On the Right - Column

National Review, Feb 25, 2002 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Does George Love Ted?

NEW YORK, JANUARY 18

There has been great fuss in the last few days over broken hearts in Washington. To uncoil the story from tabloid compression, what we have is 1) President Bush and Senator Kennedy in joint embrace when the education bill was passed. 2) Mr. Bush saying very pleasant things about Mr. Kennedy a few days later when giving a speech. And 3) Teddy in a speech at the National Press Club, blasting W.'s tax-cut bill and calling for its (effective) repeal. Causing the world to wonder: Do we have here an act of gross infidelity? How can two people appear so close and, days later, divide so sharply?

The question was raised by one commentator in the context of the whole matter of the alleged incongruity of extra-ideological friendships. A few years ago, much attention was paid to the friendship of Orrin Hatch with the same Sen. Kennedy. After heated Senate hearings, Orrin was spending his time comforting Justice-designate Clarence Thomas. During the day, Sen. Kennedy was ranting against Thomas's confirmation. In between, so to speak at cocktail hour, Kennedy and Hatch were best friends, singing each other's delights to a press confounded by the heterodox friendship.

I have run into the question myself.

I have never before spoken of it, but can't think why not, 30 years after the event.

It was February 22, 1972, in Switzerland, where my wife and I dwell during that month, pursuing ski slopes and book deadlines. The call came in from longtime friend Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in adjacent Gstaad. Would we like it if Sen. Kennedy came to us for a drink later in the day?

By all means. And did he ever come. He brought with him his wife, his sister, his buddy Sen. John Tunney from California, Sen. Tunney's wife, and a Spaniard who was a member of the court. That was 7 p.m. At 9 p.m., they were still there. Something had to be done about food. I called a local restaurant with modest accommodations and asked if they could squeeze in a party of nine people. They agreed, and off we went for cheese fondue. After eating, I asked if they would like to join us in a postprandial bout at the painting studio on our bottom floor. Indeed they would. Every one of them was given a paint brush and an easel. I went to fetch a bottle of champagne and, easel and paint brushes clutched in the other hand, reached to put the bottle on the ping-pong table we used for our canvasses. I managed to affix dabs of mercury red, cerulean blue, yellow amber, raw umber, and ivory white onto the rear end of Jean Kennedy Smith, future ambassador to Ireland. She had been leaning over her canvas, and now the seat of her ski pants looked like an early Seurat, a study in pointillism. But nothing could disturb the jollity of the evening. My wife supplied a spare set of pants and dammed our river of hospitality only when Teddy asked if he could borrow a car to take the gang home, and she said no, there was a bridge between us and Gstaad.

They left sometime after midnight, and we learned from J. K. Galbraith a long time later that this was Teddy's 40th birthday. Once every decade after our bacchanalia we crossed paths, and the greeting was convivial, though come to think of it, the last time around, his handshake was a study in curtness. I must have done something right in my column that morning.

Senator Goldwater several times acclaimed Teddy as a conscientious and informed senator, and the two were friendly, if not friends. The year we entertained Teddy I otherwise devoted to blasting presidential candidate George McGovern who, in later years, I frequently debated and learned that his ideological toughness cohabited with a warmth and personal generosity that greatly exceeded his political skills.

There isn't any reason why President Bush has to renounce a friendship with Ted Kennedy, just so long as he makes it clear to the American public that Mr. Kennedy is an utter ass when prescribing policy, and a distillery of meanness when he goes after a target, as with Robert Bork. There are those who frown on friendship across the aisle as if it were the subversion of a Manichaean divide -- how can you be nice to Lucifer?

Well, Lucifer has his winning ways, which is of course why one must always beware of him. We angels have to keep our eyes on things. Semper paratus. Amen.

NEW YORK, JANUARY 22

February 6 will be a very big day in the British Commonwealth because Queen Elizabeth will have been queen for 50 years, a golden jubilee. By coincidence, that is also the birthday of Ronald Reagan (his 91st). Fifty years ago, he was a Democrat, though now that seems a very old affliction, whereas the British monarchy really doesn't change all that much. In anticipation of the great day ahead, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph of London was given continued access to the queen for several days, reminding her subjects (and progeny of her ex-subjects) of what it is that she does for her keep, a straitened life of arduous work, but reporter Gyles Brandreth lives through it, and so do the Telegraph's readers.