Bill Buckley was the founder and editor of NR, and the fount of much of its cheeky personality. Bill Rusher became, early in the magazine’s life, the publisher who made sure the bills were paid, the bad cop in dealing with young staffers’ derelictions, and a guardian of ideological discipline. Outside the walls of 150 East 35th Street, he was also a serious presence — a consummate debater, a mentor of young conservatives, and a skilled political operator, the man most responsible for keeping the Draft Goldwater movement going and, thus, for fostering the shift in the Republican party that eventually gave us President Reagan.
David Frisk, a young newspaperman turned academic, has done a superb job of chronicling the life and times of William A. Rusher, from his discovery as a high-school freshman that, as he later put it, “I am 100 percent a political animal,” through his years as a lawyer and Senate investigator of Communist subversion, on to 31 years as publisher of National Review, and finally to retirement in his beloved San Francisco.
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