by Damozel | (h/t TBogg) Christopher Buckley can't stomach Sarah Palin or the new, reinvented McCain. In a piece called Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama, Buckley the Younger writes:
Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon..I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column....Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that....
Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first. (The Daily Beast)
Buckley points out that he went to bat for McCain back when Limbaugh and his ilk were regularly trashing him. He admired McCain. He says of McCain all the things I too used to believe and have come since this campaign to doubt. I would never have voted for McCain, but I respected him and for all the reasons cited by Buckley:
He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation (The Daily Beast)
And now?
A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking? (The Daily Beast)
.Pretty devastating. And there's more. It's not just that Buckley is repelled by what McCain and his campaign have become; it's that he sees in Obama the makings of a leader.
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR....I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty..(The Daily Beast).
Yeah, I wish. Buckley wants the exact opposite from Obama of what I want, since I reject Buckley's premises and therefore his conclusions. But knowing what I know about Obama, I'm pretty sure Buckley is way more likely than I am to get his political wish list fulfilled.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves...Obama has in him...the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for..Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. (The Daily Beast).
That's it, Christopher B: jump on the unity pony and ride off into the bipartisan rainbow with Barry O! I'll be stomping along behind in a surly "hard left" manner like the DFH I am. We were right all along, you know.
Also: *Sigh*. Only in a country that's moved far too far to the right would Obama pass for a "lefty." He is the triangulating sensible neoliberal par excellence.
TBogg says: "Somebody better hide K-Lo's plastic round-tipped scissors. Christopher Buckley is voting pro-terrorist."
Wonkette remarks:
Not that it matters, because the modern Republican fat-ass troglodyte with a sixth-grade education and a dollar-forty in the bank is not exactly spending a lot of time reading books, but talented conservative author and essayist Christopher Buckley is now officially in the tank...The author of such excellent satirical novels as Little Green Men and Thank You For Smoking, Buckley is also the back-page columnist for National Review....
The Freepers are already incandescent with impotent rage and foaming at the mouth---in other words, pretty much as they always are. If you can't bear to go to their site, enjoy the sampling Wonkette has provided. Aren't you thrilled they're on the other team?
Amusingly, over at NRO's The Corner, they've been running fawning friendly interviews with Chris all week. A vague request for comment on this column by Mark Steyn has not yet been answered. Presumably K-Lo and Jonah are wating for the "grownups" to weigh in seriously, or alternatively for a particularly insane email they can quote in lieu of coming up with a rosy response to this rather ominous column from a current high-profile National Review contributor.
So far, Mark Steyn has weighed in on behalf of the Cornerites. Yawn.
What about Jonah Goldberg, whom Susan of Texas calls "a mash-up of George Costanza, Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, and The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons"? Jonah Goldberg thinks Obama's character is bad and that he "threw his own grandmother under the bus"; he thinks the scales on which Buckley is weighing the candidates "seem awfully rigged." Meh. At least he doesn't accuse Buckley the Younger of throwing Buckley the Elder off the bus by voting for Obama.
Abe Greenwald thunders feebly about Buckley's belief in Obama's "potential" at Commentary.
K-Lo went home to repine, I guess, after enjoining readers to "fight on," and reminding them that "we" still have weeks before election day. She didn't mention Buckley.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a, etc.
Meanwhile, former Governor William Milliken, who endorsed McCain during the primary, seems on the point of un-endorsing him.
"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."
Milliken, a lifelong Republican, is among some past leaders from the party's moderate wing voicing reservations and, in some cases, opposition to McCain's candidacy.
During a stop in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island, said he's voting for Obama and urging others to do likewise.
McCain campaigned for Chafee's unsuccessful re-election bid in 2006, but Chafee said he is concerned McCain has swung to the right, a divisive strategy that could make it difficult for him to govern.
"That's not my kind of Republicanism," said Chafee, who now calls himself an independent. "I saw what Bush and Cheney did. They came in with a (budget) surplus and a stable world, and look what's happened now. In eight short years they've taken one peaceful and prosperous world, and they've torn it into tatters."
"I'm not supporting either of them at this point," he said. "Suffice it to say there are a number of people who have been strong Republicans in the past, including party chairs, who feel as I do." (Grand Rapids Press)
Comments on the Buckley piece are here.
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I see in Christopher Buckley a rarity among conseratives - man with a brain, a soul, and no room for self-delusion. After the way McCain has behaved throughout the campaign - culminating in him referring to a presidential candidate as "that one", and Sarah Palin's incompetence and now PROVEN corruption of power, how can anybody defend that ticket? Conservatives like Buckley who can admit when their guy just isn't cutting it are in very short supply - the only other one I can think of off the top of my head is Andrew Sullivan. If you listen to every other conservative talking head they've basically been reduced to being apologists for McCain/Palin. Interestingly enough, they stopped being apologists for Bush a long time ago...
And a little off topic, would Mr. Buckley care to buy a shirt? I'm sure he'd appreciate it.
http://www.voteforthatoneshirts.com
Posted by: John | October 10, 2008 at 10:30 PM
Christopher Buckley is NOT a conservative, he is NOT an American, and he had to come from someone other the William Buckley!
He is our enemy, and he must be held culpable for all the tragedies that will strike America if Hussein is elected.
Do you know the difference between a Democrat and a catfish? One is a bottom dwelling, scum sucker. The other is a fish!!!
Posted by: John A. Blust | October 11, 2008 at 01:27 PM
Christopher Buckley is NOT a conservative, he is NOT an American, and he had to come from someone other the William Buckley!
He is our enemy, and he must be held culpable for all the tragedies that will strike America if Hussein is elected.
Do you know the difference between a Democrat and a catfish? One is a bottom dwelling, scum sucker. The other is a fish!!!
Posted by: John A. Blust | October 11, 2008 at 01:28 PM