Once upon a time, American writers enlivened—even conducted—political campaigns with wit and flair and acute diagnoses of national ills. Perhaps J.D. Vance, freed of the constraints of second-bananadom, will do so atop the GOP ticket in 2028.
Till then, the acme of auctorial office-seeking remains that achieved by the trio of brio consisting of Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr., and Gore Vidal, whose relationships with each were often rancorous, even fistic.
Buckley’s finest political moment was his 1965 candidacy for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party line. His platform was higgledy-piggledy, veering from libertarian (legalize gambling) to authoritarian (“quarantine all [drug] addicts”) to the wise and humane (anti-urban renewal and pro-neighborhood schools). Buckley’s twitting of the handsomely hollow limousine-liberal Republican (and eventual winner) John Lindsay—who…
