Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth In Depth With Christopher Buckley 20240712

I write mostly comic novels. We have written seven or eight of those. This book is a memoir probably the only memoir i will never write. I dont have that much to say. May be going out on thin i. C. E. I dont think i will write another book than this one in part because it is so singular in nature. About two Extraordinary People who provided me with some amazing material for a book. Host what was it like to write the book . I sat down shortly after i buried my father last year i woke up in the morning with no intention of writing a book and started writing a book and i wrote a in 40 days. Was accidental there was no biblical collusion but when i looked at the calendar i saw 40 days had lapsed. I work hard to on my writing. It wrote a lot of it itself but we pretty much poured out. Host were you surprised at what poured out . Yes. I think the first sentence read Something Like im not sure how this book is going to turn out. I was indeed surprised at how it turned out. Host thats exactly what it says. The height of unity quoting oneself. [laughter] it is the story of the year of losing my parents who were quite incredible people. There are a lot of flashbacks in it growing up with them. I asked myself when i got to the end of the book so why did you write this book . The typical reason is catharsis. Honestly i wrote it as a way to spend some more time with him rather than finally put them to rest for go to the extent one does. And spending time when they were at their best in there were some passages. [laughter] my dad was a great man in there was no reason to expect great people to be uncomplicated. And certainly theres no reason to expect them to be harriet like ozzie and harriet. Host when you went to her death bed to say i forgive you . I literally raced through a storm to get to her death bed. I was giving a speech at washington university. April 14 which has always been a day of remembered. Titanic hit the iceberg and present lincoln was shot. I waste from robert elees house to my mothers death bed and she was in a coma so all i could do was hold her hand after giving the order to give the respirator out. I found myself saying i forgive you. These words surprised me. But they needed to be said. She was a wonderful woman that she could be noddy and impossible and she was too prou proud. She never said im sorry for being so impossible at dinner last night. My wife has a rule dont go to bed angry. Its a good rule. So as my mom is going to bed i didnt want there to be anything unresolved between us. I certainly hope that my deathbed people will forgive me. In a larger scheme of things in but i didnt. Host the last memory of her father . When he was alive . He was failing. He just kept nodding forward into his soup. He had emphysema and diabetes. I just wanted his pain to be over so that was my last living memory of him. And brought them home for one last night and he was in the coffin for week and we open the coffin and i wanted to put some things in the coffin, sorr. A jar of Peanut Butter because he was crazy about Peanut Butter. The rosary because the tv remote control. I knew he would want that. He always had a death grip on that and my a mothers ashes on his lap and closed the lid. And said my eulogy but i dont think any pharaoh into the afterlife was better equipped with his jar of Peanut Butter and his remote control. Host we have already gotten several emails asking about the importance of the catholic faith to your father and what it meant to you. He raised me catholic and post catholic or collapsed catholic and respectful of the catholic faith i went to boarding school in rhode island i got a wonderful education Father Damien and julian. Keep praying for me. I needed. And this became difficult for my father because he was the guy who never ever doubted his catholic faith. He had tragedies in his life he lost abel livid sister on a beloved sister in 1964. He was devoted to her. And lost many people that died to him prematurely and that was to either reinforce or challenge the religious faith. His father William Frank buckley senior was the son of a texas sheriff. Our ancestors left ireland at about the 18 forties because the original john buckley was a protestant who married a catholic girl and they had to leave and they went to ontario where the eventual sheriff was born but he had asthma so they moved down to texas. So my greatgrandfather john buckley, the sheriff of duval county was the first catholic. His best friend was the man who shot billy the kid that is a fun little bit a family history. Host mr. Buckley one more story but when it comes to catholicism and your father there was a crucifix in your yard . [laughter] yes. Years ago he commissioned a bronze lifesize crucifix about 7 feet tall from the connecticut sculptor. And then to reside in the cross and this depended on keeping the house in stanford and i was pretty sure after death taxes i could not sustain house. But i didnt want to bug him out in the last month of his life. So one evening i tiptoed that my mother had died at this point she never wanted to be in the cross. She was not a religious woman and whispered to me when im gone send me out with the trash i most certainly do not wish to be in that object. But she went first and went into the object. But now we are coming up on his final months. I know you want your ashes in the cross. He said absolutely. In the tone of voice i knew so well. Was set im just wondering in the event i ever have to sell the house the new owner and he says why wouldnt the new owner want the cross . [laughter] i may be they are jewish . [laughter] dont want dead giant crucifix. So i had this interesting dilemma so i decided on the drive from washington to stanford that in sharon connecticut where he grew up he was his own admission he was happiest between five and seven and bury him with his sisters. So my friend and i wrestled the across out of the ground and put it in the back of the car and followed the funeral procession so now its in the cemetery right next to him and my mom. I hope and ellen on a solution he may come back to haunt me but. Host those are stories from Christopher Buckleys most recent book. Good afternoon this is the tv and the political satirist. October 2008, theres something ironically liberating when the father figure dies. For the first time your own man. I miss him every day but now i can write about things i was not terribly comfortable writing about. Such as . Religion. Something is shied away from and then barack obama for president but i have asked myself that and i wonder. I am 56 years old. I worked at the white house in of written a bunch of books. Im entitled to my own political views but you are still a kid as long as they are alive. So i might not have. Can you say the word on all hell broke loose because i did this to say on never donate any money because that turncoat. So i offered to resign my column to the editor and he objected rather quickly. Host do you have any relationship with the National Review quick. I have the fondest for everybody there particularly the publisher jack fowler. Host are you in contact . I am a director part owner not sure how you get fired. [laughter] but i am a big booster. And then to relaunch the conservative movement with 6000 columns and tapes 1500 episodes of firing line and ran for mayor and wrote 55 books. He threw a lot of spaghetti on the wall. But what was most important was National Review. And what was nearest and dearest to him. And he cared deeply. And those who worked there like Francis Bronson and linda bridges and dusty rhodes and im leaving some people out but. Host what your Politics Today . They are all over the board. I endorsed obama but i have something very critical of him on my daily beast blog tomorrow. I like him personally he has a firstclass temperament but i write about his economic policies i think will bring the country to its knees. I think we are headed in a ruinous direction. I am socially libertarian. Nothing against gay marriage. I am prochoice. I am a fiscal hawk and to talk about sustainability which is the current buzzword. But we dont seem to be talking about sustainable budgets. And obama has just said the three. 6 trilliondollar budget. Which will double the deficit during the first term. Every president comes into double the deficit we are finished. Theres my politics. Knowing democrats are big spenders why a did you vote obama knowing all the spending he would do you are against and not a thirdparty . And less you are trying to penalize. If you voted for ross perot. And my honest answer is that obama would not be this vendor. That if he and ask ruinous spending leader to leading to higher taxes and inflation and then i think we are headed in a bad direction. I may well have been wrong. But in 2000 and i voted for the conservative. The conservative candidate for president george w. Bush. And he had enacted ruinous expansions of the Entitlement Program and the west deficit. So who is to say what you will get . Heres a question for all of us. Where would be right now if john mccain and sarah palin had one . That would be an interesting exercise to engage in. Host along with your most recent book which is a memoir, he you have written other books, actually this is nonfiction steaming to bamboo let. I was a merchant marine. Right martini. The schema in the nineties it is a collection. 