Overdrive

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Alistair Horne would seriously study the martial ways of the Germans and the French. In those days he was also studious, but always there was room for the spontaneous outburst. It was his turn to wait on table, one day, and his fate to be assigned The Boss's table. As he put down the large platter of chow mein he managed accidentally to drip it right down the length of the headmaster's tweeded sleeve. The ten boys (ten to a table, one master) watched with horror at this slow-motion profanation. It was only after he had set down the platter that Alistair recognized the enormity of the offense. So he turned and said, "That's all right, sir. It won't hurt you externally." He smiled nervously, and went off to fetch a rag. Mr. Pulling's reaction to student insolence was not easy to predict, because there were insufficient instances of it to make for reliable statistical generalization. But he let this one go by.

  Millbrook encouraged a civility among its students. There was practically no bullying, and when an instance of it was uncovered Mr. Pulling dramatically announced at the morning prayer session that he would close down the doors of the school rather than tolerate such stuff. The initiation ceremonies for new boys were theatrical enough to bring on a certain tension, but were absolutely painless. The Boss understood the need for traditions in a brand-new school, and egged some on, some more successfully than others. For instance, he would read the whole of A Christmas Carol to the entire school at the Christmas ceremony, to the progressive dismay of all who had heard the story once, or twice, or three times (there were six forms then). But, ho-ho-ho, he would persevere. His devotion to the war effort was such as to sponsor student vigils where, at night, we would strain to catch traces of German bombers, that we might report them to the military. The airplane identification training was turned over to Mr. Trevor, who proceeded in his most obnoxious way to require us to distinguish between miniature wooden Heinkel 111's and Messerschmitt 110's, in order to guarantee the security of Dutchess County. I took pleasure in telling him, after I had failed my third airplane identification test, about the lady who had won the prize in Great Britain by identifying the very first of the fabled Messerschmitt 262's—to the surprise of the community, given her notorious opacity at airplane-identification class—her instructor at one point exasperatedly professed her doubt that this student could distinguish between a kangaroo and a canary. But the R.A.F., on her advice, had risen, shot down the coveted fighter, and the mayor had given the lady a banquet and a huge silver cup. Now he asked her inquisitively what it was about the airplane that had distinguished it in her eyes? "Why," she replied, "at the identification class, the Messerschmitt 262 was the only airplane with a pilot in it!" Mr. Trevor was unamused.

  Alistair was one of four English boys who had come to America to escape the blitz. The youngest of these was positively the most insufferable brat ever exported by the United Kingdom. Lord Primrose was about twelve, and I bear today on my right leg the scar from the kicking he gave me in the ice rink when I was ordered to fetch him in, he having decided to ignore the hockey master. Alistair Horne was from London, and we were drawn together as roommates in our sixth-form year. Neither of us was apparently judged by Mr. Pulling as of leadership quality, because we found ourselves, in our third-floor eyrie, in charge of only three younger boys, instead of the customary twenty; one-and-a-half-boys each, as we delighted in putting it. Alistair made me a bootleg radio (these were forbidden), and read widely. I am godfather to his oldest girl. He is among Britain's top historians. Between us we have published forty books.

  Mr. Pulling contrived an agony I think altogether unique. Once a year, beginning in the winter term, every boy in the school had to deliver a five-minute speech to the entire school. This was done either at lunch, after the announcements, or in the morning, after the hymn and announcements. Some boys would be physically sick before their turn came. Some would freeze, for agonizing moments, while schoolboys and masters stared at their fingernails. But The Boss was determined that any graduate of his school should know how to address a large group on the subject of one's choice (a typical topic: "The History of the Ford Motor Company"). I think it fair to say that the system seemed to work. That is, after three or four years of it a student accepted the ordeal as that, to be sure: but as an ordeal related to the coming of age, which came to me and my thirteen classmates, nine of whom survive, probably faster as the result of Millbrook plus a world war, than otherwise.

  For those who grew up with Millbrook, indeed are older even than it, the school conjures up, as schools tend to do, a special image. Always there is the fragrance of the New England fall, and winter, and spring; the cider, the ice, the vernal torpor. Weekend dances with Ethel Walker students, hours of football practice, earning my first income by typing other students' papers ($1 per paper; grammar corrected, $1.25 per paper)—until The Boss discovered this, outlawed it as a "pernicious" habit, causing me to consult the dictionary, and to puzzle over the exotic use of the word; but, at Millbrook, we always knew that for better or for worse, if Mr. Pulling had said it, it was, de facto, so.

  Nathaniel Abbott writes me, a few weeks after the article's publication, an appreciative letter and confesses the pride he takes in his son, the incumbent headmaster. "Upon our return, I looked back into my barrel of broken glass and came up with a music program, a copy of which I enclose for you to include with your memoirs." I examine a nicely printed four-page folder, and read the title page: "Millbrook School Music Department, Fifth Annual Concert, May 23, 1943." And on page 3, the musical day's affliction $8, "Scherzo, Mendelssohn; Chorale, Franck; Country Gardens, Grainger—William Buckley." I note that my name appears thrice more in the program: as a member of the Glee Club and of the Orchestra, and as Librarian for the Orchestra. I had forgotten I was librarian for the Millbrook School Orchestra, but then I suppose the datum is perishable.

