During one of my previous lives as a “suit” I also knew William F. Buckley. I used to visit 150 East 35th Street (between Lex and 3rd) where NR had offices at a time shortly after I became disgruntled with the direction of Rolling Stone (which I wrote 1968-70,for believing it was the voice of “my” generation). In that building, in the office of an unnamed graphic designer, I met a young writer Jerry Bowles, who learned the art of monetizing ideas written on napkins during a 3 martini lunch. The custodian of this blue chip property was “Bela” a Hungarian former “freedom fighter” who got the job on the recommendation of WFB. My international journalism rabbi, George Bailey, was an old OSS operator in Europe with strong South America connections, and he recommended me to WFB. It was an intersting challenge in culture dynamics, from a working class, labor union background (my dad was CIO then AFL but understood education and culture dynamics enough to move his family into Shaker Heights) and patrician Buckley and the interests that his caste represent. But Buckley was quintessentially American, realizing that opportunity is offered, it produces outcome. And bingo. When one of his card carrying conservatives would have problems going “native” down in the Southern Cone or risk blowing some contacts or sources I would get paid a few hundred dollars to write an article for NR on how the economic policies supported by Pope John Paul II in South America (Latin America to some) did not help “free markets” and “reforms.”  A couple of months later, an ad agency acting on behalf of the Roman church paid for an eight page special section in NR on the work of the church in South America.  A few weeks after that, I get a call from Time Inc to do text for a special advertorial about “free market opportunities in Mexico. 1500 words, ten thousand dollars. He had the luxury of family oil money (originally Texas). And with that, underneath the intellectual patina, the cunning of a risk taker. He had an innate ability to see above the tree line because he lived above it (figuratively). The intellectual cover, in my view, was merely armor, defense, to protect the notion that all forms of social organizations require a sense of order, and NR was a way to catalyze conservative opinion. He could deal with a tyro like Roy Cohn, and the Ripon and Log Cabin Republicans evenhandedly. And he was at home with the wisdom of the “old school” Republican national committee chairmen like Ray Bliss and Rogers Morton. National Review emerged as an influencer after Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson did the dirty work to get rid of Joe McCarthy.  WFB spent time with Jack Kerouac, and Norman Mailer and Andy Warhol. Would Karl Rove, John Ashcroft or Lee Atwater do this? Yikes! Where’s the Lysol to kill the liberal cooties? Like Bush Roman Catholic friend Nicholas Brady, the Buckley family did help finance the bloody “Cristeros” Revolution, a 1920s killfest in the backyard between anti-clerical Mexican “revolutionaries” and Catholic Action “patriots” that morphed into what we now know as the National Action Party (PAN) in Mexico. So it is not surprising that less than 20 years after that chingazo, he is posted by a fledgling CIA to Mexico City. I could ramble on…  juxtaposing WFB with the Kenny Lays, Tom DeLays and Karl Roves, they are mere pissants. In today’s world of Facebook and “live chat with live person”, there are plenty of pretenders ready to take over the “brand” and become “Fake Bill Buckley.”  Without WFB there would be no Ronald Reagan, no John McCain. He could call plays better than the Navaskys and the Kitmans, the Peretzs and the Palevskys, the Kondrackes and the Vandenheuvels.  If he lived in another time, he would have been perfect in the company of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, living in Passy, helping foment the French revolution. The firing line may have gone out Josh, the “smoking lamp” is always lit.