLIGIBLE), because there's too much of a mix, too much confusion there in my judgment.

PRESS: You used the word "risk," just before we take a break, in speaking of George W. Bush. His proposal to at least partially privatize the Social Security system, is it bold, or is it risky, in your judgment, politically?

BUCKLEY: If you mentioned, Social Security, it's risky. I remember writing that Goldwater shouldn't mention the word "nuclear" except in the context of the sense that we must reject it, we must bury it. So you couldn't use the word "nuclear" in any -- Social Security has that. In that sense, it's risky.

On the other hand, it's, I think, disreputable not to recognize that as things are now going, we, in the -- what is it? -- 2035, we wouldn't have enough money. One thing we do know, we can't -- we don't know how to project consequences and tax laws, never succeeded. We do know how many old people there are, and we know how many young people there are, and how many people will be need in order to pay the Social Security of one older person, which is a diminishing number.

PRESS: We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to dive right into this new book, "Let Us Talk of Many Things." It surprised me. It may surprise Bill Buckley. I found one speech there I totally agreed with. Find out where Press and Buckley make common cause when we come back on CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. It's time, the walrus said, to talk of many things. And William F. Buckley Jr. does talk of many things in new collection of speeches just published and on CROSSFIRE tonight: on politics 2000, on American foreign policy, on the war on drugs, on privatization of Social Security and a whole lot more. Among the leading voice of America's conservatives, tonight's special guest from the firing line into the crossfire William F. Buckley Jr.

BUCKLEY: Minor correction. The only collection of speeches. It's not a new collection of speeches.

PRESS: The only collection. Very good.

NOVAK: Whose idea was it?

BUCKLEY: It was the idea of the publisher.

NOVAK: That's really great. It's nice to hear. It's delightful.

BUCKLEY: Ton of work went into it, you'd imagine.

NOVAK: let me read from the first speech -- maybe it's the first speech you gave -- but it was the first one in the book. Class Day, Yale, 1950: You were graduating. "The role of the so-called conservative is a difficult one. A starry eyed young man, nevertheless aggressive in his wisdom, flaunting the badge of custodian of the common man, approaches our neat, sturdy white house and tells us we must destroy it, rebuild it of crystallized cold cream, and paint it purple. 'But we like it the way it is,' we retort feebly. 'Rip 'er down! This is changing world.'"

NOVAK: Now you're talking about a liberal trying to change down the world of the conservatives there, but it's just the opposite, isn't it?

BUCKLEY: It's just the opposite of when? Now you mean?

NOVAK: Yes,

BUCKLEY: Yes, I see your point. In 1950, when you were about 3 years old, the consensus...

NOVAK: I was a junior in college.

BUCKLEY: Well, the consensus was so solidified on the other side. We had a vote of the members of the faculty of political science at Yale when I was a junior, and are you in favor of Truman or Dewey? Answer 23 Truman, 0 Dewey. So that was their idea of a...

PRESS: Ballots.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCKLEY: So therefore, the passage that you composed took that into account. Things have changed. The presuppositions that were accepted back then are either challenged or discarded. Nobody is really interesting about in reviving the dogmas of socialism.

NOVAK: Do you think when you were a young man then writing that and writing your book about taking -- deconstructing Yale, did you ever think, in your wildest imagination, that you would have Ronald Reagan as president, that you could have some of the kind of people that there are...

BUCKLEY: Inconceivable. It was absolutely inconceivable. I remember Nixon once. Actually, it the first time I met him, other than as vice president, said to me, "What do you think the chances of Ronald Reagan are going any further?" This was 1967. I said it's inconceivable. A grade B movie. I adored him. He said anyone who wins the gubernatorial election in California by one million votes can aspire to anything.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCKLEY: And later on he said, "Why do you think he's so successful?" He's successful because he's the only man I ever met who doesn't care what "The New York Times" says about him. John Mitchell said, I don't care either, do I, Mr. President? No, no, I don't care either.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCKLEY: But that was not predictable.

PRESS: One curiosity I have to ask you about in reading these speeches, I was surprised that there is such -- so frequently liberals come up here and kind words about them. You pay tribute to John Kenneth Galbraith. You pay tribute to Albert Lowenstein. You even speak not unkindly of Arthur Schlessinger Jr. What is this secret affection you have of liberals over the years?

BUCKLEY: Well, I think one should applaud moments of sanity wherever you tune in on them. It happens that John Kenneth Galbraith is a magnificent human being. I'm terribly fond of him. But I don't think that anybody would think that I was concealing my analysis of Ken Galbraith. There is a speech in there which makes me wince when I read out. He was coming out for the governor, and I was coming out for Nixon in front of a huge audience.

NOVAK: There is some great debates in there, too.

PRESS: Now the point of agreement. When you're speaking to the bar association I believe in New York, 1995, about the war on drugs -- quote -- if I may "It is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to prison because they grew or distributed a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession, the law profession, would mobilize, at least protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a Mylai massacre, and perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors."

PRESS: I mean, I agree with you 100 percent that this war on drugs is too much big government, too much money, and no success. Why do most conservatives still support it?

BUCKLEY: Well because, the difficulty there is that if one suggests any revision of the existing code, people suspect you're pro- drugs. For a while in the '20s, if you were in favor of repealing prohibition, you were pro-booze. I am pro booze by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESS: That makes three of us, I think.

BUCKLEY: For that reason, the governor of New Mexico is the only person I think of who survives.

NOVAK: And they tried to burn him up.

BUCKLEY: And they tried to burn him up. But I think that the point to stress is that there are postureous (ph) victims of this. The 85 million people have attempted illegal drugs. Do we wish 85 million people had been in jail? The logical situation would suggests so.

NOVAK: I would have predicted that that was the only speech that he would like, but anyway.

PRESS: That's a good one.

NOVAK: I think one of the most fascinating speeches was when you talked to I believe it was Young Americans for Freedom, in 1964, and you told them Goldwater was going to lose. What was the physical reaction when you told that?

BUCKLEY: Well, it was a closed meeting because one could anticipate the utter and total distress. One note, one woman there cried rather publicly. The morale of an army on the march, to quote a keen observer, is such that you simply don't admit the possibility of defeat three weeks before the election.

And although it was obvious that Goldwater was going to be defeated, we had even Herbert Landon thinking he was going to win in 1936 and the "Literary Digest." So I thought it was terribly important to tell the Young Americans for Freedom, look, anticipate what's going to happen, because it's going to happen, even though we don't advertise it, and we must persuade people not to vote. So we had to put off our victory for a while, Bill.

NOVAK: It was a great piece of grammar there.

Bill Buckley, thank you very much.

BUCKLEY: thank you so much.

NOVAK: Mr. Press and I will be back with closing comments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: Tomorrow night: First he endorsed Bill Bradley, and then he met with George Bush. Clearly, Bob Kerrey is not leaving the U.S. Senate quietly. Is he trying to drive Al Gore nuts, or just trying to shake up the Democratic Party? We'll ask maverick Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey in the CROSSFIRE tomorrow night, Wednesday 7:30 p.m. Eastern.

Bob, you know, this book reminds me a lost yours. It's very well written, it's very witty, but it's wrong on so many issues, except for the war on drugs, which I salute the man.

NOVAK: Bill Buckley shows in this book he's very eloquent. He's a great writer, but he's also something that endears him to all of us -- you wouldn't understand it -- he was a great anti-communist, fabulous anti-communist, one of the best.

PRESS: From the left, that's it for tonight. Good night for CROSSFIRE. I'm Bill Press.

NOVAK: From the right, I'm Robert Novak.

Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE.

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