A Public Television Special; Interview With William F. Buckley

For most of his life William F. Buckley Jr. had been a man of letters a consummate artist and word for the past 30 years he had been one of the nation's most formidable conservative intellectuals. His wit and incisive observations on modern life are eloquently expressed in his columns his essays the television programs his beaches and in the twenty four books he has written. His newest book is entitled right reason and is the first collection of essays in the past seven years. I'm Jim Cooper and I'll talk with Mr. Buckley today in a special program for public television. Most people know Bill Buckley as one of the nation's most effective protagonists of the conservative position in America. But his range of interests are better expressed by Francis Bacon the philosopher who wrote I have taken all knowledge to be my province. When Buckley television program firing line has been a rich part of public television programming since

1971 and now appears on 259 PBS stations has columns on any topic that strike its fancy appearance some 300 newspapers in between is time out for sailing or hosting TV programs all over the world or writing books by word processor or working at offices in New York Connecticut or in Switzerland. He's editor of National Review of which he is also the founder. It's a milestone year for a National Review and now celebrating its 30th birthday. This is also a benchmark year for Bill Buckley the year in which he has celebrated his 60th birthday. I think I'd like to pick up on that year of benchmarks for you is celebrated exactly right Lou and I think so. You know in Iraq I think that the forward observer of the. You have gone from a time when there were very few conservative protagonists serious conservative intellectuals to a time now when or seemed to be more gives the conservative movement better nerd now than at any time

on the show I mean it is if one were to ask what if. If one were asked a document that would of course begin by playing the Oval Office you take about 4 percent of them to have Ronald Reagan to the Oval Office. But at a level a little bit more obscure is the tremendous scholarship that has been done in history and sociology and economics. One mentions the milton freidman test. As one in one example for all of that has happened in the last 35 years. So that it's extremely unsafe to predict that any sea change will be very long lasting or too good to be secure. That which is necessary for sea change happens is going on now and that is primarily the worth of an academic network of the mind.

And second the popular political word which has been done by Reagan so it is more fashionable if you can say intellectually to have as your opposition is that fashionable is the last word I would choose if they're correct you there because I think that the style setters tend to be stilled by their members of the Eastern Seaboard liberal establishment him and they decide what fashionable and what isn't. What they do is endure you in the sense that you're in the sense that they didn't before they were condescending with being aware of for instance the early issues of National Review. Yes they were thunderous. The indignant that they were or permitted to be present to celebrate the 30th anniversary brought it was a present that was staged as a principal speaker so so that I don't deny that there is that

difference. But nor do I deny the tremendous strength of the existing academic establishment. If you're if you're a young professor at Harvard or Stanford yet and you're inclined rather noticeably to the right your times is getting 10 you're just plain less than if you left mind and I assert this without any any fear that anybody would do that in the written word in magazines in columns in newspapers in editorial. The conservative posture is seen in many places. I am asking now is it seen in many places in television you're celebrating your 20th year on the firing line. No I don't have it in lagging behind in expression of the concern. Foster's somebody as you are aware or I see a way a couple years ago a licht in rough times did if a foundation financed study. Of the personal income and

political inclinations of people who were involved in the media and they discovered that 80 percent of them were never private and 80 percent of that particular year voted for the Democratic candidates now. This doesn't necessarily mean that these biases of crude in their handling or news items or whatever but it would be a natural to suppose that it doesn't have a certain saving force in the way in which the news is presented. So this this we know I don't. With the exception of George will apply to think of anybody who is a regular there associated with the top of it with television who other than myself who was a conservative can his name being run. That's a good question. DHB County barns are gone yeah. Long gone for the nurses of Dylan Lewis are gone. That's right and the Dorset coast on towards the end when two of them to

but I think there was a lag so there is a lag with television and the other young to the expression. You've been critical of television in this book. You chided NBC for some comment by Jessica Savitch. You chided Ted Koppel for some of his presenting one of his programs where he presented a communist propagandist to have him be interviewed and you said that the world need to know more about Joe. You also made a statement I make reproach of this that shows you know you have some vexation with television particular television news. Sometimes one has the feeling that it's unconstitutional to think when one listens to the evening news. I think I forget exactly what that was in the election with Jessica Savitch and oh yeah that one that someone who makes $10000 a year is three times hurt worse than someone who makes $80000 and you know that in every axis. Yes

