Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN The Buckley Campaign IN 1886 HENRY GEORGE, the Single Taxer, ran for Mayor of New York. He lost. But to this day that partic ular election year in New York City history is known as the year of the "Henry George campaign." Only the most historically learned of men will recall at this date that the win ner in 1886 was a man named Ab ram Hewitt. The reason why George is re membered and Hewitt forgotten is that Henry George, right or wrong, stood for something. Prophecies are chancy, but I would be willing to bet a good sum, with a view to collecting or paying off in Heaven, that the 1965 New York mayoral campaign will be more or less bracketed with that of 1886. The third-place loser, William F. Buck ley, Jr., will be remembered because he stood for something. John Lind say, the winner, will be a name for the more esoteric historians. And these historians will have to look him up in Bill Buckley's own story of the 1965 campaign, The Unmak ing of a Mayor (Viking, $6.95).

Bill Buckley, of course, has nev er written a Progress and Po'verty. But he, as much as anybody else, has recreated conservative journalism in the United States as a force. When modern "liberalism" has finally revealed its impotence to solve the pressing problems of the modern world, Mr. Buckley will stand out as a leader among those who really knew what was the mat ter. So 1965 will be recalled in New York as the year of the "Buckley campaign." Lindsay, like Abram Hewitt, will tend to fade into the shadows. Buckley's book about his cam paign is interesting because the au thor talked sense to the voters and now writes about his experience with the same witty aplomb that characterized his political fencing. But the really astounding thing about Bill Buckley is not so much that he talked sense but that he ac tually made it fashionable to bring intelligence to bear on the prob lems he threw in John Lindsay's face.

This matter of making a cause fashionable is of crucial impor tance. For what is it that makes modern "liberalism" hang on? "Liberalism" can't feed people, for it knows nothing about the individ ual vvellsprings of plenty. It can't stop wars, for it hasn't the least 125 126 THE FREEMAN February idea about what it takes to keep power in the world limited and bal anced. It can't solve the "race" question, for it fails to see that people rise or fall as separate enti ties - given, of course, the equal protection of laws. So what is it that makes the dead corpus of "lib eral" ideas persist? Fashion is what does it, and only a counter fashion will oust the "liberals." What Bill Buckley did in his campaign was to sneak into the af fections of men in subordinate but important mass communication po sitions. He didn't win the top· edi tors of the big journals or the bosses of the networks. But, by being one jump ahead of anybody else in his all-around verbal flair and in his control of his various subject matters, Bill literally forced the political scribes to abandon their stereotypes of what a con servative candidate must say and do.

He Clearly Stood for Something The tip-off on the campaign to come was Bill's experience at the famous Holy Name Society Com munion Breakfast, where he made a speech to some 6,000 New York policemen. A reporter, sure in his mind that Buckley must have said what any stereotyped right-winger would have said, missed the true in wardness of the Buckley talk, and what the reporter turned in to his city desk got "escalated" into a de fense of the Selma, Alabama, police after it had been passed through a few headlines·· and been copied by other newspapers. Luckily a tape of the talk existed, and Bill Buckley exploited the tape. The corrections never did catch up with the distor tions, but the reporters began to get the idea: Bill Buckley could be a danger to anyone who might trifle with his utterances. Only once be fore in the history of modern con troversy had the "liberals" encoun tered someone who could fight back from the record. This was when Whi ttaker Chambers flummoxed his fashionable opposition by actu ally producing the so-called Pump kin Papers.

So Bill Buckley went into the mayoral campaign with a growing reputation for effectiven~ss. He was someone to be feared. When it turned out that he could also be fun, he began to steal the show from John Lindsay (who talked plati tudes) and Abe Beame (who spout ed statistics) . The campaign ended with the tail wagging the dog, which, for headline purposes, was almost as good as a man biting a dog. Once he had achieved a fashion able breakthrough, Bill showed to an increasing audience that good prose could be used to set forth good ideas. The Conservative po sition papers, reprinted as part of 1967 THE BUCKLEY CAMPAIGN 127 the text of The Unmaking of a Mayor, will be mined for many months to come by people who are serious about schools and housing and smog and the water supply and welfare and narcotics control and crime prevention and all the other subjects that bedevil our big urban conglomerations.