2007 Supreme Court ship. Also little green men which came out and 2004. If you say so but i think it was 1999. Wednesday what is transitioning . It is a the looming Social Security crisis and the woman comes up with the idea the government sense there is 77 million baby boomers getting ready to retire at this link of the Social Security system she proposes the government incentivized baby boomers suicide and you get tax breaks. So you have to have that euphemism coming up with voluntary transitioning. Host how do you come up with the idea for that . It sounds like a dinner party discussion. The hardest part of writing satire today is competing with usa today. Its not a level playing field. I wrote a novel of any president ial election or a Minnesota Senate election. You would probably say come on. Do you expect me to believe that . Host florence of arabia . Just a little bit wouldnt you say saudi arabia and qatar . That would be quite fair. I got it from wausau be if you go to sushi parlors from the green horseradish. The young woman i came up the title florence of arabia before the idea of a book although i wasnt the first one to get there. And said if you are any better looking you would be florence of arabia. [laughter] writing in 1986 prior to the white house. After. That was my first novel. I worked for george h. W. Bush as Vice President asked leader in kinder man if youre watching bush. I was with him last week. While i worked at the white house, i became fascinated with white house memoirs. Everyone who works at the white house for more than five minutes rights one and its usually 800 pages. [laughter] and they all have the word power in the title like proximity to power power principle. So witness to power which is gloriously bitchy. [laughter] that would be great is a novel it is a parody of the white house memoir written by herbert wadlow it was great fun. Host how much truth is there . None but yet a lot. How is that for an answer . [laughter] i was there for two years so i know what the place look like and secret site on secret Service Agents look like and sounded like. So i use that and one or two real life situations but it is a novel. People often ask is it based on george bush or Newt Gingrich . The answer is almost always now. They are inventions that may have been borrowed and Supreme Court ship which came out last fall is about a tv judge who gets on the Supreme Court and she wears glasses and is very sexy from texas her name is pepper and wears a gun under her robe. And her opponent is a cosmetically enhanced senator who spends a lot of time on amtrak. And in fact is modeled on jim hardin but the book came out the day became nominated. I give up. [laughter] but generally has a satirist you try to stay 1 inch in front of the americans tsunami of realit reality. And its very hard to out run. Host thank you for smoking you might have seen the movie. Lets go to calls rochester new york. Good afternoon and thank you for being such a professional peter. And hello mr. Buckley. I have a couple questions. If obama realizes, because i think he will that they will overreach if he realizes he will not get reelected, do you think he will govern even more radically to the left . And next what do you think the Republican Party should do spread out or in line. Let me take your second question first. I have actually written i dont know if you read blogs but if you go to the daily beast. Com tomorrow i have a posting of the death of the gop and one or two thoughts how we can get our mojo back. So i quote a rather compelling line in the Financial Times newspaper, a democratic strategist in a piece that i commend to you. [laughter] i almost said defecation sorry. [laughter] where was i . Because the Republican Party is the party of southern white males and that is a shrinking group so the party that cannot get any votes north of the Mason Dixon Line or west of the rockies is doomed. I come from connecticut christopher a very fine guy was my hometown congressman in Fairfield County and lost reelection. That now has not one single congressperson. Maine has two very good but republican senators. So clearly something is going o on. It is the disassembling or disintegration of the Reagan Coalition. Look. Im not a political strategist or a political thinker. Im probably the wrong person to ask. But since you ask, i think we have to go back to some basics. The great threat now is fiscally. The fed is printing money and mr. Obama is proposing fantastical spending and will have a Democratic Senate to permit this and i think this will bite us in the rear end. Theres a lot smarter people than me in the white house coming up with a plan. But one thing that we learned is the smartest people in the room are often wrong. Everyone thought Alan Greenspan was pretty smart and here we ar are. With that shredded 401 k because of the fantastic instruments. A very longwinded answer but republicans have to become the fiscal hawks and stand for that. To the extent we fight skirmishes over gay marriage were to teach creationism a looked on important if it ruins. The way things are going i think it is entirely probable we will have doubledigit inflation and three or four years. Remember that under president carter . Anyway sorry for the longwinded answer. I forget the first question. Host if he doesnt think if he wins reelection if he will go left . I think that is hard to call. I will say i do like this man. I think he has done some very good things in 100 days. I like his temperament. Its funny. According to the polls everyone likes him but also theyre not sure about his policies. Its like the negative capability that was first brought up by the poet keats and defined by fitzgerald to keep two contradictory ideas in your mind and go on functioning so there is a neighbor on negative thing going on with president obama. People like him but i think some of his policies worry us. Hello mr. Buckley what do the conservatives have other them privilege . They dont serve the environment as Teddy Roosevelt or nixon dead and they dont conserve Civil Liberties as george w. Bush has shown us. And they dont think to preserve our budget. I thank you have answered your own question. To me and strikes me in saying that conservatives or even conservative republicans are not identified as the party of conservationism. Richard nixon signed the Clean Air Act but that was a lost opportunity. And then at the Republican Convention last august with everyone chanting drill baby drill. Im all for drilling because i dont think our problems will be solved by windmills at least not right away. I thought it was stylistically a bad moment. As for the last eight years there was nothing conservative about george w. Bushs eight years. I have been a drunken sailor. But conservativism William F Buckley conservativism stands for fiscal responsibility. And small government and individual liberty above all. What is happening now as government seeps into every aspect of american life, is a gradual loss of liberty Irving Kristol used the metaphor of the frog on the stove in the water. If you put a frog into boiling water it will instantly feel pain and leap out but if you put it in with cold water and gradually heated, the frog acclimates himself to the hot water. This is as we lose our liberties one by one what happens government is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it away. These are words that have ring very true to me. Thank you for your question. Host Traverse City michigan go ahead. Caller thank you very much. First of all i admired his father. I always agree with his political views but i admired his father a great deal. My question and may be what he learned and came away with the experiences he shared with his father on the boat. I have not sailed on the beautiful lakes but i have sailed across the atlantic twice with my dad and the pacific once sailing from honolulu to new guinea in 30 days. 4400 miles. My dad was. [laughter] he was impatient we would be at sea for a week and pull in to some beautiful a toll with palm trees and a lagoon maybe even ladies in grass skirts in the distance. We would be sticky and salty just wanting a cold beer and a hot shower. And say its 10 00 oclock no now, shall we shove off at two . Id be happy to spend a week there lying on the beach but for him it wasnt so we pushed on. He was quite a guy in my eulogy i just about really a ritual on friday nights in Long Island Sound. Not quite as big as Lake Michigan but it served its purpose. So we had scheduled one sale for october 1997 and i was coming up from washington and i look out the window and and then the chain politician station and my dad was on the platform. But he was holding onto a lamppost. And i wondered if he has injured himself. When the doors opened and the 15mile gust of wind literally blew me back i crawled out of the train on all fours loose objects were blown. It look like a tornado seen in wizard of oz. [laughter] and he said to me, we will have a brisk sale. Said you mean were going out in this . He said sure . Why not. Thats a technical term. And we went out in it. With 800,000 homes lost their power that night and the governors new york and new jersey and connecticut declared a state of emergency. We were in the middle of Long Island Sound in that. I got furious with him. I wrote him an email saying you have no business being out there and he wrote back and said dont worry. The decisions i made were sound. They werent it was completely nuts sailing in the northeast gail. That they like that and they take chances for the rest of us. So my fun on a friday night is not sailing in a gail. Friend was there from San Francisco and never been on a sale though before he said should i take edge of a mean i said no you will be too scared to throw up. [laughter] s name was maury chickering and never on a sailboat before poor man. Host or again go ahead. Caller hi mr. Buckley. What a nice name columbus was always my icon. I put your name ahead of me are behind me. I travel around the world and ive come to the conclusion that all religious systems are political and financial actually divide and then for the man and that mankind you have condi. Happy man, yes, so i wonder. Eyes say my husband died but my mother still live on lives inside me. Will they come to their senses before they blow their planet the first question. That was a question . Host we will leave it there. You have given me lots to think about. Although the founder of Christian Science she was a woman. Host we have an email from Shelley Hamel of westfield wisconsin. Which of your parents was the funniest and hugh on whose does yours most resemble . My dad had a delicious and very sophisticated sense of humor. I have to give her a slight edge when she was on nobody could touch her. She was something out of a play. I describe her in the book as. [laughter] a cross between noel coward and a snapping turtle. Henry kissinger, my mom is from vancouver british columbia. And i will tell the story as Henry Kissinger told that at her Memorial Service. Henry said, as buckleys to say i am just a simple girl from the backwoods of british columbia. Having known that if she was a simple girl from the backwoods of british columbia, i waited trumbull to meet the sophisticated girl from the backwoods of british columbia. [laughter] she was anything but a simple girl from the backwoods. I dont know how she came up with these things. She was british it was quite british when she grew up so she had a slight british accent. That she would just come up with the sayings it is an imbecile not to be credited. That woman is so stupid she ought to be caged. I dont know where she came up with the staff. I would like to think i inherited her sensibility. Host talking about your mother and losing