San Tanenhaus On Bill Buckley

His new biography uncovers a deeply complicated figure on the American right.

Sam is a biographer, historian, and journalist. He used to be the editor of the New York Times Book Review, a features writer for Vanity Fair, and a writer for Prospect magazine. He’s currently a contributing writer for the Washington Post. His many books include The Death of Conservatism and Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, and his new one is Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America.

It’s a huge tome — almost 1,000 pages! — but fascinating, with new and startling revelations, and a breeze to read. It’s crack to me, of course, and we went long — a Rogan-worthy three hours. But I loved it, and hope you do too. It’s not just about Buckley; it’s about now, and how Buckleyism is more similar to Trumpism than I initially understood. It’s about American conservatism as a whole.

For three clips of our convo — Buckley as a humane segregationist, his isolationism even after Pearl Harbor, and getting gay-baited by Gore Vidal — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: me dragging Sam to a drag show in Ptown; the elite upbringing of Buckley during the Depression; his bigoted but charitable dad who struck rich with oil; his Southern mom who birthed a dozen kids; why the polyglot Buckley didn’t learn English until age 7; aspiring to be a priest or a pianist; a middle child craving the approval of dad; a poor student at first; his pranks and recklessness; being the big man on campus at Yale; leading the Yale Daily News; skewering liberal profs; his deep Catholicism; God and Man at Yale; Skull and Bones; his stint in the Army; Charles Lindbergh and America First; defending Joe McCarthy until the bitter end and beyond; launching National Review; Joan Didion; Birchers; Brown v. Board; Albert Jay Nock; Evelyn Waugh; Whittaker Chambers; Brent Bozell; Willmoore Kendall; James Burnham; Orwell; Hitchens; Russell Kirk; not liking Ike; underestimating Goldwater; Nixon and the Southern Strategy; Buckley’s ties to Watergate; getting snubbed by Reagan; Julian Bond and John Lewis on Firing Line; the epic debate with James Baldwin; George Will; Michael Lind; David Brooks and David Frum; Rick Hertzberg; Buckley’s wife a fag hag who raised money for AIDS; Roy Cohn; Bill Rusher; Scott Bessent; how Buckley was a forerunner for Trump; and much more.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the Biden cover-up, Walter Isaacson on Ben Franklin, Robert Merry on President McKinley, Tara Zahra on the last revolt against globalization after WWI, N.S. Lyons on the Trump era, Arthur C. Brooks on the science of happiness, and Paul Elie on crypto-religion in ‘80s pop culture. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On last week’s episode on Project 2025, a fan writes:

I enjoyed the David Graham interview. He was smart enough not to follow you down some of your rabbit holes.

Another writes:

I had a very interesting experience listening to your pod with David Graham: I had the feeling that we’re all focusing on the wrong things if we put Project 2025 in our sights. While I found David an engaging guest, I didn’t find his cautionary words about creeping theocracy terribly compelling, nor did I feel — and I really can’t believe I’m about to say this — that the Heritage folks were all that in the wrong about trying to reshape the government according to their vision.

I think what may be happening is that so many of us simply recoil from the evident glee of this administration in pursuing their aims, especially if it includes the side benefit of hurting others! Instead, I’d rather we focus on the illegal renditions, the threats to habeas corpus, the strange interest in pissing off our friends, the desire to destroy sectors in which the US is the clear leader in the world, and an accompanying desire to find the least capable people to lead these agencies. So maybe let’s focus on these things rather than policy positions — which we may disagree with, but don’t necessarily threaten the existence of liberal democracy in America.

I feel much the same way — but the incompetence with which they pursue legitimate policy changes still amazes. Another listener:

I’m sorry you’ve been sick, Andrew. I hope you get some rest and recover. You have a difficult job: managing a podcast that covers controversial and complex topics and a fan base who often disagrees with you.

On the subject of Project 2025, I thought you did a good job disputing the catastrophizing by the leftists, the moderates, and the Never Trumpers on the actual changes Trump is making. You also pointed out that Obama and Biden violated Constitutional and traditional norms for the presidency, opening the way for what Trump is doing. Even George W. Bush using extraordinary rendition and “black sites” paved the way for Trump removing people without due process. American governmental norms have eroded for many years.

I worked in the state government in Utah and Washington State. I was not an administrator, but I did have an opportunity to see how state laws and regulations were implemented by merit (i.e. civil service) employees. You gently alluded to federal employees whom you think took on too much initiative for interpreting and implementing laws. Since I was not a federal employee, I can’t comment directly on them, but the state employees I worked with were usually scrupulous to carry out policies and laws. We also had codes of ethics we had to follow.

In Utah, after 40 years of Democratic administrations, when Republicans came in, they just assumed state workers were lazy and incompetent — much like the attitude of Trumpers and DOGE types now. They took a chainsaw approach to changing state government.

In your sort of negative ideological evaluation of federal employees, you didn’t offer any evidence of the federal government being run inefficiently or not. A lot of critics of the government do that, so you are not alone, but if you’re interested in the quality of public administration, maybe you could find someone with expertise in this area to interview — a respected, published person who can talk about issues like how public employees work with legislators, how they cope with changes in administrations, codes of the ethics, merit employees vs. appointed, efficiencies, and inefficiencies.

