The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley has parted ways with the magazine his father founded for committing a heretical act by National Review magazine standards: endorsing Barack Obama.
In a column today entitled “Sorry, Dad, I was Sacked”on www.TheDailyBeast.com, Christopher Buckley, a well-known author who also who wrote the back page column for National Review magazine, writes that the uproar over his endorsement last week of Obama over Republican John McCain prompted so much backlash that he offered his resignation—and the magazine accepted.
“This offer was accepted—rather briskly! —by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal,” Buckley writes, although the title of the column suggesting he was “sacked” is a little misleading since he did offer his resignation.
Buckley endorsed Obama last Friday on www.TheDailyBeast.com–not in the National Review’s editorial pages–in a column called, “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama” he praised the Illinois senator for “having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect” while opining that McCain has taken “a once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget ‘by the end of my first term.’ Who, really, believes that?”
Buckley is not the first conservative associated with National Review to turn on the McCain campaign. Fellow columnist Kathleen Parker last month wrote a harsh critique of McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, calling on her to bow out of the race. “If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself,” she wrote.
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