The United States of America desperately needs William F. Buckley to rise up from the grave.
As the erudite founder of the National Review and host of the television political debate show "Firing Line," Buckley gave conservatism a great name and message with his more than 30 books on the subject.
When the avid sailor, who hailed from Connecticut and attended Yale, died more than a year ago, so did the last chance of ever intellectualizing politics again.
Buckley, one of the founders of the modern conservative movement that ushered Ronald Reagan into office, was the very definition of the elitism so many conservatives today are taught to disdain.
He was a New England sailor educated in the best private schools. A man who drove an Austin Healey instead of a Dodge Ram, and the only Irish Catholic who could manage to make Gore Vidal sound like an undereducated simpleton, instead of a snob he talks like. But Buckley wasn't an elitist for those reasons; he was an elitist because he was always the smartest man in the room.
And because of this certitude - this, as some would call, arrogance - Buckley would have never howled "You Lie!" at the president of the United States during a joint session of Congress, as Congressman Joe Wilson, R-S.C., did Wednesday night. Buckley simply would have scoffed quietly, and then eloquently made his point after the president had finished his address.
Besides the single time he ran for mayor of New York City in the 1960s as a way to steal votes away from another Republican candidate whose conservative credentials Buckley doubted, Buckley himself was too smart to have ever run for public office. He knew that the mass public wouldn't have been as impressed as his fellow Yale debate teammates were by his expansive vocabulary and penchant for reasoned postulation. Buckley knew whom the voters wanted.
The voters wanted folks like Joe Wilson representing their interests in Washington not because they thought that Wilson and his ilk knew best or were reasonably informed about policy, but because they simply passed the regular-guy sniff test.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter," Winston Churchill once humorously said. When thousands marched on Washington Saturday holding posters of President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Adolf Hitler mustaches doodled on, some are probably wondering if Churchill was onto something.
Sure, Buckley didn't have all the answers, and he certainly wasn't always right. But he elevated the national discourse. Where are his followers? Where are the Republicans who understand that a topic with the life and death implications of health care reform can't be discussed between people who don't know the first difference between fascism and socialism?
Where are the Republicans who don't disdain intellectual excellence, but disdain people who think the word "elite" is a bad attribute for a politician, but not a Navy SEAL? Where are the Republicans who are passionate about their viewpoints, but not crazed? When will this silent majority of the GOP rise up against the latest asinine coalition of tea bag protesters unwilling to debate specifics, but clinging to vague rumors and hazy ideologies?
Democrats have a person who elevates the national discourse. He spoke Wednesday night. It's high time for the Republicans to find Obama's equal.
Matthew Christ is a political science sophomore. His column appears on Mondays.
