When William F. Buckley talks, I listen. And he's said a bunch of stuff in this interview with the Wall Street Journal, among them a great line on George W. Bush:
Mr. Buckley is similarly skeptical of the presidency of George Bush, who, he says, was not elected "as a vessel of the conservative faith." He returns to a formulation he has used before: "Bush is conservative, but he is not a conservative." The distinction is not unimportant; it suggests a way of approaching the world with a conservative disposition but having devoted no particularly methodical thought to the subject--perhaps a bit too in thrall to the formalisms of Republican discourse. "There's a certain"--Mr. Buckley pauses mischievously--"wholesomeness to the Republican Party."
As Buckley's career winds down -- and what a career it has been -- it is clear he is still as with it as ever.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 6:55 PM
