The immortal James Lane Buckley will turn 100 on Thursday, March 9.
I use the adjective in its literal sense. Jim has survived his nine siblings, a few of whom were older, most of whom were younger, one of them, dear Carol, by almost a generation. He outlived the shipmates, all of them as far as I can tell, with whom he sailed into the Battle of Leyte. Late in life, after taking on the correspondent job for his Yale class, he duly recorded comings and goings for the alumni magazine until he noticed to his considerable embarrassment that his column had become highly autobiographical.
Some years ago, he told me he had almost finished a book-length manuscript and was excited about a new career as an author. I suggested, with a bit of the imp, that he demand from his publisher a three-book contract. Here we are, a decade later, and the rumor flies that manuscript No. 3 waits expectantly in the word processor at some assisted-living facility.
How has he used all of that extra time, those 30 years beyond his allotted three score and ten? In a Jim Buckley kind of way. By committing a few acts of patriotic virtue and a thousand acts of private generosity. Into his hundredth year, he writes letters of reference, connects friend with friend, consoles the aggrieved, counsels the confused, and, always and everywhere, rises eloquently to the defense of his family, his country, and his Faith.
What can be said about such a man? I confine myself here to the few words that come explicitly pre-approved by the man himself. Back in the fall of 2020, in what some observers regarded as the upset of the year, Jim won the Buckley Prize awarded annually by National Review Institute. I celebrated the occasion with a brief article that caught his eye. As he told me how much he liked the piece, he blushed, of course, after which he quickly regained his courtroom composure, dismissing my investigators as “incompetent.” See below:
John [Buckley] paused, and then popped the question. Would I be willing to put together an oppo-research report on Jim [running for Senate reelection in New York in 1976]?
I squirmed.
Jim was then 52 years old. He had served in the wartime Navy. He had worked fringy deals in the oil patch. He had spent long stretches in markets that could not be said to have “emerged” comprehensively. He had been around long enough, that is, to have compiled at least the normal catalogue of personal indiscretions. Jim was by that time a good friend of mine and there are things you don’t really want to know about your good friends.
But I shared some of John’s concerns, as well . . . . I accepted the assignment.
In each of the key cities — New York, Washington, and Albany — I retained a gumshoe. In each case, I selected the roughest, leftiest piece of work I could find. I told them I was looking not just for the public-record stuff — DUIs, tax liens, domestic disputes, and the like. I wanted the raw file, too — rumor, bar talk, the kitchen sink. You could say that, much like Christopher Steele, I wanted the unverified and salacious stuff. My gumshoes grunted their assent and began to build the file . . .
Indulging a theatrical impulse, I dropped the three-inch-thick file on the tea table with a gratifying thud. John, who was almost as impatient as his kid brother Bill, eyed the file warily, fearful perhaps that I was primed for a marathon recitation of dark family episodes. John rapped the table and barked preemptively: “Neal, perhaps you could summarize your findings for us.” I replied that I could do so in a single sentence, which went, verbatim: “Jimmy’s criminal career seems to have peaked with the allegation, later refuted, that he had torn one of those tags off a mattress” . . .
I submit this judgment as the occasional author and frequent consumer of oppo-research for more than a half-century: Jim Buckley’s file was the single most boring document ever produced in the long and mud-speckled history of political barrel-scraping.
You can read the entire tribute here.