leaving the new audience wondering gee whiz I didn't know that you qualify for federal welfare benefits if you get into your the as is of course you do so it's easy to say that people who earn ten thousand dollars a year go to suffer three times in the losses it's a love loss it's a 10 so the end of the day at all they stand to suffer a hundred times the length of that that comes as also comes out and I thought I saw that just two weeks ago. Our fight against inflation is really having horrible effect on people so security that they don't get the cost of living raises at the end of every year corresponding with a huge rate inflation that they that that's kind of that's and you can either be tendentious another right. Would you make a distinction between the contribution to communications made by commercial television for example commercial television news and public television. If

public television and he came to fruition that everyone thought it should meet. Right I think I think a part of a public television used by millions is in the field and I think they're extremely conscientious analysts. But you think you do a beat up I think you do Mars but I don't think that they are the the news breakers and that is to people going down rather is or. That's right other than the people who tune in to get the hot. Yes I tend to rely on the soldiers and they lean to PBS for for analysis which is in their mind. But do you think that's inadequate the television as it's practiced in America today is inadequate to give the thoughtful person the thoughtful depth that they should have upon which to make all of this. I mean totally. I'm very fond of the people as they show up to the other view that maybe 150 times. But now you can't go on that show on the Good Morning America show or on the CBS show and last for longer than six minutes. If you DM us the

news you can go to any guys. Such is the aggravated impatiens of them so they understand that they figure that six months is a six minutes. The standard tower or hazard that the viewer will tune to a competing channel because he's not really interested in the full but just thing and that is that the notion that you can explore a position of any subtlety sufficiently to communicate those subtleties in six minutes is just plain wrong. When it came down to it and I because a guy would not cover the conventions on the Today show as recently as 10 years ago we were given 17 18 19 minutes. You can accomplish that or not not like about where we went to Kansas City we were given six that for the two of us and given that we were both naturally verbose anyway. Six minutes is simply not enough even to release an hour graphically your reactions to anything. Now so the answer

is you're 100 percent right except in the documentary is good the visual does not invite analysis. This book for the first time is your first book since him the first collection in seven years. But for the first time it is being done by one other than yourself that is the selection of Mr. Brookhiser UBL. Your associate your colleague has done that do you feel comfortable with letting him select what should be assailing what should be analyzing what should be commenting what should be reflecting corresponding or appreciating this. The sections of this book well enough for that. Well Rick Rick Brookhiser was 14 years old when he said as a piece of National Review which basis we have of it. He graduated from Yale silicon loudy and we hired him and hes now at age 25 he was a senior editor. He's 29 years old now and over that if the phrase I would not have selected somebody in whom I didn't have a confidence but I don't want to

pretend that I didn't exercise final control. Here and there I pulled something out stuck over his head but he had the onus of reading a million words or whatever is everything that's in there. I found an interesting phenomenon in reading this book that many of the issues that we live with today are alluded to years ago. I think probably of the number one domestic problem I can't think of any domestic problem more grave then dealing with the deficit the runaway deficit in the Congress grappling now with a 2 trillion dollar budget. I think of the essay that you wrote in December 16th 1980 when you were lamenting a 100 billion dollar year deficit had you been writing that column today you would have to say you're lamenting a 200 billion dollar a year deficit. Do you feel any efforts to come to grips with this in the Gramm Rudman bill are going to turn this country around or do you still see it as a very grave unsolved problem for the country.

I see it as I see it as the latter. The question really that has formulated in the public mind during the past two three years is not Do we regret the deficit but what is the intelligent way to cope with it. Those who say let's simply raised taxes tend to forget I think the deleterious effect the extremely high taxes had on our economy during the 70s up until Mr. Reagan came in started to ease him up at that. People should be reminded that we have been taxes heavily given inflation given social security right now as we ever were. The very fact that some of those pop marginal brackets have released energy the effects of which has been respect macula 650000 new out of prizes last year the highest in the history of the United States. So that there's a there's an energy there that seems the rampant and and vigorous forever.