her her friend comes up quite often. Yes. Her best friends were gay men or in the old days we called them confirmed bachelors this was in the fifties and sixties. And a lot of them are famous like bill blass or Peter Glanville the english director was a very very close friend. But it gave me it was entertaining and enriching and a lot of these men were very sophisticated. And i say in the book trying to write a halfbaked masters thesis but that no man could appreciate man like my mother than a gay man. May be perhaps what the liberating lack of sexual interest. But she was well attended all those years by some very faithful and interesting friend friends. Host the last conversation you ever heard your mother have two days before she died she demanded that she have the nurse give her her own sleeping pills. Selfmedication was a theme of my parents. Now she said beer in the hospital in the Critical Care unit. I am well aware of where im. Just give me my pills. No maam i cannot give you pill pills. Just give them to me. No maam. At this time her lower mandible protruded like an alien just before swallowing the astronaut whole. Just. Give. Them. To. Me. Know i will give them to your hospital nurse and they will give you if the doctor says its all right. Thats the last conversation i heard them have. They with a sight impaired deaf mute him taking pills would be enough to give Hunter Thompson pause. Some people might be surprised. In later years he was the bold of emphysema which was a very cruel disease and diabetes but he had a tremendous drive so they had administered ritalin for many years. And then 40 years ago he fainted in the middle of the afternoon and went to the doctor. The doctor said you have very low blood pressure. You can either eat 1 pound of chocolate a day or start taking ritalin. He did that route. But toward the end he was in bad shape. He was desperate. He had sleep apnea it is terrible and you wake up 300 times a night so you never get the rem sleep even though you been in bed for 12 hours you are Walking Around like a zombie. He would take a bunch of sleeping pills. [laughter] but he would take a ritalin for him is a stimulant right before dinner and then have a cup of very strong coffee after dinner. Obviously he did not want a good night sleep. Stop the ritalin and the coffee. [laughter] but he wasnt going to listen. It was not overpaid to go. On i did not absent myself from the pharmacological find. And find it very ironic to be lecturing apparent about drugs. Host new york city go ahead. Caller. Hello christopher. In 1996 you wrote me a very nice letter you stated you have done more for mankind that your young age than most people have done in a lifetime. Do you remember what that was about . Remind me. The floss rings. Yes i remember are you still saving mankind . It is most unfortunate that johnson and johnson influenced cnn to do a hatchet job on my company one week before they went into the National Museum of dentistry they are listed under George Washingtons ivory teeth in the last decade has been spent in a vacuum. Im sorry to hear this. You are a great man and your invention to me was right up there with anesthesia and dentistry and airconditioning. Host what are floss rings and why did you write a letter . I think his father had the task of teaching me that guitar when i was 13. But floss rings as i recall you attach dental floss and now theyve developed the reach things to get back here. I will him he had done a Great Service to mankind and i stand by that set on that statement. Host sacramento california. Caller mr. Buckley. Your father was a great man in my opinion and you are also a great man. Was there ever a time in your life you felt you were growing into your abilities . What did that feel like and when did it happen . You are very kind to say that. I disagree with the second part of your estimation. I am 56 but its only now that i am starting to feel settled about what my abilities are or are not in a still greatly outnumber and outweigh my abilities. I always wanted to be a writer. I was not a boy a writer. I have to work at it but one of my heroes is tom wolf. I was gob smacked to say unpleasantly effective so it took him years to learn how to write. Ten years . Now i think he may have underestimated. I think it takes longer. I added professionally since 1974. Im still learning for whatever abilities i dispose of. Host you had a connection with tom wolf from your yale days. Ia discovered tom. He wrote for you. I was an editor and 1973 we all wanted to be writers. And we were aware that the top of the magazine was playboy and it paid one dollar a word. I feel like austin powers. One dollar a word. [laughter] so we thought wed send out letters to really great writers enjoys carol. And to say congratulations you have been designated as a great writer. And we would like to contract you to write an article for us. We will pay one dollar a word. Unfortunately the budget is such we can only afford ten words. [laughter] as a pricing sent in ten letter one ten word pieces so writing 26 words long and keep the change and tom wolf wrote a 13 word peace. That was my first direct experience of my hero tom wolf. Host new york. Caller good afternoon. Christopher, i remember the first time i see your dad i think was crossfire. To chew on. The path to reference i think must have to do with an incident that became sort of celebrated. He was it was in the 60s. He was doing a firing line on marijuana and they Read Everything there was to know about marijuana and talk to everyone but the one thing he hadnt done was tried marijuana. But he said he wanted to try marijuana but he didnt want to break the law. The Police Commissioner to new york it was this gorgeous not that i know anything about it. He had a dot that sailed across the atlantic and so one night we all went on the boat and in new york harbor went beyond the 3mile limit so that it would not be a crime and tough on this gorgeous stuff. Everyone, the crew was hanging upside down. The stuff was really righteous. It had a piano so they were sitting there playing and the boat was going around in circles. Anyway that is the night my dad didnt get high. I dont recall the conversation about the slave reparations. Its tricky to try to channel your fathers great. Hamlet tried it without success but i think he probably would have been against the idea of reparations. Cspan what is this book about . Guest that is in any way my funnest book. It is a walking tour about washington, d. C. I was asked to it was part of a series they tried to match offers two cities for 15, 20 authors and i got to washington. It was a great excuse to be a tourist in my own adopted hometown. To tell you a story about the title, i was asked by the publisher to designate a title for the buck which i havent read yet, havent read them yet so i thought it. The publisher thought that was just the wittiest thing they ever heard, terrific. Then i went and started doing the research and i would go to the various memorials and see all of these nice americans from ohio, kansas, the great heartland poring over books with titles like our american experiment or the founding fathers, lincoln, the young man. I tried to imagine coming out of a book and thought no, they are not going to go for this. So i called up the publisher and said we cant call it that and the publisher said we like it, we have to call it that. So i called my agent and she called back and said youve got 20 minutes to come up with a better one so i was at my office and my executive editor came in and noticed that i was looking kind of pale and he said whats the matter. I said i have 20 minutes to come up with a walking tour book title about washington. She said washington short here and here this. Host earlier this week, graciously you took us to some of the sites that he went to and we are going to show you one of them right now that he gav but s and then we will be back to take your calls so if you are on hold, stay on hold and we will be right. I am one of those guys that came to washington in 1981 to do a government big and expected to be here, to stay here for a ye year. That was 1981 and this is 2009. I fell for it, i fell for the place. How could you not fall for it. This isnt a bad front yard, not that i actually live in the Lincoln Memorial. I would be happy to if the government offered it. The Lincoln Memorial the thing about washington that perhaps we dont realize or take for granted is that its a city with active greek and roman temples. What other city in the world can boast active temples . What we mean by that, well, look, here we are on a normal weekday at the Lincoln Memorial and look how many people are here. Although they look like figure just having a nice vacation, theyve come to pay homage to americas greatest precedent as it says in this temple and in the hearts of those that he preserved the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever. This memorial was dedicated in 1922 which when you think about it is a long time after his assassination in 1865, which maybe suggests that we ought not to rush into building memorials. Whats remarkable about this one, theres a lot of remarkable things about it bu that it was dedicated in 1922. The president s only surviving child of. He died just a few years later. What thats perhaps poignant, he was a teenager when his father was shot. He was at a theater not far from fords theater watching a place called aloud and in his marvelous land in his magic la lamp. Garfield was on his way to i think his 25th College Reunion when he was shot and of course mortally. In 1901, Robert Todd Lincoln was with mckinley in buffalo when mckinley was shot, so you have this extraordinary american coincidence of the son of Abraham Lincoln being present at two subsequent assassinations. The other poignant thing about the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial was that the president of Tuskegee Institute spoke, tuskegee being one of the few as they were called negro or covered colleges. And after he spoke, he couldnt sit with the other dignitaries. He had to go sit in the colored sections. How remarkable it is that 40 some odd years later the second most fantastic speech in american history, they call it third, was delivered a few feet from where im standing by Martin Luther king. They of course i have a dream speech. This would have been Martin Luther kings view as he gave the i have a dream speech in august of 63. Imagine looking out at, what, 200,000 people gathered on that day, all of them are focused on yohave focused onyou as you spoe incredibly sparing words. We