Overdrive (17 page)

"The nation's best-known conservative man of letters unfolded a 'liberal' attack on sloppy rhetoric and collectivist economics Thursday night at the Inverness Club," the following day's paper related. "William F. Buckley, Jr., whose own prose has almost never been called sloppy—or liberal—regaled the annual dinner for the Friends of the University of Toledo Libraries with an hour of droll 'reflections on current contentions,' especially those concerning economic policies." There followed a gratifyingly accurate account of what I actually said, by a staff writer (Mr. Jack Lessenberry) of the Toledo
Blade
, though marred, I thought, by the subhead toward the end of the story, "Buckley Says Andrew Carnegie/'Was an Awfully Dumb Man.' " "Mr. Buckley, whose father was a millionaire oil magnate, drew his biggest laugh of the evening when responding to a questioner who asked him about Andrew Carnegie's theory that all inheritances be outlawed, so that the United States would be led by an 'aristocracy of talent, not of inherited wealth.' 'He was an awfully dumb man,' Mr. Buckley, who received $4,000 from the library association for his Toledo speech, said."

I don't think I said that, or if I did I misspoke, as the expression goes, intending merely to say that the notion of confiscatory death penalties was a very dumb
idea
. I went on to say that F. A. Hayek, in his
Constitution of Liberty
, insists most persuasively that if one came upon a society in which no one was wealthy, that society would be better off endowing one hundred people at random with a million dollars each than being without citizens with surplus funds. One trouble with confiscatory death taxes, I explained, is that they would place a most unhealthy incentive on profligate spending in later years. Moreover, the tribal instinct being what it is, many men work for their families and children, and the idea that property once acquired, i.e., after the tax has been paid on it, isn't one's to disburse as one likes is primitive in its collectivist bias. Something like that. Carnegie was in many ways an eccentric, but anyone shrewd enough to contrive the kind of protective tariff that nursed his steel business along was hardly dumb.

After it was over, a biographer of Ezra Pound with whom I have corresponded wanted to take me off for a nightcap, and I thanked him but begged off, because I have to write my Friday column tonight, and dictate it to New York before flying to Louisville tomorrow. I shook hands all the way round, slipped out to the elevator, and opened the door of my room.

The feeling, after lecturing, on regaining the occupancy of one's own room is a delight whose resonances have been insufficiently sung. The sheer relief of silence is a part of the magic. The stillness of the surroundings. Pat packs me a flask of vodka and little cans of grapefruit juice, and I disrobe, pour a vodka and grapefruit juice, and, since there is work to do, unzip the typewriter, this without relish. I have in my briefcase the New York
Times
with the whole of Reagan's speech on disarmament, the European challenge, etc.; so I write my column under the title "The Year of Europe" and assess, country by country, the probable reaches of the peace movement currently being encouraged (and in some instances, engineered) by the Soviet Union. "Mr. Joseph Sobran," I write happily, "the bright and witty columnist, has remarked yet one more terminological usurpation by the Left. To call those who, without compensating concessions by the Soviet Union, are prepared to dismantle our defensive arsenal in Europe members of a 'peace movement' would be to say that Neville Chamberlain led the peace movement in Great Britain during the late thirties, or that Henry Wallace led the peace movement during the forties. The Soviet Union has from now until mid-1983 to ascertain exactly what will be the consolidated picture within Europe on the designated eve of the deployment of our Pershing and Cruise missiles designed to counteract the Soviet weapons." My pitch is: that we must hold absolutely firm on the matter of deployment of the theater nuclear weapons. I argue that Soviet leaders will make no substantial concessions unless they judge as resolute our determination to deploy the missiles, and Europe's disposition to accept them.

Having twice checked the alarm clock, because I am due at the airport at 9 a.m., I read something about somebody and, turning off the light, remember to count on my fingers the five decades of the rosary, a lifelong habit acquired in childhood, and remembered about half the time. That half of my life, I like to think, I behave less offensively to my Maker than the other half.