It will ultimately overwhelm the deficit. Because a lot of fine thought which is primarily political rather than acknowledge it and be told how to get ready with a long you know how. Don't touch any of this need ever the way it is and reduce your top tax of 25 percent and stimulate the economy. That's what other rate the economy hugely built by matter what it will do is cause the people who save and who invest the primary reference to reducing taxes for them to go ahead and vest in productive active enterprises even though they pay the tax for the difference between being 50 percent tax and 25 cent tax affects the Dutch was a lot of people who decided they were potential runs away but their own savings yes. So the estimates run from a hundred billion dollars per year to 1 trillion 300 billion dollars of money that actually would be taken away from Golden roads and to use it she was able and put in to save General

Motors. Generating tax revenue would you find yourself writing a euphoric column if you could really believe that the Gramm-Rudman proposal were going to work that there would be cuts over five years or thirty six billion a year leading us to a point in 1991 where the budget would be balanced. But if what you're telling me is would I write to you euphoric knowing that we would not have a deficit in four years of 1991 to run as a yes subject to the means by which this was accomplished and there are an awful lot of weaknesses in the Graham Graham bill as as if they came out of his misery for instance. Why don't we sit down and stare in the face the whole question of the fence isn't as if it is posited that the defense

expenses should be trimmed because of deficits in the domestic economy that I say should be trimmed anyway but I've always assumed the defense expenditures are a function of defense expenditures in the Soviet Union aimed at enhancing their progressive potential. Now if if in fact our job is to keep the defense establishment that gives us proper shelter for our freedoms then we can't possibly subordinated to any consideration having to do with the deaths of downs and so rather those three wars overcome the United lies in that. Will probably see as it works out if the mo because when we actually have a set ourselves you need to quit because we run out of money because Graham the gravitas we got to yes reduce everybody on that and then 50 percent by a

mandate 50 percent must come from the defense sector. Let's move from that mess to get domestic issue 270 I think is the number one international issue confronting us and that is some kind of accommodation or some kind of reaching out for peace the arms race all those questions that were brought in this new age of summitry that we seem to be coming into. One summer down two summits to go. You seem to have a dismal view of the prospects of reaching some lasting accord and I quote from your editorial which was the American response because it expresses some of your views you said sure we could draw strategic inferences from Soviet behavior. One of them that a treaty is not really worth the trouble of devising because it is violated whenever it suits the Soviet interest of violated. And meanwhile the Soviet Union profits from the sense of security that emanates from such a treaty and one of the litany of treaties that have been broken by Russia given that outlook. What is your fondest hope from the summit which we have just come through in the two summits yet to happen with Mr. Reagan Mr.

Gorbachev my fondest hope is that by the time. Reagan feels power there will be corporate types but to the idea of the space shield by corporate cash from the I mean run embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike. Even those Republicans and Democrats alike embraced Mr. Kennedy's program to land on the moon that it will become a bipartisan effort because I think in the SDI or the space shield what we want to go to the store was there is embodied the greatest moral insight in the post nuclear age and that is that if we can devise means of protect ourselves other than by threatening to kill a hundred and fifty million Russians that's the way to go. So the whole change in emphasis from defensive to office of abuse remodeling

and excites be intellectually and scientific. That's what I would like to see come out I think the business is not yet been accomplished but this rain will weigh in Geneva and yet you feel on the whole that you feel are a strong plus coming out of Geneva. No no because I think it I don't need to go in first place but I feel very strong has come out of a complete head to what I was afraid might happen in Geneva to it a consolidation of at highest or Star Wars propaganda. We're not we're not getting great Dispatches from the Social Democratic Party in France or in Italy and Germany or in the five saying for heaven's sakes give up your Star Wars program. Otherwise the Soviet Union would not disown all of that which might have happened has not happened because I think in his own cheerful way. Reagan dominated the scene and I think he did so because people

feel that he is for real in on this and who does not desire war but is absolutely determined that in order to avoid it that other to give up the freedom you know. So what is your Again I'll say your fondest hope for the next two summits. Well actually I don't much care what happens there. So if you want to be can be romantic I say OK. My fondest hope is the Soviet Union will rip and say we don't want an offensive capability to kill two million that and therefore we would use our atomic weaponry to our 10 missiles. That would be my fondest hope we have to realize you were very dismaying in your outlook of this obvious honoring any treaty according to this essay you know a dismal and your hope for them honoring a treaty they never on the street the on of those

