What does the life of William F. Buckley, Jr. reveal about the deeper currents shaping American politics today?
In 1951, a 25-year-old named William F. Buckley, Jr. burst onto the national stage with God and Man at Yale, an indictment of his alma mater for promoting secular liberalism and betraying its Christian roots. The book launched a political and intellectual career that would span five decades, during which Buckley founded National Review, debated left-wing icons, hosted the long-running TV show Firing Line, and helped usher modern American conservatism from the political margins to the center of power. As Sam Tanenhaus explores in his new biography, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (Random House, 2025), Buckley was as much a cultural force as he was a political figure, one who helped define the shape and tone of right-wing politics for generations.
In this episode of In the National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn sits down with Tanenhaus, a former editor of The New York Times Book Review, for a conversation that excavates Buckley’s legacy for today’s political free-for-all. The discussion ranges from Buckley’s 1965 New York mayoral run to the unexpected coalition behind Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent 2025 campaign, from the “white backlash” politics of the 1960s to the left- and right-wing populist upheavals of the Trump era.
Buckley’s critique of liberalism often eclipsed his concern about communism; it was a rhetorical strategy with echoes in Trump-era attacks on the so-called liberal elite. The central issues of Buckley’s time—media bias, class politics, voter disillusionment, and the eroding power of elite institutions—remain just as salient in today’s political discourse. Are American voters really motivated by ideas, or by something more visceral and emotional that Trumpian politics taps into?
The episode offers a wide-ranging and provocative meditation on political discourse, media echo chambers, and the evolving role of ideology in American life. Why do Trump’s followers remain loyal despite his frequent policy flip-flopping? Has the liberal establishment lost its hold not just on power, but on the language of ideas itself? Is the Democratic Party now confronting its own version of the populist revolt that Buckley once galvanized on the right?
Along the way, Tanenhaus considers whether Buckley was, in the end, a “sorcerer’s apprentice,” a man who summoned a movement he could not ultimately control.
About the Speakers:
Sam Tanenhaus is the former editor of The New York Times Book Review and author of the new biography Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (Random House, 2025.) Tanenhaus previously wrote the national bestseller Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His feature articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and many other publications in the U.S. and abroad. He is currently a contributing writer for The Washington Post.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He is the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, which The New York Times included on its 100 notable books of the year in 2008, and America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel.
Image: William F. Buckley Jr. being interviewed for the Los Angeles Times, 1954 (Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons.)
