Rating: 
Summary: Calling Kettle Black
Review: Ever since Spy Magazine detailed Buckley's own problems (tips the bottle a bit too often, as if we couldn't tell, and so forth), Buckley's penchant for ad hominem (and highly inaccurate ad hominem, at that) has gotten worse. But, to compare the teacher of Greenspan and Martin Anderson to John Birch loonies has Buckley in a downward credibility spiral from which his reputation will never recover.
Rating: 
Summary: Defining the American Right
Review: Getting It Right is a fascinating and entertaining tale that captures a unique part of American history. It also carries a message about American Conservatism.The first thing to note about Getting It Right is that it is, in essence, historical fiction. Buckley is using his front row seat in the development of the modern American Right to weave a novel. The building blocks are the actual events, conversations, and lives of those involved. The fiction is what Buckley calls the "joiner work" that knits the story together. The focus of this fascinating story is the turbulent decade from 1956 to 1966. The plot centers on the lives of two young people, Woodroe Raynor and Lenora Goldstein, whose paths first cross in 1960 at the founding conference of the Young Americans For Freedom in Sharon, Connecticut. But two unique sections of the American Right are highlighted through the lives of these two individuals: the John Birch Society (via Woodroe) and the objectivists centered around Ayn Rand (via Lenora). As the story develops, you see how the burgeoning conservative movement attempted to define itself and how its members tried to deal with the events and ideas of their times. Both Woodroe and Lenora struggle with how the groups they are associated with, the Birch Society and Objectivism, fit in the larger world and the Right in America. As the story develops we begin to see how each group seems to have a fatal flaw. Welch can't seem to understand that the failures of American foreign policy and politics are not simply the result of some grand conspiracy theory wherein the communists are masterminding everything. Woodroe begins to see this when he realizes how kooky some of Welch's associates are and how unwilling the society is to recognize progress, differing viewpoints, or even honest failure. Ironically, he begins to find himself in the course of the Barry Goldwater campaign. If Welch's extremism was tied to public events, Rand's extremism begins to reveal itself in her private life. Rand's arrogance and self-centeredness leads her to see Objectivism as her unique gift to the world; something she controls and owns. She treats the people in her life the same way. Using her philosophy as an excuse, Rand initiates an affair with Nathaniel Braden despite the fact that he is married to one of her closest associates. When Nathaniel tires of an affair with someone twenty-five years his senior Rand brings the weight of her furry and power down on him and erases him from her life. He goes from second in command and future heir to totally ostracize without so much as a complaint from his fellow objectivists. We are left with two questions: how is the book as a novel and what is its message for conservatism? As a novel Getting It Right is on par with Buckley's previous works. The characters are interesting and lively. The plot moves with a good pace but this is not a thriller or a mystery. No, Buckley's novels are really a series of vignettes and character sketches. He paints the picture by describing the key events and ideas that make up a characters life. The result is interesting, if not spectacular, historical fiction. The fifties and sixties were interesting historical periods and it is entertaining following two young people as they try to make their way through those turbulent times. What gives this book added pleasure is Buckley's unique perspective on the events, people, and ideas of this particular slice of history. The history involved, and Buckley's place in it, leaves you wondering what he is trying to say with this book. In the end, I believe, Buckley is defining the center of the American Right by outlining the failings of the extremes. If the conservative movement was to succeed it had to set limits, as to what it stood for and how it would communicate and participate in the American political arena. This was, and is, an awkward and difficult process. It is a process that Buckley, as editor of National Review, was intimately involved with and concerned about. There are still those who hold a grudge because of the decisions made during that time (just ask an objectivist about Whitaker Chambers book review of Atlas Shrugged). With this book Buckley seems to be reaffirming the decision to, in essence, cast aside the Birchers and the hard core Radians; to define the mainstream conservative movement as having limits. What proved the undoing of both Robert Welch an Ayn Rand (in Buckley's view) is their inability to set limits in their own personal and intellectual lives. Both Welch and Rand come across as too smart for their own good. Their intelligence and charisma allows them to build a growing and influential following but their personal demons and lack of restraint soon lead them to extremes and to the edge of the conservative movement. What was missing from both movements was a sense of balance and a deeper knowledge of human nature. This search for one answer above all, this Gnostic quest for an overriding key to history, is both dangerous and inimical to conservatism. In Getting It Right, Buckley seems to be arguing that Welch and Rand abandoned conservatism rather than having been ungraciously kicked out. If you are at all interested in the history of the Modern American conservative movement, or if you are fascinated by the characters and events of this time period, I recommend Getting It Right. It is a fascinating and intriguing historical story and Buckley's unique brand of historical fiction brings it to life in an enjoyable and accessible way.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Opportunity Missed
Review: Getting It Right
by William F. Buckley, Jr.
