WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY: Patron Saint of the Conservatives
Judis, an editor of the newsmagazine In These Times, strives to draw a balanced, objective portrait of arch-conservative Buckley, whose politics he clearly deplores. The result is an equivocating, lobotomized biography, full of facts but lacking fire. Judis traces Buckley's "defensive clannishness," his arrogance and competitiveness to an overwhelming need for approval from his father, a Texas oil millionaire. He is careful to praise Buckley for his personal generosity, his purported tolerance of the 1960s counterculture and the way he distanced the conservatism of his National Review from segregationists and groups like the John Birch Society. Buckley's trajectory has been downward, as Judis defines it, from his role as self-appointed spokesman of the New Right, to his current status as an uninfluential media personality who still champions 1950s Cold War verities. First serial to Manhattan Inc.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.