THE WEEK

□ A friend of ours has a solution: “Nominate Joe Biden to the Court, and give him a copy of Bork’s speeches.”

□ Caspar Weinberger’s unexpected resignation kept him from surpassing Robert McNamara as the longest- serving Secretary of Defense in U.S. history. A few prominent features stand out on the landscape of Weinberger’s nearly seven years of service. Weinberger was not a great manager nor a brilliant student of defense policy, the complexities of which he did not even try to grasp. He rarely arbitrated among the military services, preferring to let the chiefs sort out their own differences. His reluctance actually to use military force may have helped the Administration avoid certain fiascos, but also made for a paralyzing indecision at critical times such as the Lebanon crisis. But for all his shortcomings, Weinberger was the principal architect of the largest, and most needed, peacetime military buildup in American history. He never wavered, faltered, or compromised in his conviction that this rearmament was essential to our national security, fully justified as a response to the Soviet armament program, and sorely underfunded by a shortsighted Congress. His firmness on these points exasperated his political opponents (of whom there were many), helped keep his boss on course, and served his country admirably.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

□ A friend of ours has a solution: “Nominate Joe Biden to the Court, and give him a copy of Bork’s speeches.”

□ Caspar Weinberger’s unexpected resignation kept him from surpassing Robert McNamara as the longest- serving Secretary of Defense in U.S. history. A few prominent features stand out on the landscape of Weinberger’s nearly seven years of service. Weinberger was not a great manager nor a brilliant student of defense policy, the complexities of which he did not even try to grasp. He rarely arbitrated among the military services, preferring to let the chiefs sort out their own differences. His reluctance actually to use military force may have helped the Administration avoid certain fiascos, but also made for a paralyzing indecision at critical times such as the Lebanon crisis. But for all his shortcomings, Weinberger was the principal architect of the largest, and most needed, peacetime military buildup in American history. He never wavered, faltered, or compromised in his conviction that this rearmament was essential to our national security, fully justified as a response to the Soviet armament program, and sorely underfunded by a shortsighted Congress. His firmness on these points exasperated his political opponents (of whom there were many), helped keep his boss on course, and served his country admirably.