(Regnery, 302 pps.) As a political activist whose views have been described as "extreme right-wing" (although I would argue that the Libertarian party annoys the Left and the Right more or less equally), I am naturally interested in how the American Right evolved, from the beginning of the Cold War to the present. It was for that reason--and not, Lord knows, because I expected any stylistic treat'that I looked forward to reading "Getting It Right." Unfortunately, as is usually the case with Mr. Buckley's historical fiction, the book would have been far more interesting'indeed potentially a classic'had the author presented it as non-fiction, either history or personal memoir. As fiction, this book is a bit of a snore. Mr. Buckley just can't write fiction very well. I would guess that this is because he doesn't ask to be coached, and none of his circle dares coach him unbidden, and in any case his novels sell well enough regardless of their literary quality. His fans'of which I am one, when he sticks to journalism and criticism'live in hope where his fiction is concerned. However, I have finally given way to despair. "Getting It Right" gives us a terrific subject: the story of how two very different "right-wing" movements'the anti-Communist John Birch Society and the "objectivist" cult of Ayn Rand'diverged and sometimes co-operated and between them pretty well destroyed the possibility of a libertarian revolution, leaving the United States to degenerate into the authoritarian collectivist society it has become. The book is also blessed with a strong cast of historical characters: the imperious Miss Rand; the ever-more-paranoid Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society); Welch's ally, the bizarre Gen. Edwin Walker; the anti-Communist academic Revilo Oliver; self-help guru Nathaniel Branden; Sen. Barry Goldwater; cameo appearances by John and Robert Kennedy and Earl Warren. Unfortunately, the subject matter and the historical characters'the most interesting components of the book'are treated with an almost insulting superficiality. The author spends far too much time on a fictional protagonist, Woodroe Raynor, whose background is so improbable as to make the reader roll his eyes almost immediately: a Mormon missionary, not yet 20 years old, he is miraculously caught up in the Hungarian revolt of 1956, an event that convinces him of the inherent evil of Communism. His romantic interest (if you can call it that) throughout the book is a Randian acolyte: Leonora Goldstein, the idealistic daughter of refugees from Hitler's depredations. The woodenness, the utter lack of emotion with which these two approach their relationship (which begins in the late 1950s and culminates in their engagement at the end of the book, in the mid-1960s) is quite illustrative of Mr. Buckley's chief flaw as a novelist: his apparent discomfort with anything to do with "feelings." I sometimes criticize writers (women writers in particular) for being overly occupied with the illustration of emotion, but Mr. Buckley goes to the other extreme. He acknowledges that people feel this way or that way, and admits somewhat grudgingly that people have sexual intercourse, but he's most reluctant to go any farther than that. In his rather sketchy illustration of the relationship between Woodroe and Leonora, one sees little or no affection, and certainly no passion. They behave to each other more like an undemonstrative but secretly incestuous brother and sister than like a courting couple. Even more egregious is Mr. Buckley's description (or nondescription) of the sexual liaisons between Miss Rand and her sometime heir apparent, Branden. Such an affair did, notoriously, take place, but it's difficult to form an original movie, in one's mind's eye, of what the postmenopausal and emphatically hideous Miss Rand must have looked like, with her clothes off, doing the nasty with a chap some 30 years her junior. A gruesomely detailed written description'and we all know how funny Mr. Buckley can be, when he wants to be'would not have gone unappreciated. An even greater challenge for the author, which Mr. Buckley likewise shirks, would have been to make the reader understand why a young man might want to swyve the aging diva of objectivism in the first place. In describing the end of their affair, Mr. Buckley commits one of the most elementary errors of fiction-writing. Here is how he describes her reaction to Branden's decision to end their sexual relationship: "Nathaniel had seen her cross before. He had seen her critical. But he had not seen her uncontrollably, titanically, murderously angry. It was like a great tidal wave smashing everything in its path, including skyscrapers, the white cliffs of Dover, and the Maginot Line. When finally he escaped upstairs to Barbara, they wept together. But before they had come near to exhausting their reserves of mutual consolation, the telephone rang, and lo! it was Ayn. She wanted to speak with Barbara. "She did so at great length. Any told how she had misestimated Barbara's husband. She had thought him a true man, on the scale of the great men she had created in fiction. He was less than that. Far less. He was despicable." Any graduate assistant English instructor at any college in the United States would have handed that passage back to Mr. Buckley with the sharp admonition, "Show me, don't tell me!" Unfortunately, just as no friend of Barbra Streisand or Tim Robbins or Ed Asner is going to tell them that their political views are wrongheaded, no friend of Mr. Buckley's is likely to presume to teach him how to write fiction. Thus his next novel, if there is a next, is certain to be yet another exercise in half-assedness. --Joseph Dobrian
Rating: 
Summary: Inside Stuff
Review: I enjoyed this book, but not as a novel. It is better read as a light, but accurate history of the times. Buckley lived through this period and avows that he has given an accurate portrayal, albeit in novel form. I had viewed the John Birch Society as more radical than is portrayed here and much more racist oriented. I have read several of Ayn Rand's works and enjoyed them, but never realized the seriousness it had as a political movement. Buckley's adventure novels are much better written, so I have to assume he was more intrested in telling the inside history as he saw it. It would be interesting to find out how he views the powerful grip the Christian right and the moneyed business interest now have on the party - in relation to this jockeying for power.