  When Reagan was inaugurated I made a rough resolution to write periodically, but with studied infrequency, to the President. I saw no reason to lose touch with a very old friend, and there is of course the collusive imperative: we are both engaged in the same business. I put it to him over the telephone during the interregnum, and he gave me the device to use to assure that a letter gets placed on his personal pile. I have used it sparingly, but frequently enough to maintain a tactile sense of communication. I write him now my own analysis of the Stockman business, and a sentence or two on the nature of my own misgivings about the economic program. I close, "Take care, and promise not to give away the Erie Canal. Remember, we built it, we paid for it, and it is OURS!"

  The reference is to a public disagreement he and I had over the Panama Canal Treaty, which he opposed, in 1978. We debated in South Carolina, on television, for two hours. He brought along as his experts and interrogators Admiral Jack McCain, former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific (and an old personal friend); Roger Fontaine, professor at Georgetown; and Pat Buchanan, the columnist and former speechwriter for Nixon. I brought Admiral Zumwalt, former Chief of Naval Operations; James Burnham, the strategist and philosopher; and George Will, the columnist. Both teams had access to Ellsworth Bunker, who had directed the treaty negotiations, and the chairman was Senator Sam Ervin, who had presided over the Watergate hearings. It was a very successful encounter, for the reason that everyone who participated in the discussion had exactly the same priority of concerns. Here is where debates genuinely contribute to the public understanding. (I remember afterward, at the reception, getting the sad news that Hubert Humphrey had died.)

  I think, ironically, that Reagan would not have been nominated if he had favored the Panama Canal Treaty, and that he wouldn't have been elected if it hadn't passed. He'd have lost the conservatives if he had backed the treaty, and lost the election if we'd subsequently faced, in Panama, insurrection, as in my opinion we would have.

  Six months after the debate, getting ready in Pasadena to set out with Pat to dinner with the Reagans at Pacific Palisades, I was told over the telephone by my host that I was to tell the driver to proceed very slowly up the drive. />
  "Why?"

  "Never mind why, just do as I say," he teased.

  So I did; and as we mounted his driveway the headlights shone on three successive cardboard signs, each four feet square, on the first of which had been etched in huge red crayon:

  "WE BUILT IT!" Then,

  "WE PAID FOR IT!" and, finally, tacked to the front door,

  "AND IT'S OURS!"

  I decided to add a P.S. to my letter. "Barbara Walters asked for my help in getting together one or two questions to ask you in the forthcoming interview [scheduled for Thanksgiving]. Here's one you may want to think about: 'When the Constitution made the President commander-in-chief, the Founders envisioned a man directing an army or a fleet, and the worst that could result was a lost battle, or war. But in a thermonuclear age, Constitutional authority seems to give the President the right to take steps that could result in the elimination of American society. Is it wise that a single man should exercise that much power?' "

  Barbara had asked me the week before, while I was attending a party given by Roy Cohn and Tom Bolan in honor of Van Galbraith, who had been designated ambassador to France, if I had any thoughts on any questions she might ask Reagan, with whom she was scheduled to do an interview. I promised to think up two or three tough ones, did so, and phoned them to her last Sunday. But afterward it occurred to me that I shouldn't be in the business of ambushing an old friend, which is why I decided to relay the question to the old friend. In doing so I had no sense that I was emasculating the question. It would be a tough one to confront, whether on one second's notice, or one week's.

  Frances tells me over the telephone that the WNET people are anxious for at least a tentative reading on whether I'll take on the Brideshead Revisited assignment. I have tried to reach Alistair Cooke on the telephone, but got no further than establishing that he was somewhere in Vermont. I decide to go with it, and speak with Sam Paul of WNET, whom I haven't met; he is to prove bright and amiable. I tell him my schedule is pretty intractable, and arrange to view the entire series a week from Saturday in Stamford, and the following Saturday to tape the whole of the commentary. Having made the decision, I was glad of it; and all the more glad, ten days later, on seeing it whole, inasmuch as it seemed to me to have a most fearfully anti-Catholic impact. This was not so much intentional as intrinsic to the plot, written by someone with a transcendent, if misanthropic, faith in what he was up to. Having made most of the Catholics in his book personally insufferable, Waugh replied huffily to a critic by observing in a letter that "God . . . suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God." In any case, it seemed to me that if only for the sake of doing a little historical justice to the author's intention, it made sense to sketch in the background, to protect against any facile conclusion by the uninformed that the author was an anti-Christian fanatic—to which end I secured the help of critic and novelist Wilfrid Sheed, Hugh Kenner about whom I have written, and Peter Glenville, retired as a theater and movie director, a student at Oxford in the thirties, with whom Waugh once discussed a movie script. Weeks later, Herb Caen, the unbottled scorpion of San Francisco (for whom I have a fugitive liking) would write in his column how inappropriate was my own selection to introduce the series:

