I knew him.

Of course you did.

All right.

I asked him once about 10 years ago, I, right before the impeachment, I met him, the one time I met him.

And I said, "How good is this guy? Is this guy as good as Roosevelt?" 'Cause you remember Roosevelt was the model for Neustadt.

He said, "Better.

Better.

Emotional intelligence.

Yeah

...

the first guy they were saying was charismatic.

So Leonard puts this into his piece, and then he gives it to Buckley, and Buckley adds some sentences.

And Buckley says, "Well, however, uh, dazzling a personality he may be, that doesn't keep him from bulldozing over the bones of the people he's killed in Cuba." So this thing is running.

Then Buckley says, "We have to do more than that.

We have to find out what's going on in Cuba." So he arranges, through all his contacts in Latin America, for John Leonard to get a press pass to go to Havana.

All of a sudden, all of a, all of a sudden he's a wingnut, right-wing wi- wingnut.

Sir, the floor is yours.

Well, you know, what you remind me of, uh, Steve, you mentioned it before, is that when Joe McCarthy made his famous speeches and, and, and did the, uh, hearings, a lot of it was about China.

There was more on China than there was on the Soviet Union.

We kinda knew who the Soviet Union was.

China, as you say, we had a special relationship with.

No one understood how we lost it.

That was the verb that was used.

One of the reasons Buckley was attracted, or the principal reason, is that Joe McCarthy was the fiercest of the anti-communists to the point of calling out what was happening in, inside the US government, that we know when the Venona files were released, the KGB files were released in the 1990s, not everything, but a lot of what Joe McCarthy was saying happened to be true.

How did that play out?

Yeah, well, he was also, Steve, uh, their mentor.

You know, I remember, uh, when I was getting to know, uh, Bill Buckley around the time I was writing about Whittaker Chambers, and then moved over to Bill Buckley, and I said, "Um, so how did you get involved with, uh, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan?" And I'll never forget the way he said this, 'cause, you know, he had that patrician voice.

He said, "They came to me." Um, they needed him.

[chuckles]

Um, these were two really talented politicians, uh, from the Southwest.

Uh, Goldwater, Arizona; uh, Reagan, Southern California.

And remember, Republican Party and all US politics back then was situated in the, in the East Coast.

How did that play out?

Yeah, well, he was also, Steve, their mentor.

You know, I remember when I was getting to know Bill Buckley around the time I was writing about Whitaker Chambers and then moved over to Bill Buckley.

And I said, so how did you get involved with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan? And I'll never forget the way he said this, because, you know, I had that patrician voice.

He said, they came to me.

They needed him.

These are two... really talented politicians from the Southwest, Goldwater, Arizona, Reagan, Southern California, and remember, Republican Party and all US politics back then was situated in the East Coast.

Why is that, sir?

(laughs) Yeah, of course.

Because Buckley wrote a, uh, a famous editorial in National Review in which he said the thir- the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are, quote, "Inorganic accretions to the original Constitution." Um, and that is the view, and he said this is the view in the South.

And Buckley was raised as a Southerner, and, um, his brother, Jim Buckley, who was also a major political figure and extraordinary man, much better candidate, political candidate, by the way, than his younger brother Bill.

It was Bill who pushed him to run for Senator of New York, and he was elected.

He was elected on the conservative ticket in 1970, when New York was as populous a state as California.

And, uh, when I interviewed, uh, James Buckley, he said, "We were culturally Southern."...

uh, because, although they were raised in this magnificent estate, uh, where the Young Americans for Freedom gathered in 1960, in what's called the northwest corner of Connecticut, the summer each- th- the family each winter went down to Camden, South Carolina, which is about 30 miles away from Columbia, where they lived in a beautiful antebellum mansion, which Buckley's father, who loved and had a wonderful eye for architecture and design, had renovated for the family to spend their winters there.

Tell us about Reagan and Buckley.

Can you walk us through that?

Yeah, here's what happened, Steve.

Buckley knew Ayn Rand.

He'd met her through anti-communist circles in the 50s.

And he also knew Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, who's really begun in a secret meeting in Indianapolis late 1958.

Organization started in 1959.

Buckley supported Robert Welch and the Birch Society for a couple of years.

It's not like he's going after people that they considered the established order of the Republican and conservative party, correct? Yeah.

Can you walk us through that?

that?Yeah, here's what happened, uh, Steve.

Buckley knew Ayn Rand.

He, he'd met her through anti-communist circles in the '50s and he also knew Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, which had really begun in a secret meeting in Indianapolis, late 1958, organization started in 1959.

Buckley supported, uh, Robert Welch and the Birch Society for a couple of years.

He thought they were great.

"They're getting the grassroots people out there.

(laughs)

They don't realize how this whole issue of communism really gripped the nation, and, and Buckley, when he went to Yale, kinda wrote this book that put him on the national scene right away, sir.

Yes.

Well, w- what happened was, a- as you said, yeah, they exposed the, uh, the communist spy rings, and at first there was a lot of resistance to that.

People didn't think it was really happening.

Then the evidence comes out, and we talked about this, I think, in our first conversation, Nixon was the guy who saw there was something off about the, uh, the, the blue blood, Alger Hiss, and that, that sort of, you know, dumpy, frumpy accuser, Whittaker Chambers, who is no joke, by the way, right? He's a, you know, big editor at Time Magazine, brilliant writer and journalist, um, th- that it was Chambers who was telling the truth.