Rating:
Summary: William F. Buckley, Jr.'s Battle Axe To Grind
Review: I have long been an admirer of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s magazine, National Review. It has been a reasoned voice for American conservatism, and indeed a guiding light that helped launch the Reagan revolution. I have also been a longtime fan of the novels of Russian-born American novelist Ayn Rand, and a serious student of her philosophy, Objectivism. There: That's my disclaimer.
"Getting It Right" is a historical novel that spans a crucial decade for the conservative movement, from 1956 through 1966, and is told through its protagonists, two anti-communists who fall in love. One, Woodroe Raynor, is a staffer for the John Birch Society. Mormon Woodroe is involved with a (non-practicing, obviously) Jewish "student of Objectivism," Leonora Goldstein, who works as an assistant for Barbara Branden, erstwhile second-in-line to Ayn Rand's throne as Philosopher Queen and head of state of Galt's Gulch.
However, "protagonists" does not exactly describe Woodroe and Leonora. Tristan und Isolde they ain't. Actually, "props" more aptly captures the essence of the novel's two main characters. Throughout the novel, the pair serve as two remote controlled cyborgs that puppet master Buckley navigates expertly through the inner-workings of paranoid Birch founder Robert Welch's movement and his co-conspiracy theorist Gen. Edwin Walker and Rand's "Collective," a group of freewheeling individualists who strangely become automatons under the spell of Ayn Rand, whom Buckley has cast as The Bride of Dr. Mabuse.
Basically, the plot of the book is simple: How William Buckley, National Review and Young Americans for Freedom rushed in on a white steed at the last minute and saved the conservative movement -- hanging by a pinky from a cliff overlooking a crevass -- from the clutches of evil madman Welch and heretical witchdoctress Ayn.
"Getting it Right" is actually entertaining, once you get past the two non-entities Woody and Lee. Buckley has obviously been saving juicy tidbits of right-winger gossip for almost a half century and can finally divulge them all now that the interested maligned parties (Rand, her passive husband Frank O'Connor, Welch, Walker and radical scholar Revilo Oliver) have had their mail forwarded to St. Peter's pearly gates (Petrogate, for the atheist Rand).
Cameo appearances are made by Barry Goldwater, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Ike Eisenhower, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Alan Greenspan and various second-stringer conservatives who wrote for National Review, who act as stand-ins so that Buckley can take vicarious credit without appearing too boorish.
Much of the book's plot centers around Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater's 1964 run for the White House and his crisis of having to dissociate himself from the John Birchers. Yes, it is true that Welch was a big obstacle to moving the conservative movement forward, but Rand?
The Objectivists were never more than a speed bump at worst, and actually had a much longer-lasting impact on Republican politics in particular and conservatism in general. By equating the bizarre paranoid fantasies of Robert Welch with the eccentric sexual antics of Ayn Rand, Buckley's 45- year-long chip on his shoulder against the author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" is revealed (he's been sore at Rand ever since she told him he was too intelligent a man to believe in God). For a man who should now rest on his laurels as the legitimate Elder Statesman of conservatism, Buckley spends an inordinate amount of time nursing a childish grudge.
Oddly, Buckley never even mentions the one man responsible for making the abrasive and rugged Goldwater palatable to the American people, Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan's nationally televised populist speech that did more for Goldwater than patrician Buckley and his coterie ever did by heading off Welch and Rand at the pass.
Buckley's omission may have been excusable had Reagan never done anything more than boost Goldwater's popularity. However, the fact that the pinnacle and culmination of all the hopes, wishes and efforts of conservatives was Reagan's election in 1980, shows Buckley's as more ungracious than forgetful.
Mostly, "Getting it Right" gets it wrong in narrowing the scope of its focus, overlooking the larger impact of the then-nascent conservative movement.