Earlier this year we had Michael Lewis on the pod defending the victims of DOGE. Here he describes DOGE cutting effective government programs:

Here’s a guest rec:

Andrew Klavan just released a new book called The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. You may already know this, but Klavan is a popular podcast host with The Daily Wire and a celebrated novelist and writer. You might also enjoy his memoir about going from an atheist to a Christian: The Great Good Thing. It would be a fascinating conversation on the intersection of art, culture, and faith!

A reader writes:

I’m waiting to hear what you have to say about Biden’s cancer, especially with the ridiculous backlash against the new Biden book. Inquiring minds are dying to know!

I’ll be getting into it with Tapper and Thompson in next week’s Dishcast. Gonna read their book this weekend.

Another reader dissents over a small line in last week’s column, “The Pope, The President, And America”:

You continue to parrot Israeli propaganda about “human shields” — a term which implies that Hamas embeds among civilians to try to deter Israel from bombing Hamas targets. What’s actually going on with Hamas is guerrilla warfare.

Hamas — with its zero tanks, zero artillery, zero planes, and zero viable anti-aircraft weapons — would be destroyed by Israel’s US-provided F-35s in an afternoon if it fought like a traditional army. Instead, Hamas has to engage in guerilla warfare: hits and run, ambushes, and so forth. Hence their strategy of embedding among civilians, militarizing civilian infrastructure, and tunneling — a strategy they got from their predecessors in asymmetric warfare, like the Viet Cong against the Americans.

There may be isolated cases where the term “human shields” is an appropriate description of Hamas’s conduct. That term would certainly qualify if Hamas actually built a tunnel beneath European Hospital in Gaza, as the IDF claims (though Israeli and Western media have called it into question). But in general, human shielding has little to do with Hamas’s strategy. In fact, it’s the Israelis who systematically use human shields in Gaza: commandeering Palestinian-civilian men and boys to clear tunnels for them. (This is practice is so common it has a name: the “mosquito protocol.”)

And one more point: while Hamas militarizing civilian infrastructure is obviously a war crime that endangers Gazan civilians, the large majority of civilian deaths appear to have nothing to do with this. In its analysis of the October 2023 bombing, for example, Airwars reported, “Of the minimum 1,900 children killed, 92 percent were killed in incidents involving the destruction of a residential building.” There was no evidence of militant activity in practically any of these homes; Israel simply bombed them as part of its “Where’s Daddy?” program of systematically bombing to death alleged Hamasniks when they went home to see their families.

In other words, most civilians are being killed in a circumstance that has nothing whatsoever to do with the militarization of civilian infrastructure (what Israel calls “human shields”).

On a central theme of last week’s column:

As a Chicago Catholic, I’m also impressed with Pope Leo and view him as a counter to President Trump. However, I think the distinction between them is different from the one you note and more complex than just “good guy vs. bad guy.”

The difference between them dawned on me as I was reading Trump’s commencement address at the University of Alabama. There was much in the address that was of the Trump we know: he “weaved” his way across a variety of topics, inserting self-congratulatory phrases, bogus claims, and comedic digressions.

But his address was also a classic commencement message, in that he included advice to the graduates in the form of a list of “the biggest lessons I’ve learned from a lifetime spent building dreams and beating the odds.” His list included a few items found in the garden variety commencement message: Love what you do. Work hard. Never give up. But a number of others really point to who he is: Don’t lose your momentum. Trust your instincts. Think of yourself as a winner. Don’t consider yourself a victim. Be an original. You’re one of a kind.

Trump’s tips revealed he is the raw embodiment of an internal locus of control. None of his life lessons made reference to anyone but himself. There was no call to serve others. No counsel to build your network. It was all about how you conquer the world all by yourself.

And Trump governs like he believes America has an internal locus of control. Who needs allies? Heck, even his executive branch has an internal locus of control. Who needs Congress?

This is why he hates wokeism. That’s all about an external locus of control.

Eight days after Trump addressed the graduates in Tuscaloosa, Pope Leo gave his first homily, invoking the words of Peter — “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — when Jesus asked Peter who he was. This response, Pope Leo instructed, is a sign of Peter’s understanding of two things: “the gift of God and the path to follow in order to allow himself to be changed by that gift.” Pope Leo uses Peter to teach us that an internal locus of control can be fully formed by the external Heavenly King.

Trump’s mantra: I alone can fix it. Pope Leo’s: Be changed by the gift.

One more on the piece:

Just wanted to say I loved last week’s column on Pope Leo and his Midwestern roots. As a Chicagoan, it hit perfectly.

Speaking of canines:

I have often wondered how the dog became your Dish logo. I’m a communications designer, and I think the dog is charming, and I’m sure there must be a story behind it?

The logo was originally Dusty, my first beagle, but with the arrival of Eddy, Bowie, and now Truman, the logo represents all of the Dish dogs:

left to right: Eddy, Dusty, Bowie, Truman

Here’s a question I get a lot:

Just wondering about your dog’s name — honoring Capote or Harry S? Or is he the “true man” of your dreams?

