Someone should tell the story of this odd couple, because many today would find it hard to believe. Politics often feels like an ideological blood-sport, with pundits mercilessly bludgeoning one another to entertain the agitated masses. But while the godfather of the modern conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr., was a happy warrior in the world of intellectual combat, he was also blessed with a genius for friendship — and he counted a handful of committed liberals as close friends: John Kenneth Galbraith, Allard Lowenstein, and, perhaps most notably, Murray Kempton.
Kempton was, in Buckley’s words, a “socialist — a sworn enemy of all anti-Communist legislation, sworn friend of militant unionism.” He was also, according to Buckley, “the finest writer in the newspaper profession,” with characteristic “wit and irony and a compassion which is sometimes unruly.” More to the point, he was “a great artist and a great friend.”
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