Leslie Sheridan rang that he was downstairs and ready to convey me to the airport. I had breakfasted, talked with Frances, and decided there would, after all, be time to telephone in the column from Louisville before the (12:30) deadline, so I left. In the car, we chatted and Leslie pronounced the previous evening a great success, which was nice to hear, though in fact the preceding evenings are always pronounced great successes, hosts being as nice as generally they are. At the field it was cold. I greeted the pilots and said I hoped the air wouldn't be as choppy as yesterday's, and got a reassuring reply. The flight was about two hours and I dug into the portfolio on the other television program, this one having to do with busing as an instrument designed to effect school desegregation, or integration. It had been a while since my mind dwelled on the subject, and there was much to catch up on.

We flew at about 7,500 feet and encountered little turbulence. There was snow as we came over Cincinnati, and I remembered that extraordinary fortnight fifteen years ago. I had been scheduled to speak one night in Louisville, but the pilot landed the plane in Cincinnati because of bad weather in Louisville, and I took a 110-mile taxi ride, arriving in Louisville forty-five minutes after my speech was supposed to begin. One week later (what are the odds against such a thing?) I was scheduled to speak in Cincinnati and the airplane landed in Louisville, requiring me to take a 110-mile taxi ride to Cincinnati, breaking into the banquet room after some of the guests had simply given up.

When I arrived in Louisville, the car from the local television station whisked me off to the Galt House, where the young, attentive manager reminded me I had been there a couple of years before. The hotel in question is sort of Diamond-Jim-Brady-Western, and in my huge suite, thirty-two Muscovites could have been housed.

Warren Steibel, who, when the program is taped outside New York, generally gets in a day ahead to supervise technical arrangements, rang me before I had even sat down, and I told him to come on up. Warren has produced all but the first dozen or so "Firing Lines"; we have been everywhere together, and I have long since developed a huge admiration for his professional competence and a special gratitude for his knowledge of my own (by no means eccentric) likes and dislikes (foremost among the latter, to be made to arrive at a studio much before the technicians are ready to roll). He gives me a rundown on the schedule. The first show will be with the two professors, on the busing question. The second show will be with the governor. A hundred-odd supporters of the station will compose the studio audience, and after the second show there is to be a reception, but that reception will last no more than forty-five minutes, guaranteed. After that, Warren had promised our hosts, I would read several commercials calling for local support to the station. Then we would be whisked away to the airport, in plenty of time to catch the 6:30 flight back to New York. Did I need anything?

Just the time to finish my research, and type out the two scripts. But I took Warren's telephone numbers—he and his assistant, George, need to be at the studio several hours ahead of time, to arrange the setting and practice with the technicians.

I telephone my office, and dictate the column into the recording machine. Moments after hanging up, my brother Jim reaches me by phone from Washington. He dined last night with Clare Boothe Luce, and she professed her indignation at the
Time
mag story, and it was left to Jim to ask me whether I thought a call from her to editor-in-chief Henry Grunwald was in order. God no, I said; surprised, actually, that Clare had made the offer, having on more than one occasion heard her express her powerlessness at
Time
even when Harry was alive and running things, so mighty was the fortress separating Henry R. Luce, editor-in-chief, Time Inc., from Harry Luce, husband of Clare. Probably the gesture was a mere act of civility, even as it may be difficult for a congressman not to
offer
to look into the matter if he finds himself spending an evening with an old friend whose grandmother didn't receive her last Social Security check. Jim agrees, and the social circuit is completed.

It is only a quarter to twelve, but I am suddenly ravenous and order a hamburger and a beer. I eat the hamburger while still standing, because I had given myself a minute to read the front page of
The Wall Street Journal
, which was spread out on the desk. I gulped down a glass of beer, unzipped the typewriter, and spread out my research. Then I was hit—it happens sometimes—with a most awful, undeniable, need for sleep. In the Infantry, during the first hour you march for fifty minutes and then take a ten-minute break. In succeeding hours, the break is reduced to five minutes. The question, back in 1944-45, was always whether to smoke a cigarette—or attempt sleep. Half the time I would sleep; and ever since I have had no problem at all in sleeping for ten minutes. The alarm on my clock isn't calibrated finely enough, so I set it for fifteen minutes. I am instantly soundly asleep, and wake before the alarm goes off, substantially refreshed.