Well, Buckley was following this really closely.

Why? He's at Yale University, and he goes there in 1946, was part of that first group after World War II, right? The GI Bill.

And Buckley's, uh, father, not just about oil and about material goods, but he was an ardent Catholic and there were a lot of serious Catholic businessmen that actually financed, uh, the, uh, you know, tried to finance the stop of how radical this Mexican Revolution was because it was anti-clerical and killing so many priests, correct?

despise, that just treat guys like Nixon like nothing.

When Nixon was a young guy, we all know this has been reported in all the biographies.

You can always tell the really interesting presidents because they get great books written about them, including Nixon.

And Nixon, when he was a kid- was admitted, you know, coming from that little town, Yorba Linda, California, he's admitted to Harvard.

But he's a son of a grocer.

He can't afford to go there.

So instead, he goes to the local college, Whittier, and then he gets his law degree at Duke, finishes third in his class, and the law firm will hire him.

Bars have them.

the, you're the non, you're the total opposite package.

It's a, yeah, he's got nothing going for him, but he's very, very smart, and he has a great word.

He says, "There's something mouthy about Hiss." He says, "He's talking too much." Right? There's this thing where somebody asks you the question, give them the answer.

Don't make the joke about the chairman of the committee.

And, and something sticks in Nixon's head.

Also, he is talking to Robert Stripling, the very smart investigator who's been interviewing these communists for years, and he says to Nixon, "He's saying he doesn't know a guy by the name of Whitaker Chambers.

Chambers isn't gonna call himself by his real name when he's an underground agent.

But the ones that own, the mo- Bars, bars have 'em.

Did you get grief when you had the detail in the book, when Whittaker Chambers came, when Whitt- the Whittaker Chambers book came out?

Yeah, uh, actually, um, less than I thought it would, but I got plenty of it.

Oh, yeah.

Um, it's funny, some, uh, uh, some writers who, who are friends of mine now really came after me when that book came out, th- that, um-... that, uh, who was I to tell this story and to make Chambers seem like a sympathetic guy? And there was, there were just enough old style liberal anti-communists, as they used to call them, including Arthur Schlesinger, who reviewed it for the Times.

And he said, "No, this is the story." He said, "This is as close a story as we're gonna get." But that, th- that kind of liberal is gone now.

So, it's, uh, even the- the- Chambers is great anti-communism.

And Buckleys, Buckleys fighting it to the end.

Yeah.

They thought

he was weak.

There's a great line he gave in his hearings that nobody picked up on because it's just too subtle.

Chambers, super literary guy, and everything he says, if you look at his face and his testimony, there's a kind of half smile he has all the time.

And someone says, well, is it really true, Mr.

Chambers, that you were not really a Stalinist but a Trotskyist? And Chambers says...

I am not now and never have been a Trotskyist.

says the book about, the right-wing book about the thing with Joe McCarthy is the greatest book since the Bible.

Mm-hmm.

Well... (laughs) So, um, Chambers is watching all this and he goes off to- to his...

You know, he lived on a farm in Maryland and he'd come in, he'd work these odd hours, very...

He's become a Quaker by now.

Very odd, oddball character, but everybody knows he's brilliant and he types this thing up.

He has a story.

He writes a parable, right? It's not rep- a report in Time Magazine.

Yeah.

Wow.

... worked very closely with.

You don't have a guy like Joe McCarthy and you don't have a guy like Rush Limbaugh.

And which is what I also note that it should not have been surprising, though it was to many, that Bill Buckley would take up Rush Limbaugh because he'd been the most articulate, impassioned defender of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

In fact, if you go to the George Clooney play about Edward R. Murrow, uh, Buckley is mentioned in it.

Because when Joe McCarthy was not ready to answer, right? Murrow makes this famous attack on McCarthy and the hearings and how he's interrogating people and brutally and humiliating these inoffensive people.

And Edward R. Murrow goes after McCarthy and says, "Will you respond to me?" And Joe McCarthy says, "Well, I don't think I want to do it, but I've got a young guy here, Bill Buckley, who will do it instead." And Murrow would not let Buckley on because he knew Buckley was a brilliant debater and that Buckley might be able to make a case for McCarthy, and that's what made people nervous about him.

But you know what I'm talking about.

... um, just first start off by asking you, what is it about William F. Buckley Jr. in 2025 that you think was worthy of the 1,000 or so pages that you devote to this, this new and im- im- important biography of him?

Well, (laughs) it was, he was a man of many faces, of many phases, and many personalities that we see alive today in all the facets of, of conservatism.

And I sometimes suggest to people that if you want to understand the, the landscape we inhabit now, don't look just at President Trump.

I know it's hard to take your eyes off him, but there's a surrounding orbit of writers, of thinkers, of activists, of provocateurs.

We hear and see them on social media, but in many ways, that media landscape was anticipated, pioneered, almost sprang out of the head of William F. Buckley Jr.

Bill, as everyone called him, including the people who worked in the mail room at National Review, the magazine he started in 1955.

He was a master of media, and he understood before anyone else that, uh, politics had changed from differences of ideology to a kind of ongoing culture war-

So, he— so his father said, "It would've just been dumb." Do you see evidence of that sort of, um, pretense of logic in- in Bill Buckley's own views about- about certain social issues in the United States, particularly race?