Bill Buckley announced recently that he is giving up public speaking, but he has softened the blow by publishing, for the first time, a collection of his best speeches, gleaned from a half century s worth of lectures, debates, testimonials, and eulogies. He is the most indefatigable and probably the most famous American lecturer since Mark Twain. His achievement is all the more stunning because this is not an age friendly to forensic excellence. Wagner s music, Twain quipped, is better than it sounds.
Most modern speeches are the opposite.
They are much worse than they sound. President Clinton s speeches, for example, are almost unreadable, despite their political effectiveness, as delivered. Buckley s speeches, compiled and edited with the assistance of Linda Bridges, NR s former managing editor, and prefaced with new short commentaries by Buckley, are superbly readable. Readers of Buckley s spy novels and newspaper columns have come to expect this kind of moral commentary, and they will not be disappointed. What is surprising, however, is how personally revealing these speeches are.