  HOW LITTLE WE KNOW

  SLICE OF WRY: Maxwell Arnold suggests that William Buckley Jr., fairest flower of the right wing, is an odd choice to act as host of the TV series based on Evelyn Waugh's classic English novel, Brideshead Revisited. On Page 543 of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, we find the author writing to Tom Driberg on June 6, 1960. After congratulating him on a magazine article about right-wing movements, Waugh asks Driberg, "Can you tell me: did you in your researches come across the name of Wm. F. Buckley Jr., editor of a New York, neo-McCarthy magazine named National Review? He has been showing me great & unsought attention lately & your article made me curious. Has he been supernaturally 'guided' to bore me? It would explain him. ... If anything can."

  I wrote to Caen:

  Dear Herbert: The item on Brideshead, Waugh, and me was understandable fun. Though perhaps a little skepticism would have been in order, even as I'd have shown skepticism toward any writer who pronounced that "Herb Caen is a bore." We are other things. The letter you quoted, Waugh-to-Driberg, was an inside joke. Waugh had just finished reading a book by me the last chapter of which is an attack on Driberg. Following the letter you quoted were several not listed by the anthologist Mr. Amory, for reasons unknown. Mr. Waugh also submitted a piece to National Review and wrote a book review for us. His last letter to me, I quote:

  Combe Florey House

  Combe Florey

  Nr. Taunton

  2nd April 63

  Dear Mr. Buckley:

  Very many thanks for Rumbles. [Rumbles Left and Right by WFB, New York: Putnam's 1962.]

  Some of the essays were familiar to me from National Review. I reread them with the same zest as those which were new. You have the very rare gift of captivating the reader's attention in controversies in which he has no direct concern. I congratulate you on the collection. At your best you remind me of Belloc; at your second best of Randolph Churchill.

  . . . Please accept my greetings for Easter (which I shall be spending in Rome).

  Yours sincerely,

  Evelyn Waugh

  Herb, I thought the world of Evelyn Waugh, but sometimes when I think of what he wrote about me, I blush.

  Yours cordially,

  Bill

  Herb Caen is not in the business of collecting personal jokes at his expense, so the best he got around to publishing in his column was:

  OKAY, fair's fair: The late Evelyn Waugh, author of Brideshead Revisited, did once refer to William F. Buckley Jr. as a bore (Buckley is "host" of the Ch. 9 series based on the book), but later, they became dear friends, as befits two hard-working snobs. As for the series itself, IT is a bore—just too excruciatingly dated for words, my dear, and dreadfully close to self-satire. The clothes are nice, though ... (I speak as a Waugh fan. A Handful of Dust is his classic, whereas Brideshead is Waugh at his worship-the-rich worst) ...

  Herb does not mind communicating with snobs, provided they are hardworking, and accordingly wrote me a letter so pleasant it would have ruined his reputation if it had appeared in his column. ("I envy you your equable temperament. Perhaps that accounts for your good looks, flawless diction and full head of hair. . . .") He enclosed yet another comment on Brideshead, this from a nineteen-year-old college student who looked at ten minutes of one segment, then left the room, remarking, "What is this, a kind of preppy Roots?'"

  Time, now, to focus on the speech, part of an all-day affair at the Waldorf sponsored by Yankelovich, Skelly and White, the well-known pollsters, the afternoon half of which was to be devoted to Business and the Media, with my twenty minutes the opening remarks.

  I'll make several points, beginning with the failure of the press to live up to its own critical criteria. This I'll illustrate primarily by examples taken from television. We published recently an account of the infrequency with which the television media mentioned deficit financing and non-productivity-related wage demands as factors contributing to high prices. CBS mentioned monetary policies only six percent of all the times it discussed inflation—Tom Bethell actually counted. During two years of television news, 1978-79, only five references were made to budget deficits (this would be in interesting contrast to the frequency of the media's stated concern after Reagan's program was inaugurated). I would discuss some of the planted axioms of liberal economics—for example, the unexamined philosophical premises of the graduated income tax. I would examine, also, the impact that that which is visualizable tends to have on the television news. It is much easier to convey the image of a single child or mother blasted to eternity as the result of the bombing in Vietnam than successfully to communicate the quality of life of Ivan Denisovich, multiplied by a factor of ten to fifteen million, in a camp to which CBS cameras have no access.

  I completed my notes, and ate t
he perfect chicken sandwich Gloria brought me, with a glass of cool white wine. Pat came in, en route to her lunch, and we discussed the weekend plans, and she told me now don't -forget that my black tie and cummerbund were in the pocket of my tux, and I promised I'd remember, and walked down the stairs with her, saw her out, and dangled for a minute over the harpsichord.