The late William F. Buckley, Jr. weighs in on the 1968 presidential election, along with Gore Vidal.
Buckley: [The next president of the United States] shouldn't be too naive. For instance, when the president of the Soviet Union informs him that the Communists desire world peace, the next president would ideally tell him to cut the horse feathers. He shouldn't crave the idolatry of world opinion. For instance, when criticized by the United Nations for taking a position he feels he needs to take in the best interests of his country, he should feel free quite ostentatiously to turn off the national earphone.
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Note Vidal, with calumnious alarm -- expectorated drippings whence waft a whiff of the nauseous mal de vivre Jean-Paul Sartre cooked up -- referring to the American Empire and to the race war, intoning that the 37th president of the United States could very well be the last president. Picture yourself in the 1960s. Militantly touting its cult of "social change," the Left has taken to the streets, it conspires and boasts of revolution, its most ruthless individuals (a Communist and a Palestinian) assassinate, first, a president, then a major presidential candidate -- and that "malevolent fantasist" Vidal suggests that fascism is just around the corner. ("Malevolent fantasist," a phrase borrowed from Roger Kimball's farewell to Buckley.)
It may have been. Yet let us recall, Gentle Reader, that whatever be the hard, sometimes bitter (and, yes, sometimes bloody) costs of preserving the political order, upheavals threatening that order come typically from the Left, sometimes with popular approval. During the Roman Republic's shaky final decades Caesar decided early on that the Populares, not the Optimates, party would best translate his indecipherable genius into real power. In a later era Bonaparte and Hitler each enjoyed, for dreadful seasons, enormous popularity when they provided order where the institutions that had guaranteed order had collapsed. Truly there is more to be said on the subject -- yet Vidal, for his seemingly moderate erudition and insight, agitates more than penetrates the subject. His final phrases identify a generalized, troubled sentiment (a queasiness, if not a nausea) but they do not indicate an issuance from that sentiment. "Law and Order" is strong medicine, mind you, strong for good reason and to good ends.
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In this second video Vidal (below), an American blue-blood just as much as Buckley, tosses out more dour, veiled threats, perceiving himself no doubt as some kind of tribune, some kind of messenger: Very soon the poor, black and white in alliance with the young, are going to challenge the old order, and if Nixon does not respond with intelligence and with compassion, then there will be such revolution in these United States as has never been before.... Not all of the police and national guards combined will be able to withstand the eruption of those without hope or means of redress save through violence.