A Growing Political Force The conservatives and the lib ertarians are still fashionably written off when it comes to talk ing about the future of U. S. pol itics. Buckley, so it is pointed out, missed his primary objective, which was to keep. Lindsay from winning. In the New York State elections of 1966 the Conservative Party, running an upstate college dean, Paul Adams, for governor, failed to defeat Governor Nelson Rockefeller. And, in elections throughout the nation, "liberal" Republicans won in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, and in Illinois. But the movement of ideas goes on. In both the Buckley 1965 cam paign for mayor of New York City and in the 1966 campaign for gov ernor of New York the Conserva tive Party finished ahead of the Liberal Party, which means that the Conservative swing vote is be coming more important than the "liberal" swing vote. And, in the nation as a whole, so-called lib erals such as Governor George Romney of Michigan and Senator Chuck Percy of Illinois are turn ing to supporters of "independent sector" thinking such as Richard Cornuelle for practical solutions to welfare and home ownership problems. From the standpoint of economic theory, there is only a hairline difference between a Romney in Michigan (an inordi nate admirer of the first Henry Ford) and a Ronald Reagan in California. Both are advocating an approach to economics that would tend to get the State off people's backs.

A Changing Trend The measure of Bill Buckley's success both as an editor and as a political candidate is that very re cent events have made the last pages of his book sound entirely too pessimistic. "I greatly regret the prospecti ve decline of the GOP," writes Mr. Buckley, "be cause the alternative is likely to be a congeries of third parties, adamantly doctrinaire, inade quately led, insufficiently thought ful, improvidently angry, self-de feating sectarian." But need it turn out that way? Isn't it more likely that the next two years will demonstrate the complete sterility of the Great Society? Money from Washington won't solve John Lindsay's problems in New York City. Rent control won't build 128 THE FREEMAN February more apartments in that city. Bus ing children across school district lines won't improve education. Better ideas than these can be found in Buckley's position pa pers, and, out of desperation, the "liberal" opposition will begin to purloin them.

It has already begun to happen. Noone has been more critical of the Conservative attitude toward big city problems than columnist Joseph Alsop, for example. Yet Al sop is now writing that it is the quality of education dispensed in the schools that counts, not the racial ratios. Well, what have the Conservatives been saying all along? Mr. Buckley's book could tell Joe Alsop a thing or two. ~ ~ FABIAN .FREEW AY by Rose L. Martin, (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands Publishing Co., 566 pp., $9.65) and THE DEMO CRAT'S DILEMMA by PhillipM. Crane, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 383 pp., $.75). Reviewed by GeoJ'ge Charles Roche 111 To THOSE AMERICANS .perceptive enough to recognize the dangers of our present collectivist course, one of the questions of consider able interest is: "Who did it, and how was it accomplished ?"Surely the traditional values of this na tion and the attitudes of the American people were not in them selves socialistically oriented.

Thus, some analysis of the person nel and the methods producing the present sad state of affairs would be a definite addition to the im proved understanding of our situ ation, as at least one preliminary step toward reversing the trend. Mrs. Martin and Professor Crane are the authors of two. such analyses, both well-researched, complete, and offering a detailed answer to the "Who?" and the "How?" of America's turn down the mistaken road paralleling European collectivism. To the reader searching for the names, dates,organizations, and activities of the prime movers in the proc ess, these two studies offer a we~lth of information, reaching from the origins ... in the late nine~ tee nth century to the events of the 1960's. ~ THE FREEMAN MARCH 1967 VOL. 17, NO. 3 '" Robert Newell, from his farmstead in Michigan, sees the best hope for better government to be in the self control exercised by better individuals ........ p. 131 '" Nor does author-journalist William Henry Chamberlin expect any allevia tion of poverty from the political jug gling of funds by persons isolated from the problem p. 135 '" A careful student of political affairs in Britain tabs their new Selective Em ployment Tax a major regression toward mercantilism p. 141 '" Those who understand and practice freedom· may breathe new life into the forms of American Federalism, sug gests Dr. Roche, and revitalize the gov ernment as an instrument of justice rather than forced equality ...... p. 144 '" How can we hope to bring freedom to other lands, or even our own, until each of us frees himself from the fears and prejudices of his animal nature?