Celebrating the influential, non-elected political guru

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STRICTLY RIGHT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. AND THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT

By Linda Bridges and John R. Coyne Jr.

Wiley, $27.95, 358 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN

How do you solve a problem like Bill Buckley? He has always been easy to caricature -- the eloquent eyebrows and the aristocratic drawl, with its lord-of-the-manor tone -- but difficult to analyze. Prolific writer, great editor, nonpareil debater, television celebrity, expert skier, gifted harpsichord player, ready wit (rapier or stiletto style, take your choice), popular lecturer, political guru, an ideological warrior who distrusts ideology: Just who, and what, is this guy? A brilliant dilettante with Attention Deficit Disorder or a Renaissance man overflowing with talent and ideas?

His obvious delight in debate, his knack for writing entertaining escapist fiction, his defense of religious orthodoxy and his gifts as an intellectual gadfly have always reminded me of G.K. Chesterton. But in "Strictly Right," co-authors Linda Bridges and John R. Coyne, Jr. make a strong case that Mr. Buckley may well be the single most influential non-elected American political figure in the last half of the 20th century.

He was a necessary, if not sufficient, cause of the political rebirth of conservatism, and his insistence on the moral and cultural importance of traditional conservatism, from the very beginning of National Review magazine in 1955, laid the groundwork for the defense of conservative values when the culture wars began.

Mr. Coyne (my friend for many years) and Ms. Bridges, former National Review colleagues, give us an insiders' look at the Buckley phenomenon. For conservatives, reading "Strictly Right" is like being present at a family reunion where two informed and articulate relatives regale us with anecdotes about family lore, and gossip about family feuds.

They whisper about disreputable cousins, pause now and then to wander down memory lane in personal reminiscences and entertain us with tall tales of yesteryear. But at the heart of the affectionate discourse are stories about the life and times of Our Bill, the family favorite, the ageless enfant terrible, the precocious, impossible-to-resist charmer whose achievements and escapades have captivated everyone who knows him (with the exception of Gore Vidal) for decades.