talked earlier about walking to the memorial. Sure, lets do that. With all due respect to president roosevelt, i find this a tad severe as memorials go. In all fairness, the two great acts of his presidency were the depression and world war ii, so i dont suppose theres any reason it should be a Something Like from my fair lady tha but t has a certain heaviness that it is lacking in many of the other memorials. This is the famous statue of him, which i maybe it is the english language major in me, but looking at it, he looks to me like james joyce on a toilet, sitting on a toilet. Theres just something about it. Im certainly not making fun of his disability, but this statue was put here at the insistence of the disabled Americans Organization and there was indeed a controversy over it because, as i recall from fdrs heirs wanted to respect his never wanting to be photographed in his wheelchair and in fact i dont think there is a photograph of him in a wheelchair and so they found this to be rather against his wishes, but here it is. Lets hope that it gives comfort and encouragement to those who are disabled and see that great things can be done by a man who was confined to a wheelchair. Its one of the larger memorials. I think that it takes up Something Like seven and a half acres, which is a lot of real estate, but its intended, its giving us a sort of narrative to it as you move from 1933 to the end of his time in 1945. Its hard to look at the memorial as we are going through this pure co which we are told is the greatest depression since the great depression, but to put it in perspective, at the height of the depression, unemployment had reached 80 in some parts of the country and there was of course not this socalled safety net that we have now, but this does give us pause right now, and so many people are out of jobs and the economy continues in its difficulties. This is i suspect how president roosevelt would have liked to be memorialized in his dashing caped, the wheelchair not visible. Of course there was a wonderful photograph taken on the bridge of a destroyer where come to think of it perhaps the last president who would have been unafraid to be photographed and smoking a cigarette. I dont think we will see many of the current president , mr. Obama sneaking a cigarette is apparently he has to do and here they have fdrs scotty who was his devoted companion. There is a saying it seems kind of apropos to quote in this just a week after they obama is settled on their dog, but perhaps it is a sad thing in washington that if you want to have a friend in washington, get a dog. But i think by all accounts, he was a very good friend to his devoted faster. Host we are back live with Christopher Hitchens Christopher Buckley. [laughter] we were talking about Christopher Hitchens. [laughter] is he a friend of yours . Guest very much so. While, let me count the ways. Ive known christopher about 30 years. He is to my way of thinking the best writer of our generation. He has traveled widely along the political spectrum. When i first knew him, he was not much different from a molotov cocktail throwing communist although i dont think he ever would have parted with a cocktail of any kind. So you know, he was as leftwing as they come. Since then, his views have moderated. Hes one of the chief backers if you will if that is quite the right way of putting it of adventuring. I was not, not that it is neither here nor there. But christopher is a prodigy, the superb intellect and sublimest idealist. It is breathtaking to behold. Host we are back live with Christopher Buckley with the numbers on the screen if you want to participate in the program 202 7370001 for the east and central time zones, 202 7370002 for the mountain and pacific time zones. This is the monthly indepth program. In virginia, good afternoon. Caller i loved buckley and this buckley. When i hear you speak it is like Chester Santos on my tv. I watched this proposal in bloomsday. My question to me and ive already been to heaven because they were caught to walk through the library [inaudible] guest you are a lucky guy. Caller when you do your piece for the daily beast tomorrow, will you be paid and what do you think we need to do to save the newspapers or are they worth saving. Thank you. It is so disconnected to hear intelligence on television. Its wonderful. Guest you are too kind as Christopher Hitchens would say. We are going through it would seem some kind of paradigm shift. Maybe thats the wrong word, but trying to wrap your mind around this thought. Seattle washington now doesnt have a daily newspaper. Baltimore might not have the baltimore sun. Boston globe might fold. I am a newspaper guy. I still prefer to read mine and end up with my fingers could we think by the end of breakfast but lets face it. We are in a shifting time. The terrible danger with these holdings is however vibrant and vital the internet is which can either be frankly a thousand points of light or a thousand points of spite, there is some very nasty stuff out there on the internet, its not the same as trained journalists working under trained editors and responsible publishers. Imagine if the New York Times, it is inconceivable a World Without the New York Timess editorial point of view often drive me to sputtering over my coffee. But if institutions like that go, god save us all. In the meantime, there is no fighting whats happening. It is an extra bowl. But remember, also, when radio arrived in the 20s and 30s, the deathknell of newspapers was sounded. When tv arrived in the late 40s and 50s, the deathknell of radio was sounded. So the answer is these things go on, but they go on in different and sometimes diminished capacities. Host that caller also mentioned dorf at all and your father in the same breath. You often hear that . Guest there is a little bored at gore but moment host if you could briefly tell us that moment. Guest keeney called my father all sorts of names among all the things a history at queen, which i didnt quite get and he hoped that he would rot in hell and called, took also time off to call me braindead and creepy for having talked to the editors of newsweek into doing a cover story of my recently deceased father. The editors of newsweek it may surprise you to hear dont actually take their instructions from me. I found it sad. It seemed to me that he was sort of drowning in his own bio and this isnt a good thing to beginninbedoing at age 82 or 83. I also found that frankly had variance with his most recent memoir which goes Something Like as i knew moved i hope gracefuy towards the door of the marked exit, but anyway, i feel sorry for the man that he would speak this at such a time and thats not insincere. Cspan and that is in this chapter losing much to spring with a morning. Guest im sure youll recognize it is usually not playing there with a morning head as jeeves would call a long morning crashing into tell him hes going to lose his inheritance if he doesnt state some dreadful daughter of the duke or whatever. Host go ahead with your question or comment for Christopher Buckley. Caller good afternoon peter and christopher. I admired your father immensely and he reminded me, you have reminded me something he said. He was running for reelection in connecticut and was asked why he was going to vote for joe lieberman. He said the reason is because he was given to give her station, a word i never heard off. Guest [inaudible] he also called him the most obnoxious moralist in the u. S. Senate. My dad and i actually came up with the idea of forming a Political Action committee. You could only be in the Political Action committee if they were buckley and sponsor buckley for lieberman. I think that we had the bumper stickers printed up and i remember the New York Times reported we put out a press release and said barclays are voting for lieberman. Joe lieberman was a pretty liberal democrats in those days and i remember the New York Times account, the New York Times called up the lieberman campaign and said william f. Buckley has just endorsed you, and there was a long pause and said we are going to have to call you back. But joe went on to win that election this would have been 1988 by the margin of about 7,000 votes in connecticut. So, who knows. Buckley is for lieberman. Host ruthie in richmond, virginia. Good afternoon. Youre on with Christopher Buckley. Caller i read your memoir yesterday and it did nothing but that. I thought it was funny and wonderful and it portrayed her childhood but im wondering what do you think your parents would have thought, each one of them . Guest honestly, i think they probably would have been appalled. And i say that in the buck. Though they were both very public people, they were very private. They are gone now. They are past caring and youve read the book. You know that its a loving tribute. So id like to think that they might also have thought that. But i think that if they were a life they would have cut off my allowance. Host mr. Buckley, you seem to us use able to footnotes in r writing. Guest not as many as david foster wallace, but one or two. Footnotes are kind of fun. Remember it was said of edward gibbon, the author of decline and fall of the roman empire, that he lived out his sex life in his footnotes. [laughter] host now youve thrown me off. Lets go to the email that we got. From martin. Please speak about scheming to bend the law. I remember him promoting his first book almost 30 years ago on David Letterman and remember going to the library the next day to check it out and read it in one day. Guest i love to hear that. Its sometimes nicer to hear that they went to the bookstore. Its funny, you know, listen i dont have enough fans that i can afford to be blase if i would like to personally hug each one, but it is funny how people will come up to you and to say i cant wait to read your book. I number 56 on the list at the library. [laughter] indictable think thats very sweet. You could order it on amazon. It was my first book. It was my editor a marvelous man named tom who died just before they make a few days before christmas this past year. He is slightly more famous for having been the editor of a book called jaws. Anyway, this is my first book. I went to i spent most of the 60s at a boarding school in rhode island wearing blazers and ties while woodstock was going on a busy very exciting decade and i was under the lock and key of monks. I wanted to see a little bit of the world instead of going right off to college, you know, i have had many adventures that ive had two real adventures one was working on a freighter at the age of 18 going