The Unmaking of a Mayor. William F. Buckley Jr.
jury composed, say, of professors from the Columbia School of Journalism (the seminar was gratifyingly impressed by the experience I related), a Goldwater who had done no more than to speculate on hypothetical means by which to denude North Vietnamese supply lines might hope to be thoroughly exonerated from responsibility for such headlines as reported on what he had allegedly recommended: and the offending reporter or reporters, the wire services, and the newspapers might be fastidiously censured on an inside page in the school’s fortnightly bulletin. That kind of justification is, of course, immaterial in politics; moreover, the case might even be made that it is immaterial intellectually, on the grounds that, at least in nonacademic circumstances, political speculation is necessarily framed by the values that contemporary history composes. So that any distinction-making, however interesting or relevant sub specie aeternitatis, simply ought not to be attempted in addressing, for instance, six thousand policemen three weeks after the horrors of Selma, Alabama, if the purpose is to point out that the situation in Selma was complicated. The audience itself, with the benefit of the full context of the analysis, might very well understand. But there are reporters present, one of whom is likely to assume the position of Defender of the People’s Prejudices and construct his story on the basis of a putative irreverence to the people’s passions. It may very well be that constant attention needs, in politics, to be given less to the nature of what one has to say than to the nature of the audience before which one speaks it, and the surrounding order of prejudices. If the intellectuals of a community were poised to correct blatant misimpressions, that would be one thing. They aren’t. Politically active people must learn this; and those who believe that distinctions are always worth making, the more so the more impatient the public mood as regards them, should worry a little more than they apparently do about the difficulty of making such distinctions—other than, say, in the cozy surroundings of a book, or an academic quarterly, or a seminar at Columbia.
The press, I noticed, is not greatly concerned with self-discipline. For reasons perfectly understandable in commercial terms, the press cares about the scandal, much less about subsequent developments tending to dissipate the scandal—less, in a word, about exact history, exactly understood. Exact history, it might be maintained, isn’t necessarily what was said at a particular situation, but what subjects were treated, and how the speaker angled in on them, and how the audience reacted to what he said. It remains generally true, I was to find, that politicians tend to say nothing very much, as a general rule, primarily because they desire to say nothing very much. But it is also true that the cautious politician, if he desires to say something hazardous, had better come prepared with tape recorders, steno-typists, and, ideally, motion picture cameramen, trained on himself and on the audience. Even then, there is a risk: Who can be persuaded to come to the grand opening—and closing—of a cinemascopic version of what really did happen when the gamier story of what didn’t happen is already a few days old and, in any case, ever so very much more interesting?
1. I remember, as a very young (nineteen) second lieutenant in the army, being approached for advice by a private in his early thirties who told me his wife was in Reno suing him for divorce, which he was quite prepared to give her, but that he wondered whether her affidavit, to which he had been asked to acquiesce, charging him with afflicting extreme mental cruelty upon her, wouldn’t forever stigmatize him—unfairly, inasmuch as it simply wasn’t true. I counseled him, from the depths of my experience, never ever to yield, not under any circumstances to sign any such waiver. That evening I mentioned the episode to my uncle, a retired lawyer of bellicose personal rectitude, who gently informed me that my advice had been mistaken, that the adversary rhetoric of divorce proceedings meant nothing, absolutely nothing at all. I was shattered, and only wish that, in my disillusion, I had, while I was at it, asked him about the adversary language of nonmarital polemics.
2. The statement I wrote was as follows. The italicized passages were omitted: “I am shocked in turn at the ease with which a routine job of misrepresentation by the press of a public speech can cause distinguished public figures to believe the unbelievable, namely that at a Communion Breakfast sponsored by the Holy Name Society of the Catholic Church, bigotry was applauded. I did not on the occasion in question breathe a word of prejudice against any people. I spoke sympathetically of the plight of the Negroes in the South. I deplored the violence in the South and the attitude of lackadaisical white Southerners towards it. I did criticize the general tendency of some of the noisiest elements in our public life to jump to false and contumacious conclusions about policemen. The trigger-willingness, shown today, to impute to the police a sympathy with bigotry is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.”
3. The point I was trying to make, concerning which a reference to the treatment by the press of Mrs. Liuzzo’s murder (in contrast with its treatment of another category of crimes) was relevant, is irrelevant to this narrative. But for the convenience of those who wonder about the context of the controversial remarks, the entire (short) address is reprinted in Appendix A to this book, together with indications of audience reaction.
4. Although it never became a part of the controversy, I was factually incorrect here. I myself subsequently ascertained that the “twenty minutes” I had been told about by someone who misinterpreted a television comment on the day of the riots was more like three or four minutes.
5. As a matter of record, I should note that the vilification that continued to come in from all corners of the country, based on the Tribune’s story and subsequent aggrandizements on the theme, prompted me, finally, to file a lawsuit for libel. The Tribune thereupon agreed (July 7) to reprint Leo’s article preceded by what amounted to the publisher’s apology (“The Herald Tribune regrets that erroneous conclusions arose from the report . . .”). It was reassuring to ascertain that right, plus a good lawyer, can sometimes stimulate the dormant conscience.
6. This was not merely impudence: Judge Hofstadter has often been quoted as deploring the relative concern for the criminal, rather than the victim, which was the principal focus of my talk.
New York, Spring 1965 New York, Spring 1965
1. The Declining City 1. The Declining City
THE HORROR-STORIES piled up, and the word was “crisis.” The Tribune embarked on an extensive and highly useful series identifying the constituent crises. Long exposés tumbled out, one after another, concerning the crisis in education, the crisis in housing, the crises in traffic, in crime, in air- and water-pollution, in dope traffic, in the economy, and—what was perhaps most significant—in the public morale.
They are not crises in the technical sense that the situation must improve or else the patient will die. Excepting the fiscal deficit, which presumably cannot be kited indefinitely, things could probably stumble along pretty much as before without causing New York City to close down its doors. But even discounting the irresistible urge to melodramatization during political campaigns, New York was—is—in bad shape. This was no phony missile gap of the kind a Presidential campaign had been fought over in 1960; nor, on the other hand, was it anything that had just recently afflicted New York. The crises had been around for quite a while but hadn’t attracted very much public attention. Some crises are of course more modish than others, and they tend to have their day in court, as, for instance, the poverty crisis has recently had. The crisis of Cuba, as another example, was on everybody’s mind for several years and was all but washed away by the sigh of relief that followed the great confrontation of October 1962, even though the net result of the showdown was merely to return Cuba to the status quo ante—which up until then was precisely what the crisis was all about. (Already the