For reasons I haven't fathomed, the half hour to forty-five minutes I give to writing out the introductions to "Firing Line" guests, and making notes of questions from the material previously researched, I continue to find the single most taxing activity I engage in. I don't know why this should be so. My introductions follow an uncomplicated formula. If the guest is vastly illustrious, his identity is given in the opening paragraph. If less than that, the whole of paragraph one is devoted to the issue being discussed during that hour. The whole of paragraph two is devoted to a biography of the guest. There is then a one-sentence mention of the examiner, with the promise that he will be introduced more substantially "in due course."

The examiner has been coached by Warren, and his instructions are simple. 1) He must stand, at the outset of the program, behind his lectern, so that the camera can bring him in when I mention his name. He can then sit, but 2) he must, beginning after thirty minutes, watch me for any sign that I am about to introduce him, because when that introduction is performed, 3) he must be back at his lectern.

I introduce him sooner, or later, depending on several factors. If the guest is dull, I bring in the examiner early, for relief. If the guest and I are in substantial agreement, I bring in the examiner early. Or—if the guest is brilliant, but I feel that the right moment has come for a change of gears, then I bring the examiner in early. But as a rule of thumb, the examiner comes in fifteen minutes before the hour's end. His instructions are to take his time in phrasing his questions, from which he should not endeavor to conceal his own bias, but not to be preachy. Finally, he should ask questions not only of the principal, but of me. My introductions close with a phrase that has become standard: "I should like to begin by asking [Mr. Blow] why [he believes the earth is flat]?"

I devote the hour to composing the introductions, and to making my notes, then I change my clothes and, as Warren directed, report down at the lobby at exactly 2:45, where the kind lady from the studio is waiting; and we say goodbye to the Galt House.

The studio appears busy. Like most studios, it comprises mostly hallways and small rooms, and people in a hurry. I am made up—years ago Warren told me sternly never to forget to instruct unfamiliar technicians to put makeup on my hands, because I bring them often to my cheeks, and awful visual anomalies happen when chalk-white hands come up against ruddy brown cheeks.

The studio is full of WKPC's guests, and I walk over and greet my own guests, who are already seated and plugged in. I sit, a technician clips the tiny mike to my necktie, applying an inch of adhesive tape to cause the electric wire to set out vertically toward my waist, and I check the little stopwatch on my clipboard, which George hands me. It is pre-set so that when it reaches zero, the show is ended, fifty-seven minutes and twenty seconds after the music begins. On the table to my right is a digital stopwatch, a reserve in case my regular stopwatch stops working (this happens, curiously, a half-dozen times per year). "QUIET IN THE STUDIO!" Then the monitor is seen 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Then the music from Bach's Second Brandenburg, while the viewer sees the opening credits. I look down at my notes. I am to begin talking when the music stops playing, which it does after about thirty seconds. . . .

MR.BUCKLEY: It's been a long time since we have visited on this program the question of busing as a means of effecting interracial comity. The issue appears to rise to high pitches of noisy advocacy, both by those in favor and those opposed, and then to recede from the headlines, at least for a while. To the end of determining what's up in the busing world, we have two distinguished scholars here in Louisville, one of them also an attorney, to report on the question.

Willis Hawley is the dean of Peabody College in Vanderbilt University, where he is a professor of education and political science. Professor Hawley received all three of his degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, after which he taught at Duke and at Yale, settling down finally at Vanderbilt. There he has undertaken the principal responsibility for a government-financed study entitled "The Assessment of Current Knowledge About the Effectiveness of School Desegregation Strategy," a massive document stretching to nine volumes, for which an alternative use would be to throw these volumes at teachers or students who disagree with their findings. These we will discuss presently; suffice it to say for the nonce that they would appear to endorse busing in virtually every respect.

Professor Robert Sedler, really, goes further. In a recent law article he advocated a construction of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which would in effect abolish the traditional differential between
de facto
segregation—that is, such segregation as occurs when all the kids in the neighborhood simply happen to be of a single race—and
de jure
segregation, where schools are segregated as the result of machinations of the school board. Professor Sedler teaches at the Wayne State University Law School, having before that been with the University of Kentucky Law School. Fie is a most active litigant, having figured in a number of constitutionally prominent anti-segregation cases. He has written a number of books, including, after three years as a professor at Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, a book called
Ethiopian Civil Procedures
, published shortly before Ethiopia gave up civil procedures. He has written profusely for the law journals.