treaties is convenience and on yes for it how do we how do we what's our strategy what's our our strategy there is that we want in as many treaties as possible. It's of both interests. They said we will how is it possible I said Well for instance neither of us wants acts that are we're doing now. We don't want by the state to have that that does as we interpret the ducks as incoming missiles and they don't want it. So we can cooperate in seeing to it that that doesn't lead to a national vision now nor do we want at a time it was started by the country right now so even though Libya is very much on the Soviet wing and even though Israel is very much on the OS we probably would be willing to cooperate. In any measure that Roy brought the drawing against the poster that says using nuclear weapons. So there are those areas in which I think it makes as to subside a little bit. You have anonymous an ominous outlook for Central America that you

express in your essay about saber rattling which you say a little saber rattling is not such a bad idea particularly in Central America means in the Central America where you talk about the very unhappy scenario in avalanches the word you use an avalanche of Mexicans fleeing chaos perhaps in the nature 15 million should that government collapse. But not just Mexico Guatemala Honduras Costa Rica went the way of Nicaragua and you say that people are making judgments and I quote from your book where you are saying what. Which side they're choosing get it because more and more people feel in their bones that the future belongs to the kind of governors who say no to the liberalization of Poland meaning the Russians and mean it who march armies in Afghanistan and stay there and who shoot down and right airliners as they walk down a mosquito again meaning Russia while the other superpower meaning our higher our nation agonizes at peace rallies over the disarmament treaty which when affected mean nothing to the Soviet Union and south castration for the United States given that outlook where

do we go from there. Realistically what pragmatically do you have what we what we have working for us Jen is is the reality of opposition that is saying people who experience communism are scarred by it on happy and with it and it takes things like bird in the wars and the sharks around the waters of Cuba to keep them then. So that's an exe dream the have the old and the weapon that we have working for us. Truth and a kind of a natural proclivity to prefer freedom over against tyranny. But they have practically have the US but I should add a tremendous like not it machine which is the the the fruit of this robustness that's tolerated in the field. They have everything else including the dual conviction by their satellites that they can count on the Soviet Union to be absolutely

unrelentingly in favor of them whereas the United States is a flaky ally and we were very flaky allies the Vietnamese For instance if we are flaky allies where are we headed in Central America as of today. Well I don't know really had it and I should know and so should you. We should be headed in to Central America towards a reimposition of the Munroe doctrine in which we acknowledge OK one hundred twenty one hundred say fifty years ago on Bisons one road often happened. But history has saddled the United States with a certain imperial possibilities just as we are de facto responsible for the passage of oil to Japan. And even though the seventy seven thousand miles away. So we're responsible. See to it that people in the countries in this hemisphere don't get progress of a satellite by a country that intends to menace the entire continent. Now the great start it has been in Cuba and our failure to turn Castro around in the early

60s will in my judgment alternately indict the administration done that. But even given that we must not do that it and I think although I applaud Mr. Reagan for such efforts as he has made I think up until this moment they are insufficient. So it is a rather unclear destiny that you're looking at in Central America. And I say I don't know one human being with a clear eye and I think it's extremely clear what it is that our tail wants to do he wants to march in the same direction as Theo Castro take total control of Nicaragua and get away with it. And so our options are limited. And again you know right off mining the harbor and you write off I don't I don't I would be in favor of a definitional war against a go of what this does mean that you start driving out a bomb but it means that all of those jurisprudential

cobwebs that stand in the way of your doing what you want to do disappear. If we say OK we've got a mutual defense he was how do you have concrete proof that Nicaragua is attempting by military force imported from Cuba imported into the Soviet Union to interrupt the march of democracy and the. And liberalism there. Therefore we declare war on it in response to our obligations for this brutal and stupid. Now we do have we want absolute and we want or nothing but we can certainly give an ultimatum and we can certainly use our Navy to patrol an Air Force to see to it that they don't get any more weapons. Those are options that the it's so so so as I say we've got a lot of options many of which we haven't looked at. We have just a very short time left I have to ask you a question that you're 60 it's a milestone year. What do you see ahead for Bill Buckley in your professional life. I don't see anything they had HIS have deadlines. I don't really understand

why some people think that a 60 career change is in order. It's not in order for you know I don't think so and I certainly hope from when you reach it it will be a lot of you. Thank you. Our time is almost up now and I want to thank you Mr. Buckley for your comments on right reason and about the world as you see it has been a special interview for public television with William F. Buckley. I'm Jim Cooper. Thanks for being with us.