around the world and a speechwriter at the white house. I went back and worked on an american show and that is different because instead of going to the building and being 18, i was now older and this ship crisscrossed the north atlantic in the winter carrying military cargo tanks and trailer trucks and steel between the gulf ports it isnt a particularly many of whom on the ship had a very poignant and unhappily poignant lives, but people ask you what is your Favorite Book this was my firstborn in some ways remains very special. Host you are on with Christopher Buckley. Caller thank you very much and hello to you both. First let me say i read thank you for smoking a long time ago and it made a big impression on me. I also have an opportunity to ask your father a question ones and it was the market does the price of everything and this is an extension of that question. Host guest that sounds like definition of a critic. It may have been borrowing. Caller it was food for thought for many years and it leaves me with what i wanted to ask you which is the conservative devotion to small government is all well and good to war may be better off a little less ideological than fundamentalist and our principles and a little more balanced and practical, so given that both the current president and our esteemed governor in california have been referred to as postpartisan and your politics strike me as perhaps being in a way postpartisan. I wonder what you think of the term and if you think that there is any value to this concept and if it might be a trend. Guest i am a postideological. One of the bedrock tenets of conservatism is the principle of subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity is as follows to know, nothing odd to be done above the lowest competent level of government in other words if the mayor can do it, let the mayor did. It doesnt have to be done by an agency. That battle may have been lost lets face it im kind of glad my dad isnt around to see this and by the way we should outfit just yesterday jack kemp died who really provided Ronald Reagan with his economic policy. Host did you know jack kemp . Guest i did, i did. And i liked him. He was a dashing, improbable guy. In the obituary ive gotten to the age where the first thing i read is the obituary. [laughter] i get out of bed to see if im dead and then go back to my bed. That the New York Times obituary says here he was, this football player, hes on the bus with the other players and while they are playing blackjack or reading kids comics books, he was reading either ayn rand or William Buckley. He accomplished a lot. As to the callers question, you know, president obama is a very interesting guy. Hes hard to nail down just as soon as you think youve nailed him down as a lefty, he does something out of that character. In something i wrote for the Financial Times last week, i call it the audacity of capacity. His handling of the cia torture business has been sort of a zigzag. He doesnt pay for prosecution. Well, now he does want to rule out prosecution. Hes going to let eric holder for your account. But in the meantime we are going to release photos of the interrogation sessions. Hes all over the map on that one. But i fear. I am a little pessimistic. Host how often do you write a column, how often are you asked to write a column . Guest i write a weekly post on the daily beast. My friend launched in october and you know, i still cant get my tongue around the word blog. It sounds vaguely i have to write a blog, like i have to go use the bathroom. My dad, i grew up with my father that rotate three times a week just say ive got to write a column i will call you back. Anyway, i rate this post and its called what fresh hell. That is the title of the post. Of course from Dorothy Parker what fresh hell is this. And theres been a pretty reliable supply, but ive been writing for tina brown happily for decades. I wrote for her at the vanity fair and from the new yorker and now im blogging for tina and having a ball doing it. Im the editor at large of forbes life, my old magazine, which i love and i write a column there. And i write for the Financial Times and the New York Times. Host do you have an office, do you write at home . Guest on the train that goes between washington and new york. Theres something called a quiet car which is the car where you are not supposed to talk or use a cell phone. There are signs every 2 feet saying dont talk, dont use a cell phone. And every 2 feet there is someone talking or using a cell phone. So i have devolved into the nazi of the quiet car, im like the enforceunlike theenforcer and id shushing people. My wife used to be more interesting. Ive sort of turned into a crotchety old librarian. I once shushed the director of the fbi, mr. Louis freeh did. I got on with it to watch off whatever the collective noun for a bunch of g. Then and he was sitting one row in front of me just yakking away and i said well, buckley, are you a man or a mouse. I reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder, stepped back in case there was a glock nine. I said mr. Freak you are a Great American and i am your biggest fan, but this is the quiet car and i dont think that he was used to being shushed. So they all got up and moved. Host that is a great story but it doesnt tell us how you write or where you write. Guest i right on that train on the way home to washington. The great enemy is, the internet blessing and the great enemy is the internet. Writers love to procrastinate. My little study out in washington is wireless so i can do that, there is no phone. I used to be much more productive before i got a blackberry you have been very patient please go ahead with your question for Christopher Buckley. Caller good afternoon, gentlemen. A quick word people praised cspan and i like to associate my person talked about professionalism and the way that everything is done on cspan. A lot of us out here appreciate that. Mr. Buckley, as someone who lost their father before all issues were resolved, let me say i envy the fact that you were able to spend large amounts of time with him as an adult. I was estranged from my own, and i think that probably leaves issues for some of the fathers that dont get to take care of them. I remember especially some of your dads programs on firing line with Mortimer Adler and john kenneth galbraith. I kept a photograph, although im probably not can it hurt a conservative 62 way might be moving that way, i kept a photograph of your father on his moped that i think showed up in times or newsweek back in the 60s and i wondered if he kept riding a motorcycle. I was going to ask a question about your merchant marine experience that came up a little earlier. But maybe you could talk about the fact that real world experience, what effect that had for a person that was launched in the academy for so much of his life, and as a teacher myself, i know having spent eight years as a pipefitter at t goodyear in akron ohio, it was a good internship for me in the real world of dealing with men and dealing with people in a ona different level. And quickly, last question, since i was patient and waited for a long time, did your father enjoy your writing and did you ever have any conversations with them about that and i will be glad to hang up and listen. Guest thank you for your questions and for your patience. The ship i worked on when i was a teen was a very different world from the one i grew up in. I grew up in connecticut and went to boarding school that was tough it sounds awkward to put it this way, but i think i was much better off for having had that experience. On a small things that up until then had been abstractions. I saw dead bodies in the street in india. I went to practically every court in the far east. We had a 33 day trip back from sri lanka to around the cape of good hope to new york and we ran into a hurricane in the south atlantic. The ship couldnt make enough headway to leave the automatic pilot on, so we all had to take turns steering the ship into diseased or notheseas that weree ones in the movie the perfect storm you may have seen although that is a little bit exaggerat exaggerated. These were 70, 80foot seas and it was terrifying. It is quite terrifying to be 18 and have the wheel and know that if i did the wrong thing, the ship would founder. So who isnt better off from having that experience . I would point out that a lot of people my age were at that very moment being shot at by the vietcong, so my experience was nothing on what they went through but it was through that real world experience with it ive never regretted it. You know, i speak at colleges and meet a lot of people and i always urge them to do this, to take a year off. Now it is called a gap year, that the teacher told me come and i found this crushing, the reason relatively few kids do this is they then go off their pants medical insurance and they cant afford it, too in sure the child for the year would be 500 a month and a lot of people cant afford to. Thats very saddening because i think a lot of kids, you know, they just automatically go to college and think thats the next thing you do. They are not quite as widely used the word of mature. By the time i got to college, having taken this year off, i really wanted to be at college. And i was a better student than i would have almost certainly. Host did your father like your writing clicks guest he was very encouraging when i think that he felt he could be. He had a saying. He would never encourage someone to be a writer whom he didnt think had possessed such and how once. He was also a pretty tough grader. The book right up there i sent him a bound galley, an early copy and i waited and waited and waited and finally one day i got an email and it was about other things and then ps was this one didnt work for me. Sorry. [laughter] and thats the end of the discussion about the buck . Guest i would say wha would you care to elaborate on that . Towards the end of, his emails became increasingly hard to decipher. He would simply put his hands down on the keyboard wherever they landed i sent an email back that he had sent to me. At this point im going to have to get in enigma machine to decipher these things. I have in my office in washington is old royal typewriter. On a typewriter in his prime he was vladimir horowitz. He didnt make any mistakes typing away on the royal typewriter, but in the later years and he taught me the picture that youre showing right there. It was sitting on his lap write like that and he taught me how to touch type when i was about seven or 8yearsold he taught me how to type