William F. Buckley's Flip-Flop

I could not have spoken to Bill immediately even if I wished because he was out of town. I went instead to see Bill Rusher. He had been told what was coming, and he was familiar with Buckley’s habits when it came to lowering the boom. Buckley typically did these jobs by letter, or passed them on to his publisher. Once, in the early days of his tenure, Rusher had had to fire an accountant at Buckley’s orders. Then too Buckley was out of town; the woman took it rather hard, and said through her tears that “if Mr. Buckley was here,” it wouldn’t have happened. Rusher asked me if I had thought of a response; I hadn’t. He was concerned to play the endgame as best as possible for my benefit. Think of an answer soon, he advised, “before Buckley decides to consult his 50 closest friends.”

I settled on a cover story for myself: Realizing that I did not have enough time to write, I had decided to step down as managing editor and work at the magazine only part-time. I peddled this story to my friends and colleagues. My supposed motive was untrue, but I carried conviction because I was accurately describing what I intended to do.

Despite Rusher’s fears that Bill might be indiscreet, the secret was well kept. Jeff didn’t know; Pat didn’t know. My apologies to everyone, living and dead, for my deceptions. I imagined that my new plans caused some talk in right-world, but I did not want to know about it; that would have been a distraction in my present state of mind.

My state of mind was kept unsettled by one odd, but characteristic, codicil of Bill’s letter. He felt some compunction about luring me from law school in 1978, he wrote, and the earthly paradise of a plump job. He tried to assuage it by proposing to guarantee the salary I had earned as managing editor for five years. His guarantee was not simple, however, because he also proposed to deduct a portion of what I might earn as a freelancer above and beyond the subsidized salary. It was peonage disguised as a payoff, or vice versa.

My eyes glaze over even now as I try to make sense of it. My counteroffer was simpler: You should feel compunction, so give me a lump sum. He wouldn’t do that; I wouldn’t take his tricked-out subsidy. This back-and-forth went on for a week or two, entirely by memo, after he came back to town; I was as leery of confrontation as he was. In the end I simply went part-time and took a pay cut.

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