Our text today is a pair of classic Buckley quips from the great 1965 vintage. People who remember nothing else about William F. Buckley Jr.’s brief foray into elective politics recall his reply when asked what he would do if elected mayor of New York: He would “demand a recount.” And they remember, as well, his response when asked how he felt as he emerged from a meeting with the editorial board of the New York Times: He felt as if he had “just passed through the Berlin Wall.”
Somewhere in my attic is a photograph of Bill’s introductory press conference. He is grinning wolfishly and I am wincing in pain. He has just been asked what he would do as his first act of office and we both know what was coming next. He had come up with the “recount” crack a few weeks earlier and I had urged him not to use it in public. It was a Buckley-grade witticism, to be sure, but it was not likely to be good for unit morale. But Bill was a writer and not a politician, which is to say that he was constitutionally incapable of letting a great line go unused. He thus proceeded to roll it across the press room with perfect timing and to predictable effect. Merriment bounced off all four walls.
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