the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy cow because it has all of the letters of the alphabet. Host we have a call in stamford connecticut. Host are you with us . Caller we are having the best time. I decided to bring christina with me and we are sitting here watching you having the time of our life and i thought you would like to get what i call a family called. Guest isnt that exciting. I send you all a big smooch. We saw because i was on that trip that you would enjoy telling the story i know youve been on other subjects of the time when time grabbed her mother is clean and silver sugar pot and because they had this pirates treasure buried over on a long island beach, i thought if you told that story that it would indicate both your mothers patience about the whole thing at least after it was over plus your fathers typical thinking this would be fun if not thinking about anything else except a year later of course would have changed but never mind. There was nothing to take care of it so i asked for alcohol. I thought it might be a nice little story to tell. Host i will take that question. Caller im an old friend. We all met in 1961 then had known him in college etc. And was connected all of his life. We became fast friends. Since i happen to be out here we just thought that this was a nice time to get together and we wanted to send our love to christopher for whom ive known i guess since he was im not as old as i sound. Guest i send my love to all of you. Shes a great lady. She lives as it turns out in the building that until recently was occupied by bernie made off, whom she knew up to that point only as the president of the coop until she noticed the federal washington building. When i was about seven, my dad comprised of a treasure hunt, and he got a cedar treasure box whiccedar treasure boxwhich i hk still and filled it with silver dollars and persuaded my mom to part with some of her jewelry so he and a friend sailed across to long island and buried it at a place called ethan mac and they contrived to the treasure map printed on parchment and had drops of red that might have been blood and giving clues as to where the treasure was, so we sailed over the next weekend and i can still remember, i dont think that ive ever been as excited that much digging through the sand and feelings that would of this Treasure Chest on my fingertips, so we dug it up and brought it home and being seven, i persuaded him that there must be another charger trust to be good Treasure Chest. So he got another Treasure Chest and filled it with stuff including my mothers silver which i think he didnt tell her he was doing he just put it back in a week. So he and a friend buried it. Well, a few days later, Hurricane Katrina of 1960s onehit long island and rearranged the entire topography model me here, that of all of long island so we sailed over some weeks later and all of the clues were irrelevant. So another plus i think not amused with feith but they have adventures like that. He was an adventurous guy. He was a man of great learning and creating, but i still think his favorite author was probably robert louis stevenson. He had Treasure Island and get mapped as a child he added that adventurous spirit. Host is it the first time the story of your father flying the airplane was an hour or two of title experience . Guest this is the most extraordinary story about him i know. And i didnt know until he wrote about it. He published an anthology called michaels gone by just the closest thing he ever did in autobiography but in it is the following story. Having read it, it unlocked a lot of things for me about my old van. In college it dale in the late 40s, he and three other friends earned a plan called and earth to, singleengine, and they were learning how to fly. One of his friends who had been a decorated combat pilot in world war ii one night was lamenting to my dad that his goals rand was in boston he really wanted to see her but have no way of getting to boston so my dad, generous and valiant spirit said i shall fly you to boston. At that point, my dad had one and a half hours of cockpit time in the plane. I used to be a licensed pilot. You get your license an in so lw at about eight or nine hours depend on how indepth you are and you get your license 30 to 40 hours depending. He had been in the cockpit for one and a half hours. So they fly out, the friend doing the flying, the land at boston and now my dad has to get this plane back to new haven so he gets in and takes off and notices that is getting kind of dark and hes forgotten to factor in the daylight savings change the night before. So he cant see. He flies down low off the deck, flying 100 feet following the railroad tracks. This is a very, kids dont try this at home, a very primitive form of navigation. Just as it is getting pitch black, he looks over and sees the begin of the new london airporairport and manages to pue plane down somehow and then hitchhike spec to new haven and goes to the bar and the next day told his flying instructor what he has done and he couldnt do believe it and went totally ballistic. Having read that story only relatively recently made me understand a few other things about my dad, a man who would do that isnt likely to be deterred by things like bright lights for, you know, and approaching scroll if youre sailing. He was awfully fearless, which is a wonderful attribute to have, but it can be a little bit tough on the other people in the car or plane or whatever. Host james in manhattan, go ahead. Caller david. Host in manhattan . Please go ahead. And i was curious of National Review. I went to a newsstand and had a whole different stigma attached than it does now and they went to a newsstand that is the absolute truth. I started to watch firing line whenever i was home saturday morning pbs for many years. Hes to have the brother of the month or the brother of the week love luppercaseletter liberals and he would destroy their arguments for half an hour listen carefully and be patient and then at the end showed them how wrong the conclusions and the backup conclusions were completely wrong. I do want to ask you a comment about sarah palin and the Republican Party has changed to basically a party that is going in the direction of fascism. I will start with sarah palin. I think on balance it was a reckless selection think mr. Mccain was told and it was reported in newsweek that did a postelection issue that it was presented to him this way. You might win with her but you cant win without her. He spent like 15 minutes with her so we know it wasnt long and drawn out. Maybe you shouldve had dick cheney beyond the selection committee. Those always turn out interestingly. [laughter] search me. [laughter] the Republican Party is in tough shape. And it may take 25 or 30 years these are cycles. We are in a cycle it is the dissembling of the Reagan Coalition the Republican Party lost its way in the nineties and during the reign george w. Bush. The spending and the scandals and the lack of confidence. And the wars that we got on into that were costly in so many ways but yet i will miss the Republican Party an old friend of mine once said to me he asked his father dad, what gives you pleasure at this stage in life . He said voting republican and left alone by your mother. [laughter] two cheers for the old Republican Party but it god its work cut out for them. Im not sure its next leaders have quite announce themselves yet. Bobby jindal i hope he gets a second chance. His debut to review to the state of the union was not a successful moment but neither was bill clintons nominating speech for dukakis in 1988. They said thats all we need to hear from mr. Governor bill clinton. Things turned out a little different. So one weekend politics is an eternity but when you think about it this week it seemed to be the ultimate deathknell of the current Republican Party and wake up on sunday morning to read jack kemps obituary. Amazing. Host washington and slept here when he took us on a tour and we have one more hour to go. We have some dogwood here in the foreground the Washington Monument in the background. We are close to the Jefferson Memorial. And the famous title basin which of course it was too bad it got the association back in the early seventies but for some it will be forever associated with wilbur mills and fanny fox fanny fox being a stripper whose trade name was the argentine firecracker. They were driving along here one night and drink had been taken and the police car pulled them over and ms. Fox seeking to abscond herself left into the title basin so this lovely body of water is forever associated with a stripper who jumped into it. Hello. Look. At this site will be directed a Martin Luther king memorial. I did not know that. It will embody the man and the movement and the message to honor the 20th century visionary change through the principles of nonviolence and equality a memorial symbolizing promise and hope for a Brighter Future for humanity. Thats funny to think that just yesterday there was a story in the news about how the king family was charging the Memorial Foundation 800,000 for use in the reverend kings likeness on the sculpture. I dont know what sense that makes it escapes me. But here we are. Look. This was very much the fdr memorial. Franklin roosevelt made this memorial happen this was his pet project. We were standing on the front steps he would be looking straight across right into the white house and that was intentional. Around us are the famous japanese cherry blossoms. We are a little bit late one or two remaining on this one. That these of course were a gift from the people of japan do you remember why japan gave us these . It was a gift as a way to say thank you to the us and to Teddy Roosevelt for his role to broker the war between japan and russia. Sadly after pearl harbor some patriotic americans came down with hatchets and started to hack away at them that anything japanese was hateful. Fortunately that was stopped before the vandalism went far. But funny little story that sherry trees went all around before the Jefferson Memorial was built. When they started construction tree hugging good ladies of washington went they were so upset at the prospect of the cherry trees cut down to make the memorial they chained themselves and were refusing to move. So how do we get rid of the ladies . I think it was fdr with the clever idea to send refreshments. So with lemonade and tea and the moment came when they had to answer the inevitable call of nature. [laughter] and they and chained themselves from the tree the men with chainsaws and as royals are just like anything else if you build them then you can to make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. Its one of the more moving memorials and less celebrated. But a number of things that are poignant and at one and the Lincoln Memorial and in the other extreme and you have the grant memorial. And then the civil war under the administration of Abraham Lincoln. I think its appropriate these two men face each other what is the front lawn. Another reason i find this poignant is the memorial which is quite vast and complex is the work of a sculptor who worked on this for 20 years. And then died of exhaustion two weeks before it was completed. But his father who traded grant during his final illness. And refusing pain medication to stay alert and wanted to leave them memoirs as a means to support their family and they were famously published by a reader on a writer named mark twain a major huge amount of money. In todays dollars they would fetch the equivalent of eight. 