I had the chance the other day to view the documentary, “The Best of Enemies.”  Absolutely enthralling!  The documentary looks at the ten televised debates between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal that were held at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami and then the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  These debates, televised on ABC, caught the attention of the nation and forever changed both television as well as Buckley and Vidal.

The debates are most well known for the infamous moment in which Buckley exploded in rage at Vidal’s accusation that Buckley was a “crypto-Nazi” and in which Buckley countered by calling Vidal “queer” and threatened to “punch you in the —— face and you’ll stay plastered” on national television.

The result was an increase in the acrimony and hostility between the two men (which seems barely possible, by the way, given the animus between the two that existed before these debates) and eventual lawsuits between the two as well.  Culturally, the result was a change in the way that network television covered national conventions and, more substantially, a change in the way that television allowed, then welcomed, and now encourages such raucous exchanges.

In 1968, however, such things did not happen, and the infamous clash was a very big deal, to be sure.

The stage was set for conflict from the very beginning.  Buckley was the patron saint of conservatism and founder of National Review magazine.  Vidal was a celebrity of the left and the author of the highly controversial ode to sexual libertinism, the novel Myra Breckinridge.  Buckley considered Vidal a pornographer and dangerously radical leftist.  Vidal considered Buckley an absolute dinosaur and totalitarian buffoon.  Both were aristocrats.  Both were highly intelligent.  Both loathed the other.

The ten debates were filled with ad hominem invective from the get-go.  The mutual disdain was palpable.  Buckley’s notorious paroxysm was just one of the more dramatic and shocking salvos in a long catalogue of such barbs.

The documentary is very well done.  It sets the stage admirably on what was going on in the parties and in the culture at large.  It also paints very helpful pictures of Buckley and Vidal that help explain some of the psychology at play.

I was fascinated to see how Buckley’s outburst haunted him for the remainder of his days.  I had naively thought, based on some of his later self-effacing allusions to the incident, that he wore it as a badge of honor.  He did not.  He was mortified by it and deeply regretted it.  He was also somewhat obsessed with it in the aftermath, writing and commenting on it at great length.

Vidal saw it as a great triumph in which he finally exposed Buckley for the vile creature Vidal thought him to be.  However, Buckley’s deft declaration of victory in the aftermath of his lawsuit against Esquire and Vidal (itself in the aftermath of Vidal’s response in that magazine to Buckley’s earlier examination of the whole episode in the same) grated on Vidal.  After Buckley’s death, Vidal publicly bid him, “RIP WFB…in Hell.”

There’s a lot to see here and a lot to ponder.  The power of ego.  The power of hatred.  The clash of worldviews.  The power of a single instance to redefine whole media of communication.  The concentration of wider cultural movements in figurehead celebrities.  The insatiable human desire to have the last word.  The haunting failure of allowing one’s carefully-crafted image to drop for a moment of raw, regrettable emotion.  The role of television in the cultural discourse and the etiquette thereof.  Etc. etc.

This is a cautionary tell, well told and enthrallingly depicted in “The Best of Enemies.”  It’s political theater at its best and its most troubling.  It’s also a strange and telling little episode in American political history, this fracas between Buckley and Vidal, but one worthy of consideration.  And, in that regard, one can do much worse than this documentary.