William F. Buckley will turn 80 soon. In his long life I wonder how many people he has touched? My first encounter with Mr. Buckley having been as a rather bored teenager with absolutely nothing to do who started flipping through my father's copy of National Review. Sometimes I do wonder what might have happened if Dad, like more conventional fathers, had had a copy of Playboy for me to flip through.

Joseph Rago over at Opinion Journal recently sat down for a talk with Mr. Buckley:

NEW YORK--There is something out of time about lunching with William F. Buckley Jr. It goes beyond the inimitable WFB style: the mannered civility, the O.E.D. vocabulary, the jaunty patrician demeanor. It is also something more than mere age. "Well, I am one day older than I was yesterday," he says, with rather good cheer. Yet if there's anachronism to Mr. Buckley, it is also a sense of being present at a moment of creation.

For all his versatility as editor, essayist, critic, controversialist and bon vivant, Mr. Buckley is widely credited as the driving force behind the intellectual coalition that drew conservatism from the fringes of American life to its center, with such side-effects as the utter collapse of the Soviet empire. "There's nothing I hoped for that wasn't reasonably achieved," declares Mr. Buckley, who will turn 80 later this month. "Now, I'm going to have a cocktail," he announces, flashing his oblique grin. "Will you join me?"

There is something altogether admirable in a man at 80 who wisely decides to have a drink. I shall raise a glass to Mr. Buckley in thanks for what he has done - in large measure, had there been no Bill Buckley, there wouldn't have been a Barry Goldwater, a Ronald Reagan or a George W. Bush.

Posted by Mark Noonan at November 12, 2005 03:04 PM

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