When Buckley Met Reagan (Reagan/Palin slam)

The New York Times( small, Manhattan paper ) ^ | January 18, 2009 | ROSS DOUTHAT

[Leisler]

On the night that William F. Buckley met Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States put his elbow through a plate-glass window. The year was 1961, and the two men were in Beverly Hills, where Buckley, perhaps the most famous conservative in America at the tender age of 35, was giving an address at a school auditorium. Reagan, a former Hollywood leading man dabbling in political activism — the Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin of his But the microphone was dead, the technician was nowhere to be found and the control room was locked. As the crowd began to grumble, Reagan coolly opened one of the auditorium windows, stepped onto a ledge two stories above the street and inched his way around to the control room. He smashed his elbow through the glass and clambered in through the broken window. “In a minute there was light in the upstairs room,” Buckley later wrote, “and then we could hear the crackling of the newly animated microphone.”

This anecdote kicks off The Reagan I Knew (Basic Books, $25), a slight and padded reminiscence published posthumously this past autumn, nine months after Buckley’s death. As a personal portrait of the 40th president, the narrative is sketchy at best: the Reagan whom Buckley knew turns out to be the Reagan most of his friends and allies knew — amiable, smooth and ultimately opaque.

What the book does offer, though, is an expansion on the theme lurking in that opening vignette, in which the man of ideas came face to face with the man of action, and the intellectual famous for describing the world met the future president eager to change it. At its most interesting, “The Reagan I Knew” provides a case study on the ........

[jla]

Who narrates the audio book?

[jla]

But she will never be a successful national figure merely as a populist no matter how glib she becomes.

This is utter nonsense. I apologize, Bedford, but this unmerited critique of Palin grows very tiresome.
The woman is fine in a debate. If left to her own inclinations she would have delivered the coup de grâce in the debate with Biden.
Thomas Jefferson loathed speaking in public, yet he managed to get elected to two terms. One example out of many. How many other presidents where stellar public speakers?
You are judging Palin thru the McCain campaign prism. When she is at the top of the ticket I'll wager we'll see a more vibrant and aggressive candidate. It was she who asked for more opportunities to be interviewed, only to be denied by those 'savants' in the McCain camp. Now, you want to speak of a horrendous public speaker, let's talk of McCain, who nobody seems to notice over their zeal to malign Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin has more in common with Reagan, and Jefferson for that matter, than any politician alive today. And I believe it can be said with confidence that those two gentlemen would have wholeheartedly supported, admired, and adored her.
For heavens sakes, the woman rose from being a PTA wife and mother to garnering the Veep nomination. Not a feat I'd say is too common.
The problem is not with Sarah Palin, it lies with those who for whatever unknown reason(s) wish to see her fail. A wish, I'm afraid, they'll not see come true.

[nathanbedford]

No need to apologize, I take no offense.

May I ask you to reread my post and I think you will see that its point was not that Sarah Palin is somehow inadequate but that the path identified by the author, populism, is wrongheaded.

[Valin]

“Who narrates the audio book?”

Malcolm Hilllgartner