2 Million Dollars i am a writer. Trust me this is a lot of money. [laughter] mr. Obama made two. 6 million last year from his books. All power to him but i always come down to the grant memorial and pay my respects. And finally an amazing fact it wasnt until reagans inaugural january 1981 that the president gave the inaugural address from here it had always been on the east front of the capital where you look into a parking lot. And it boggles the mind why no french man would have availed himself of this view. Dont take my word for it if you are sworn in as president wouldnt you rather look at this than a parking lot . Do you consider yourself a washingtonian. There is something about washington the matter how long you live here that makes you feel like a transient but im a happy transient and i hope to and appear. I dont think it will end up in arlington and there will be no memorials to me. But there will be some books at the barnes noble and then to profess my love. Host mr. Buckley its one of your Favorite Books . Why . I will confess i came there after i saw that exquisite adaptation on tv in 1981. But i fell for the book hard and reread it about twice a year not many books trey read with that frequency but its such a magnificent piece of writing and there are passages in it that target my heart and there are characters that i find more exquisite and marvelous portrayal but anyway thats one of my favorite novels i was rereading the last chapters of moby dick. And to study a couple of weeks ago my wife came in and tears were streaming down. [laughter] she said it must be a pretty good book. Host what is the process like to get a book made into a movie . [laughter] long. You just gave me a segway when thank you for smoking came out it had taken 12 years to the big screen and then to say it took 100 years to make moby dick a movie. [laughter] it is a strange process mill gibson bought the rights even before it was published. Then he got sidetracked with little projects like braveheart and the passions of christ which i understand were both terrible flops at the box office and arrested for driving while anti somatic. [laughter] to talented kids come along one was david sacks he and his partners have a Company Called paypal and sold it for one one. 4 billion. He wanted to produce it. Is a go talk to mel gibson so he spent 18 months negotiating it away from him. And by god he got it. Talented guide then 24 and ghostbusters and above all what i thank you have to have it is someone who is passionate who will not take no or yes financer. And they made it happen. It wasnt expensive it was about 7 million which covers the catering for those hollywood productions. But they did a fair job and it was a splendid job. Host and nick naylor pops up and other novels he is a side character. , you are on. Caller im a big tv fan mike and breakfast in bed with you. Are you still in bed . [laughter] it is still early here. But whats the difference i am just laughing out loud having a great time. I thank you just dropped your croissant. [laughter] caller i just wanted to say that i felt obama was a great candidate also and i did not vote for him but now i feel hes not so enchanting with the financial situation. I picked up my phone to call and say and ask a question. You can ask if there are discounts for bulk purchases. [laughter] i believe there are. Caller so how did it will woman from dc made a man from connecticut that that would be an interesting story. Something i did not know i did not know intel the obituary was published about another and in vancouver canada back in those days in order to get into college you have to have a math proficiency and pass a standardized test and she could not pass it so instead she went to vassar, an American College where her roommate was my fathers sister. My beloved aunt trish who left us last summer. Mother of ten children. And they said that i found the perfect girl for billy. Her name is pat and she is very regal. What a babe. [laughter] so they met and my dad was her date at the vassar prom and he visited her in vancouver the next summer. Only the second or third or fourth day. And then proposed marriage in the middle of a poker game. My mother was a beautiful debutante. This is not the first time she was asked and she said i have been asked this many times my answer is no to you now its yes can we get on with the poker game . And the canadian grandmother and my father at the foot of the stairs waiting to see what the reaction would be. And the appeals of laughter. And my grandmother was vastly amused but she said yes. And not from the world of letters or the intellectual world. And she was protestant. My father was a catholic and in those days we had to get permission to marry outside the church. She went from the glamorous world of vancouver to being a faculty wife at yale because my father taught spanish at yale what he was writing god and man. And her hair was in curlers with the vacuum cleaner she could not boil an egg. I dont think she ever been in the kitchen. But she was dutiful to take care of her man. So every morning get on the train in new haven and take cooking lessons from a man named james beard who became americas great chef and my mother became a very great chef she learned so much about food. Thats how they met. Married, my dad like to say , on the same day as Elizabeth Taylor was married for the first time. July 6, 1950. Host Christopher Buckley will you always be known as son of conservative William F Buckley and Patricia Buckley . Sure. It is unlikely i will be receiving the nobel prize for literature or any other thing. But even if i did, to the extent i would even warrant an obituary mr. Buckley son of William Buckley dies at 107. But sure. Thats fine. There were times when i probably would not have been at peace with that. But i am at peace with it now. Host rhode island good afternoon. Caller. I just want to say to mr. Buckley the first exposure to his father im a nixon fan, 50 years old. And to do a satire of your father and i said what an interesting man this guy must be. Went to see nixon anger a political republican by birth but im nonpartisan in my fifthgrade grandfather was John Brown Francis and a grip on the brown estate on Warwick Rhode island trying to make my family aware of politics and i told my daughter who runs a country and my exwife did not even vote and then after i read your book thank you for not smoking it came out on video i said you need to watch this video. It is a satire but 100 percent true. They watched it and seldom dont believe that. Are lobbyist and easy target for a satirist . They are and they are not as we say in washington i will refer to my prior statement the trickiest part of writing satire is competing with the gorgeous reality. I got the idea thank you for smoking watching the layer news hour them Mcneil Lehrer news hour is how i think of it. To have somebody on to present the latest evidence of smoking is bad for you and had at least two phds. And to balance that out they had on someone from the Tobacco Institute of course that is a lobby and she was an attractive woman and every time the scientist from the National Institute said something and presented the evidence at least seven words that were incomprehensible she would go oh please. And then square lemon juice and make it sound as though he was being the most preposterous in the world. That has to be an interesting job. So i just have to come out and hang out. So i got to hang out with her. So after a couple of days there is something i am dying to ask you but im feeling awkward. A beautiful smoker like lauren but call. She said i know a nice girl like me doing in a place like this . I said yes. Exactly. She said im just paying the mortgage and then in the book this is the nuremberg defense. [laughter] it was great fun writing the book. Host both of your parents smoked. Yes. My mom smoked for 65 years. She did not die of cancer but she died, you could say perhaps of complications. Her circulatory system gave out. And that is no good. Technically of the complications of to apply a stent we learned about that when Vice President cheney had his sixth. , sound like big been going off when he goes through the magnetometer. My dad smoked. But he gave up cigarettes early in his twenties but he smoked cigars. And unlike our former president mr. Clinton, he inhaled. That got him in the end. He got emphysema which is a very cruel disease that a lot of people must have. Im still oldfashioned enough to watch the Evening Network news while i make dinner and now ive got into the age where all the ads are aimed at me. Bone loss something retired one requiring flomax. [laughter] and copd chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Which emphysema technically is but its a very cruel disease and robs you bit by bit of your breath. Dont smoke. Host costa mesa california you are on with Christopher Buckley. Caller thanks for the great conversation. Happy to hear mr. Buckley is a great fan of moby dick there are biblical portions i admire the great on a great deal. I am reminded in 1949 my father about the first fm radio we could listen to Classical Music almost without interruption. So ive been doing that for a long time including volunteering and a local public station which plays Classical Music all the time. Ive been volunteering 27 years. Good for you. Now i read the New York Times as well as the boston globe will sell qnx are to somebody else. So when the Radio Station almost went best 12 Years Ago University of Southern California bail that out. What remedy do you propose to save Classical Music on radio . That