On Donald Trump and Political Demagoguery --William F. Buckley, Jr., 2000
Thanks for the article. There is a very apt response to it in the comments:
ChrisZ * 3 hours ago
It's great to have Buckley's unforgettable literary voice on this site again; I read the whole piece aloud to myself in my best WFB impression, and relished reciting the line about Burr and Hamilton and their "conclusive encounter in Weehawken." Just beautiful.I miss having someone of his wisdom and perception around today, to guide us. The truth is that we conservatives have been in mourning since the loss of WFB, Reagan, Thatcher, Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II, Neuhaus, Kristol ... it's painful to continue the list. No one of their maturity and accomplishment has arisen to take their places, and we as a movement (and as a country) are suffering for it.
Buckley was right to caution against the demagogue as the candidate who promises the voters Nice Things. But what do you call it when the voters have asked for an uncomplicated and reasonable thing, and the elected officials refuse to deliver it--even lie about it as candidates? That seems to be our situation today, regarding immigration. For at least the past 15 years, the majority of Americans have wanted a more restrictive, rational, and controllable immigration regime. Some of us cast votes for candidates whom we thought would advance that cause. But nearly to a man, and regardless of party, they were unresponsive, and even went so far as to subvert the existing immigration laws of this country.
The terrible result for public policy has brought us to the present impasse. The success of Trump's candidacy from the very beginning was predicated on his promise to build the wall, and that promise has sustained him throughout the subsequent antics of all the candidates (including himself). At any time during the past seven months, any one of the Republican alternatives could have embraced the Trump program on this issue, and effectively ended the major rationale for Trump's candidacy. But every one of them proved too feckless, too coopted by special interests, to do so. So they will lose, and Trump will win.
I think WFB would have understood the dynamic in play here, even if he disagreed with it; and I like to think he would have appreciated Trump's ascendancy as a vindication of democracy--not in it's noblest or prettiest aspect, certainly, but in its blunt assertion that the will of the citizenry should prevail in large questions of national consequence.