Harry, not Capote. Truman is just an ordinary mutt with an outsized sense of pluck and charm.

Another reader looks to children’s television:

Just wondering if you’ve seen the trailer for this new series coming to Apple TV+, Lulu Is a Rhinoceros:

It’s based on a children’s book that I’d never heard of before, but when I googled it I found websites that referred to the main character both as a bulldog who “identifies” as a rhino, and as a rhino who “presents” as a bulldog. It seems some people think it’s safe to identify Lulu by her biological species primarily (“a children’s book about a bulldog…”), while others think it’s better to call her, objectively, the species that she *says* she is.

The subtext to this is pretty obvious I think. This is pretty much the opposite of, say, The Ugly Duckling. In that story, there is a deep objective reality that the child doesn’t understand but ultimately learns to appreciate — and even finds liberating. But in Lulu Is a Rhinoceros, there is no objective reality at all, just the fantasies that we have about ourselves — and everyone, presumably, is supposed to go along with them.

I’m not sure this is yet another kiddie book telling children that their bodies are irrelevant in deciding if they are a boy or a girl, and that it is all socially constructed, and changeable at will. It looks more like banal “you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be” pabulum. But yes, children are increasingly told there is no natural reality, or objective world. It’s depressing and terrible for children trying to grow up.

One more email for the week:

My husband and I — both old Boomers — live in Key West. The reputation here is that it’s a “Gay Mecca,” which as a vacation spot, it still is. What has changed drastically is that unlike places like Wilton Manors — also a very gay location in Florida — Key West is so expensive that our gay demographic skews to so many older gays that one rarely meets anyone gay under 60 who actually lives here.

Which brings me to my story: our resident, rich, gay, Boomer population has drastically reduced financial support for our primary state/local gay organization, Equality Florida. What happened? Equality Florida changed from a focus on LGB rights to a fanatical obsession with all things trans. And us Boomers are not happy. Our recent fundraiser dinner, which would encompass 300 to 400 paying guests, only saw 35 people attend this year. We haven’t made what was a substantial annual donation in the past; we paid nothing the past three years. There are many old/older gays here who are very unhappy with the young ones, and we are not afraid to close our checkbooks to express it.

It’s frustrating that I believe we are a very large gay demographic that gets no recognition. Perhaps that will change, someday?

Here’s hoping. The former gay rights groups are no longer about gay rights or gay people, but about fomenting a gender revolution that will make homosexuality itself disappear.

But they are now increasingly funded by leftist foundations and a handful of super-rich, super-left donors — so withdrawing small donations makes little difference.

Many gay men of my own generation have indeed effectively withdrawn from any identification with this homophobic gender extremism — but none of the younger fanatics care. The one generation they have contempt for is the one that survived AIDS and won them civil rights. I don’t think this will last. But it’s grueling.

Thanks as always for the emails, especially the dissents, which you can send here: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

You can follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed. Here’s a note from the week:

Reading JD Vance’s interview with Ross, I’m struck by a couple of things. Vance denies he is over-reaching on immigration because he has no interest in what lefties who backed unlimited mass migration under Biden are now saying.

But what of us who want mass deportations, criticized Biden, but insist on legal and humane methods? He has nothing for us either. He reiterates the unproven notion that Abrego Garcia was and is “a reasonably high-level gang member in MS-13.” If he has that evidence, he should provide it. Then he says that it would take “extraordinary diplomatic pressure” to ask Bukele to send Abrego Garcia back. Unserious.

His means for expediting deportations, moreover, are entirely punitive and authoritarian, not legislative and humane. No e-Verify, no big increase in immigration courts and judges, no new laws, just lots of cops and detention camps. Fear over humanity. Raw power and fear over the rule of law.

He also refuses to acknowledge the insane abuses in the El Salvador prison, which amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” and would never pass any Catholic test of treating all human beings with dignity. Vance wants to demonize Garcia and then throw into a gulag where torture and violence are routine – even after deporting him to the wrong country.

And he postures as a Catholic. A Catholic for dehumanization, violence, cruelty, torture, and lying. These are not just policy errors; they are deeply immoral.

Another note:

A foreign friend is due to renew a visa this week. Her lawyer advised her to remove any mention of Trump or Israel/Palestine from her social media. AI systems have been unleashed for mass surveillance of online content. The chilling of free speech in America to protect this president and to censor discussion of a foreign country’s war is real, ongoing, and appalling.

One more:

I’m beginning to think liberals are effectively helpless at this point. Here is Joe Stiglitz complaining about the Trump administration’s terrible censorship and meddling in a federally funded lecture in a Danish university. Trump demanded they disavow DEI.

But in the first paragraph, Stiglitz notes: “under President Biden, attention to D.E.I. issues had been a requirementfor receiving the grant.” So ideological meddling from the Dems is no big deal. Reversing it by Trump is an outrage.

I genuinely don’t think many liberals see the double-standard. Biden seized the entire federal government and turned every single part of it into a machine for race and sex discrimination and the imposition of gender ideology. Yet reversing that is somehow the overreach.

See you next Friday.

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