is a fascinating question. Those are developments i would long to see i am a devoted listener to Classical Music. On the bright side there are so many ways to get it. You probably know about it like pandora. I can open my laptop and go to pandora and instructed to play for me among the menu if one can on 100 kinds of music. I can turn on comcast at home go to channel 478 i can have a choice of orchestral, streaming, brass, it is coming at us i dont do the ipod got only knows the variety are available there. But these are market forces. The New York Times is struggling terribly. And at times like that, things like qnx are will be looked at. But i promise you i will devote some time to thinking about what nick naylor may do to raise consciousness on behalf of Classical Music on fm radio. Host lake minnesota. Caller hi. Thanks for taking my call. I am a retired Flight Attendant. I started off young and blind and flighty. Pardon the pun. I have my serious side. 1963 i subscribed to National Review probably the only crew member who read the magazine. With the exception of half of the pilot core. I wrote a manuscript and flying experiences so now to find a literary agent to promote my book. You mentioned your dad was one of the first ones to give you a rejection. [laughter] did you get a lot of rejections from literary agents when you began your writing career . I got a lot of rejections. Not from literary agents but in the early days i would send an article into the New York Times. I collected a pretty thick file somewhere there. It isnt for the faint of heart. Its part of the enterprise. You develop certain calluses. But i say to young people you may have been Flight Attendant in 1963 but you sound like a young person and a pretty blonde girl. So i will say to you that if this is something you burn to do, do it. I always thought if it is good it will happen. Dont be discouraged. Dont give up. And my professor that stole on so the million and a half copies and be grateful for every word you can cut. Host philadelphia please go ahead. Caller good afternoon. Its great after in a great honor to speak with you. This is only the second time i managed to get through on the shows. The last time was gore vidal. [laughter] you had described yourself in your memoir and other writings as a collapsed capitalist. That is something i can identify with. This was a painful topic between you and your father as with mine. How much in your judgment catholicism drove your father in those political directions as well as his sense of adventure and experimentation . Or did he isolate that from his life . Thats an interesting question his catholicism is the most important in his life. His hierarchy of love and faith, family and friends and god came first. And i would say his catholicism informed his sensibility and personality. The most generous human being i have ever known. And he committed thousands of acts of quiet generosity. Giving money to people. And he was magnificently a generous man. And magnificently the christian. He was forgiving. One of his closest friends is a man named dick klerman who was head of correspondence for time magazine. And dick was one of his closest friends. At the Memorial Service and it closed with the line i can cite from memory, it occurs to me on my life i have been unconsciously on the lookout for the perfect christian. And when i found him he turned out to be a nonobservant jew. Anyway pup faith was bedrock and i came to my own conclusion but if there was a heaven i am virtually certain that said to lectures seen peter about his latin grammar if mom has made it there yet i dont know that she is complaining about the food. [laughter] host i had the pleasure bartending for your parents on a number of occasions in the early eighties. Your mother was a hoot to work for her and nan were my favorite. A great lady of new york society. Host paul send in 14 questions given the time restraints i will hand it to him and if he gets a chance he can answer you on his owns. Theres a lot of good questions i wish he wouldve started with that. Scottsdale arizona please go ahead. Caller thank you. Unlike the previous color the aged the Flight Attendant you seem like such a genuinely nice guy which is rare. It is just a facade. I dont think so. And the civility yukon that the politics of the day. Newspapers where theres a good deal of shrill can you ever get back to two people discussing opposite sides of the spectrum . And how do we get around to that if its possible . Very good questions. What i wish we would get back to is the Top Republican in the congress doing what they used to do not over a cup of coffee but a bottle of bourbon. And then you can call someone on the senate floor and say my distinguish colleague from the state of pennsylvania has the morals of the pig and then we are swapping jokes in the cloakroom. Tip oneill and he would go out and accuse reagan of starving orphans and reagan would respond but then they get together. I dont know what they drank and start telling jokes. It was the wd40 of democracy. It was a lubricant. So they got along and was socialized. Thats gone. It has become harsh and strident emperor the explosion of media im writing about this blog im totally new to it you write a piece and its posted and within five minutes you get views from people anonymously like gag me with the spoon. And those that against civility it sounds like shameless apple polishing but im talking to you and the studio the house that brian lamb built in and they call that the citadel of civility. So these exist. There are shows on tv that are informative if i dont know if one has come along to him on replace firing line. But who knows. We could all use some civility. This is what i like about mr. Obama. His temperament is that people are screaming at each other. And with this amazing temperament. But at some point he will be tested. Or to launch an attack at the united states. And then we will see the true pleasure. But temperamentally in scores very high on the civility scale. Host less than 15 minutes left with our guest this month new york city you are on. Caller to questions. First with the tour of the Lincoln Memorial you have worked for first president bush as a speechwriter and supported president obama what might you have to say about president bush and obama as public speakers . And im interested to hear any recollections you may have of your fathers race to be mayor . All start with the last one. I was 13 when pup ran for mayor. One of the most famous things he ever said when he announced he would run as a conservative candidate a reporter asked what would he do if he would run . The reply was demand a recount. Cited as one of the wittiest things in american politics. Its scary suddenly there was a bodyguard who is also his driver that he was built like a brick and then there would be a cop standing outside. And he put the conservative party and then five years later my uncle jimmy one election to the u. S. Senate in a threeway split. That is our moment in the sun. But it was fun while it lasted. President bush as a speaker he was Vice President one of the Great Adventures of my life. In part because it doesnt matter what the Vice President says. [laughter] for mr. Biden when he says run away or we will all die. [laughter] thank you joe. Go away. But for that reason i got to spend a lot of time with him. That mr. Bush had just me for most of the time. I got to hang out sometimes at air force to on the weekend and secret Service Agents gave a fundraising speech in sioux city. So i got to know him and love him very deeply. President obama is a superb speaker. I will say i was one of the first along with several other million give his speech at the 2004 democratic nomination. I wrote a piece and call him the tiger woods of american politics. I am being facetious of course but i recognized very early on obviously there is more to leading the and giving a good speech so we will see more as we move into the second and third and fourth 100 days. Host washington go ahead. Caller thank you very much to cspan and mr. Buckley. My father was in world war ii , a prisoner of war and missing in action his plane crashed in russia and a prisoner of war in a prison camp they are during winter 1944. Im asking because did your father or uncles or relatives involved in world war ii . Do you have any recommendations about writing a book on your fathers experiences . My father died 30 years ago and im catholic and one of the 51st cousins of business people. I am also one of 51st cousins. My father had nine brothers and sisters. Im sorry about your fathers experiences. My father was in the infantry in world war ii but not overseas. He spoke fluent spanish. In the Mysterious Ways the military works, he was assigned i think to Fort Sam Houston in texas to train mexicanamerican recruits. He was very funny about what you did in the war lack of glory. His biggest job was to get 1000 mexicanamerican recruits from texas to send the wheel this on a train without letting them contracting venereal disease along the way. The way he accomplish this is the train would stop periodically and the only way to keep them on board so they wouldnt run off to the nearest bordello was to tell them the train would only be there for ten minutes even if six hours. My uncle jimmy served in the us name me one navy and saw a lot of action in the pacific with major engagement and my late uncle john buckley served with patent George S Patton as a g2 officer in europe. Host Columbia South carolina you are the last call. Caller i am enjoying listening so much. Are any of your books in large print . I am old enough to have that. Also i was a friend of your and maureens in camden as a child and spent a lot of time at her house. I saw your father playing on the piano with his sister on two pianos one day. Also, do you think your father inherited any of your grandfather or grandmother qualities or if you remember any family gatherings in camden. Janet, its lovely to hear from you. You asked a lot. Yes they do exist in large print editions and pup is buried right next to dear maureen whom we lost in 1964 in connecticut. Host our guest for the last three hours in no particular order here are several of his books. The white house mess. Thank you for smoking. Florence of arabia. Little green men which we did not talk about, wet work we did not talk about. Supreme courtship and the latest losing mum and pup. You can find a list of his books thank you. Thank you for having me on. His thoughts on the upcomig 2020 election. Interviewed by Magazine Editor at large matt welch. After words is a