[There are generally no examiners when there are two guests.]

I should like to begin by asking Mr. Hawley whether the views or findings of Arthur Coleman were examined in your lengthy report?

[I was off to a bad start.]

 

MR. HAWLEY: James Coleman?

MR.BUCKLEY: Arthur, I think his name is—is it James? It
is
James, isn't it, yes. [The two big names are
James
Coleman, and
Arthur
Jensen.]

MR. HAWLEY: James Coleman has written a great deal. I'm not sure what you have in mind.

[I have in mind leading him to a quote from Coleman, but I'm not yet ready to use it. I give him a hint.]

MR.BUCKLEY:  '78.

MR. HAWLEY: The white flight issue, yes, of course. Mr. Coleman, as well as most other scholars who have studied this question, have found that school desegregation brings about white flight from public schools under certain circumstances. I don't think there's much debate about that. The question is whether that
needs
to happen, whether it can be reduced and whether the longterm effects—

MR.BUCKLEY:  [attempting levity] Mr. Sedler could pass a constitutional amendment against it, couldn't he?

MR. HAWLEY: [smiling] He's not the only one who would like to do that. But in general I'd say that the folks who point to white flight as the most serious problem of school desegregation generally overstate the effects of desegregation in that regard. There are lots of things going on in the country that would otherwise explain whites leaving public schools.

MR.BUCKLEY:  I didn't actually have that finding [the problem of white flight] of Mr. Coleman primarily in mind. I had [another finding] the summary of which, in his words, is, "There are as many cases where achievement levels decline as where they increase; thus, the notion that black children will automatically increase their achievements in integrated schools is shown to be false." Had you [sarcasm] forgotten that one? MR. HAWLEY: No. Mr. Coleman didn't himself do that study. Fie reported on a study that was published in 1975, which in turn dealt with the studies up until 1973. More recent evidence shows, to the contrary, that school desegregation in most instances brings about positive consequences for minority children with respect to academic achievement. Indeed, I think there is considerable consensus among scholars on that question. The only issue, I think, about that has to do with whether those effects occur throughout the school period or whether it's primarily an early school effect. We find that the effect is primarily in the early grades.

[Coleman had affirmed the work of another reliable scholar, but it is left sounding as if Coleman had been relying on stale studies.]

MR.BUCKLEY:  Is David Armor a considerable scholar? [He was the author of the study in question. A Harvard Ph.D.]

MR. HAWLEY: He is. He has not studied this question. That's not his particular area of expertise. [I am left in doubt now. Coleman was quoting
some
study, and I thought it was Armor's. Perhaps it was Jensen's. But I had better go on the offensive rather than take a chance dropping another name.]

MR.BUCKLEY: Is your definition of a particular area of expertise somebody who agrees with you?

MR. HAWLEY: No, of course not [he laughs], but in this case it's a question of who is studying the issue.

MR.BUCKLEY: Is Tom Sowell [useful here: the black economist who has done trenchant work in sociology] a considerable scholar?

MR. HAWLEY: He is, but he has not studied the effects of school desegregation on children.

[A wise old bird. He's not going to volunteer the name of the author of the study. I decide to make light of it all.]

MR.BUCKLEY: I think you're saying it's Greek, and that I can't win. [The allusion is to the old story about the white voting registrar administering a literacy test to a Negro. In Greek. The Negro studies the text and says: "It say no Nigra's goin' to vote here today."]

[It is time to turn to Mr. Sedler, who begins by saying that his interest is not so much in whether blacks profit from integrated schooling as it is that the two races should study
together
.]

MR. SEDLER: The primary justification for school integration in my view, both from a constitutional and from a policy standpoint, is that it brings black and white children together during the educational process, teaches them how to live together in a multiracial society and a multiracial world. . . . When black children go to school only with other black children and when white children go to school only with other white children, neither black children nor white children, in my view, learn how to function as effective adults.

MR.BUCKLEY: [I need now to spear the philosophical point.] I think your views are extremely interesting, but I'm sure that you, as a lawyer, would upbraid me if I failed to ask whether your views are constitutionally relevant?