History Creator / WilliamFBuckleyJr

* FriendlyEnemy: George [=McGovern=] (a liberal Democratic politician who represented South Dakota in both houses of Congress) was Buckley's political antithesis and Buckley always gave him hell when he was on the show and McGovern happily gave back as good as he got. However, off the record, the two were very close friends, with Buckley describing him as his "best friend" and "the nicest guy I've ever met." He was also feuded in writing and debate with liberal economist John K. Galbraith, but nevertheless considered the man a close personal friend, even planning annual ski trips together.

** In his later years, Buckley was also very vocal in his criticism of the war on drugs, believing it did far more harm than good and just ruined the lives of young people for minor mistakes and made it harder for addicts to get help as well as just being a waste of resources.

* FriendlyEnemy: George [=McGovern=] (a liberal Democratic politician who represented South Dakota in both houses of Congress) was Buckley's political antithesis and Buckley always gave him hell when he was on the show. However, off the record, the two were very close friends, with Buckley describing him as his "best friend" and "the nicest guy I've ever met." He was also feuded in writing and debate with liberal economist John K. Galbraith, but nevertheless considered the man a close personal friend, even planning annual ski trips together.

** In his later years, Buckley was also very vocal in his criticism of the war on drugs, believing it did far more harm than good and just ruined the lives of young people and made it harder for addicts to get help.

* UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: Perhaps the most famous user of the Transatlantic accent, which is every bit as part a persona as anything else. In his case, it's classed up even more due to a good mixture with the English RP he picked up when he spent some time in British boarding schools.
* AcceptablePoliticalTargets: [[invoked]]Most of Buckley's career was spent attempting to invert this, as he felt that a liberal orthodoxy tolerated ideas that should be unacceptable (most notably, Communism) and took the falsity of ideas that he held dear for granted. To wit, his first two books were (1) an iconoclastic look at one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the country and (2) a spirited defense of UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy, of all people.[[note]]It should be noted that Buckley wrote the latter book before the Army hearings and [=McCarthy=]'s appearance on ''Face the Nation'', and he was very critical of the excesses of [=McCarthy=]'s methods, warning against playing fast and loose with the truth in the final chapters.[[/note]]

Buckley famously feuded with author Creator/GoreVidal, whom he despised on principle. The two first met when invited by ABC to commentate on the 1968 political conventions, which the network did because they knew the two bitter rivals would boost ratings.[[note]]Buckley had expressly named Gore Vidal as the one person whom he would not be pleased to be co-commentating with. [[TemptingFate Naturally, this made Vidal a shoe-in.]][[/note]] The debates brought the worst out of both men, who spent more time trading increasingly unsubtle insults than actually commentating on politics, described by the "moderator" as "generating more heat than light." The exchanges quickly deteriorated, culminating in Buckley, provoked by Vidal calling him a "crypto-Nazi" responded by calling him a "queer" and threatening to "sock [Vidal] in [his] goddamn face" on live TV. Buckley considered being cajoled into using a hateful slur and stooping to personal insults the absolute lowest point in his career, going so far as to pen an apology to the man he hated so much. Their feud, however, continued unabated immediately after, trading published barbs and libel lawsuits for the rest of their respective lives.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: He critiqued feminists on ''Firing Line'' for this, insisting that their attempts to make English gender-neutral was an unmusical abuse of the language. At least one -- Germaine Greer -- agreed with him on that front at least. During one of his televised debates on UsefulNotes/{{feminism}}, however, he found himself using "PC" terms (e.g. insistently using the term "spokesperson") without thinking about it.

* RaisedCatholic: Buckley's Catholic faith was a prominent part of ''Firing Line'', not only frequently discussing current events regarding the Church, but also airing a special annual ChristmasEpisode wherein he discusses his faith with friend and colleague Malcolm Muggeridge.

** Suffered this at the hands of his co-brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell Jr., who had founded ''Triumph'', an explicitly religious (read: Catholic) offshoot of the ''National Review''. The two had a very public falling out over Buckley's supposed lack of fidelity to the Catholic faith except where politically convenient, culminating in Bozell all but calling him a hypocrite in print. This permanently ended their friendship.

** Despite the heavily pro-capitalist stance of her works, the ''National Review'' famously pilloried Creator/AynRand as an imposter, scathingly equating her worldview with that of Marxism.

** His ''modus operandi'' with the ''National Review'' was to make it clear who could and could not rightly call themselves "conservatives." Notably, Buckley excluded the rabidly anti-communist John Birch Society, whom he thought were wackos who gave genuine anticommunists a bad name. This also excluded Creator/AynRand, whose militant atheism offended him, and white supremacists ([[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness eventually]]).

* ColbertBump: The attention he gave to UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan both on ''Firing Line'' and in the ''National Review'' are credited in large part to Reagan's eventual prominence in national politics and his successful run at the presidency. He may have also been responsible for Ron Paul's elevation from being a hopeless fringe candidate to an actual presence in national politics.

* AuthorAvatar: Literature/BlackfordOakes, the protagonist of Buckley's spy novels, is pretty clearly a highly fictionalized version of himself. His exploits are a reference to Buckley's own past as a deep-cover agent for the CIA and, just like Buckley, is a WWII veteran, Yale graduate, passionate sailor and horseman, and avid reader of the ''National Review''.

Buckley famously feuded with author Creator/GoreVidal, who he despised on principle. The two first met when invited by ABC to commentate on the 1968 political conventions, which the network did because they knew the two bitter rivals would boost ratings.[[note]]Buckley had expressly named Gore Vidal as the one person whom he would not be pleased to be co-commentating with. [[TemptingFate Naturally, this made Vidal a shoe-in.]][[/note]] The debates brought the worst out of both men, who spent more time trading increasingly unsubtle insults than actually commentating on politics, described by the "moderator" as "generating more heat than light." The exchanges quickly deteriorated, culminating in Buckley, provoked by Vidal calling him a "crypto-Nazi" responded by calling him a "queer" and threatening to "sock [Vidal] in [his] goddamn face" on live TV. Buckley considered being cajoled into using a hateful slur and stooping to personal insults the absolute lowest point in his career, going so far as to pen an apology to the man he hated so much. Their feud, however, continued unabated immediately after, trading published barbs and libel lawsuits for the rest of their respective lives.