My first vote remains my best. It was for James L. Buckley’s reelection as a United States senator from New York. In six years in office, he had shown himself fearlessly principled, whether in calling for Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal before any other conservative in Congress or in opposing a taxpayer bailout for New York City, where about half his constituents lived. He also possessed the model demeanor for a statesman: Lucid, logical, and dispassionate, he focused on issues, not personalities. He brought this approach to bear not just in the Senate, but, later, on the federal bench, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
His new book exemplifies these qualities. He presents a meticulous argument for returning our Constitution to its first principles by making the federal government once again responsible only for problems national in scope. In particular, Buckley wants to end grant-in-aid programs through which the federal government distributes money to states and localities for state and local projects.
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