Remembering Jim Buckley, Conservative Statesman

The death of James L. Buckley at age 100 on Friday signified nothing less than the end of an era.

Buckley was the last in a pantheon of "greats" who forged the post-war conservative movement long with his late brother William F. Buckley Jr., author and founder of National Review, 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.

More than a half-century later, Buckley is recalled as a historical figure and a man of consequence by winning a U.S. Senate seat from New York as the nominee of the New York Conservative Party, making him the last senator to come from a third party.

Defeated in his 1976 Senate race by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Buckley returned to Washington four years later when Reagan became president. After stints in two high-ranking positions in the U.S. State Department, including as undersecretary of state, Buckley was appointed in 1985 to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

In those three positions, Buckley became one of a handful of Americans to have served in all three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

When Justice Lewis Powell retired from the Supreme Court in 1987, there was considerable encouragement of then-President Reagan to appoint Judge Buckley to fill the vacancy. But the White House had privately ruled out naming anyone past the age of 60, wanting someone who would have a long tenure deciding major cases.

Buckley later told Newsmax: "There was too much reading involved in being a jurist and I was always a slow reader. As it was, I had to go into chambers on Sunday after church to complete the required readings for the court of appeals. Had I been offered the Supreme Court appointment, I probably would have declined."

When Newsmax last interviewed Buckley in 2019, we asked how then-President Donald Trump's agenda held up aside the more traditional conservatism of Goldwater, Reagan, and himself. 

"I never thought of Trump as a conservative," Buckley said. "I just thought of him as someone out there looking for opportunities."

Trump's foreign policy, he said, "scares me."

Buckley specifically cited Trump's proposals to slap tariffs on foreign goods.

"But you have the domestic area, which I'm extremely happy about," Buckley said."You have the judicial appointments, which have been superb. My guess is he lucked into that by getting the list from the Federalist Society."

Buckley also was high on Trump's domestic policies.

"I very much approved of his tax package, the corporate end of it," Buckley said, adding, "not necessarily the personal income tax part of it. We need the revenue."

As a senator, Buckley championed turning back to the states authority not constitutionally delegated to the federal government. Not surprisingly, he liked Trump's rolling back of federal regulations.

"But I am concerned about executive orders and issuing proclamations of sorts," Buckley said. "President Obama set a pattern of doing this. Having first declared he had no constitutional authority to do this, Trump now does it."

As for the Republican Party and its condition, Buckley told us he was "perplexed."

"You've asked me a question I can't answer," he said."When Trump came in, the whole [Republican Party] system went up in the air. I don't know where it is today."

Any interview with Buckley inevitably worked its way to his surprise election to the Senate in 1970.

Angered by Nelson Rockefeller's appointment of liberal Republican Charles Goodell to the Senate seat of the late Robert Kennedy, Empire State GOP activists defected in droves to Buckley, a registered Republican who ran as the candidate of the new Conservative Party in the Empire State.

A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, attorney, and businessman, Jim Buckley took the state by storm.

Buckley spoke up for law and order and smaller government. And they identified with his slogan: "Isn't it time we had a senator?"

Conservatives around the country sent money to the "outsider" candidate.

Actor John Wayne even cut a commercial saying, "If I lived in New York, you can be sure I'd vote for Jim Buckley."

In one of the most closely watched campaigns of 1970, Buckley won with 39%, with former Rep. Richard Ottinger, D-N.Y., at 37% and Goodell at 24%.

"I could not have launched my campaign under the present rules," said Buckley, voicing distaste for the present federal regulations on reporting campaign donations.

Buckley's good nature and graciousness seemed tailor-made for a Senate which, as he put it, "oozed civility."

"We could talk to one another and respect one another," he recalled.

Buckley and wife Anne often dined with colleagues and their wives from the opposite side.

"It's become a way of politicizing and appealing to certain groups," Buckley said of the highly partisan environment in Washington.

Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware, who entered the Senate two years after Buckley, worked closely with the New Yorker on issues such as opposition to court-ordered busing and crafting the earliest environmental legislation.

"Now, the only thing you see on the Senate floor are people making speeches to a national audience and not to their colleagues," Buckley said. "And their colleagues aren't even around to listen."

Part of the problem, Buckley said, is Congress has increasingly focused on "grants-in-aids programs which have nothing to do with federal responsibilities. But it's the easiest way to generate hometown headlines."

"I would pull the cameras out today," he told me.

Buckley was in the Senate in 1973 when Roe v. Wade effectively gutted state limitations on abortion. He became one of the earliest voices for the right-to-life movement, and along with the late Rep. Larry Hogan, R-Md. (father of Maryland's future governor), he became one of the earliest sponsors of federal anti-abortion legislation.

"Today, technology is helping to increase popular support of restrictions on abortion," he said."You have a very, very strong base for state laws that say the moment the fetus can feel pain, don't do it. I would prefer it to say it never happen, but I think there is a strong popular movement for strict limitations on abortion. "

Buckley's wife Anne died in 2011, a devastating development for him. Today he is patriarch of a family with six children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren

"We all married late, so I'm becoming a great-grandfather 20 years after most of my friends did," he said with a smile.

Buckley made it to 100 and was toasted nationwide by legions of friends and admirers. In his passing, he will be remembered fondly by legions more as an early craftsman of and spokesman for the post-war agenda that would become the Reagan Revolution.

And he surely won't be forgotten.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.