Rating:
Summary: Fictionalized Early History of Modern American Conservatism
Review: I've occasionally enjoyed William F. Buckley's Blackford Oakes novels, but "Getting It Right" is by the far the worst novel he's written. While I commend Buckley for looking at two of the most extreme groups in American conservatism, his fictional treatment might have worked better as a memoir, since he himself was a pivotal player in many of the events shaping the course of the American conservative movement in the 1950's and 1960's. Instead he presents two one-dimensional protagonists who happen to fall in love, despite the fact that they are working for the political groups that are polar opposites of each other; the male protagonist for the John Birch Society, his female counterpart for Ayn Rand's Objectivist clique. Regrettably this novel was difficult to read through its entirety inspite of its relative brevity. I can only endorse it for those who are truly passionate about modern American conservatism and diehard fans of William Buckley's thoughts and prose.
Rating:
Summary: Witness
Review: If you have George H. Nash's /The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945/ on your bookshelf and have thought its themes fertile for a novel of manners, William F. Buckley Jr.'s /Getting it Right/ is the book for you. It presumes substantial familiarity with the figures and institutions that shaped the modern right, so readers who have not followed conservatism's internecine philosophical struggles will find little in this book that anchors their interest. Those well-acquainted with the patriarchs of such fixtures as National Review and Young Americans for Freedom will appreciate /Getting it Right/ as an illuminating chronicle of an ideological revolution of which Buckley is one of the last surviving witnesses. The book is also a fitting companion to /The Redhunter/, Buckley's novelization of the rise and fall of Joe McCarthy, as both books contribute an important perspective to the emergence in the 1950s of an anti-Communist eddy that helped invigorate an ascending conservative movement. During this era, Buckley, Russell Kirk, Whitaker Chambers, and others were defining, in the pages of National Review, the parameters of conservatism as we understand it today. In so doing, they strove to establish their breed of conservatism as the dominant ideology of anti-Communism, while such firebrands as Ayn Rand and the John Birch Society's Robert Welch adopted a fiercer, more confrontational demeanor. /Getting it Right/ is Buckley's account of how Rand and Welch estranged themselves from the emerging conservative silent majority. Buckley is fair to both and displays a keen understanding of how Rand and Welch each captivated their respective sects. Presently, Rand's legacy is more enduring and I expect that Buckley's portrayal of Rand as a shrew who may have "created an entire . . . philosophical system[] to deal with her own psychological problems" will earn this book hysterical reproachment from those who still adopt Rand's "Objectivism" and style themselves Randian heroes. But Buckley has in no sense whatsoever adopted the Aaron Sorkin model of political fiction wherein one makes ideological opponents look silly by putting words in their mouths that they would never speak. Buckley clearly acknowledges Rand's literary brilliance and her gift for rigorous analytical deduction. He uses her personal implosion as an object lesson in how the most studious fidelity to capitalism and freedom cannot yield genuine happiness without a corresponding commitment to the traditional social virtues. But did this have to be a novel? Not until the final pages will readers develop much affection for the major fictional characters, each of whom serves as little more than a deus ex machina to hurry along the narrative. The author was a major participant in many of the events chronicled, and history would have been better served by a well-documented first-person account than by a half-fictionalization in which Buckley at times clumsily renders himself as a supporting character. The novel's copious citations to National Review editorials also harmonize rather poorly with its literary form. Yet the struggle for the soul of American conservatism does have the character of an epic. The drama reaches its crescendo at the 1964 Republican National Convention when a defiant Barry Goldwater declares, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . . Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." By itself, the sentiment was and is beautiful, but Buckley places it in context, and, as always, stands athwart history, yelling Stop.
Rating:
Summary: Can I give it 3 and a half?
Review: In looking at the other reviews, they seem to come down a little heavy on the prose. I've never known historical fiction to be as flowing as well-written general fiction and don't expect it to be. Anyway, one of the best insights here was when Goldwater's aides were explaining to him the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The 'street' politics, as Buckley refers to them here, are nudged both directly and indirectly by these intellectual and fringe movements. Think Ayn Rand's high-brow philosophy had no effect on modern Republican thought? Guess again (also, see Greenspan). For me, it underscored how any standing "President" is truly just a figurehead for a broader movement when so many seem to overlook this and assume that he is where it all starts and ends......or "voting for the man", as I've heard it put. In other words, George Bush doesn't have to know the intricacies of everything that happens in relation to foreign policy because he's not basing decisions merely on his personal ideas anyway. That wasn't the point of the book, but an interesting aspect of it, I thought.
If you are far too into politics, as I am, you'll definitely enjoy this insight into the forces that determined the direction of the conservative movement in the last century.
Rating:
Summary: Can I give it 3 and a half?
Review: In looking at the other reviews, they seem to come down a little heavy on the prose. I've never known historical fiction to be as flowing as well-written general fiction and don't expect it to be. Anyway, one of the best insights here was when Goldwater's aides were explaining to him the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The 'street' politics, as Buckley refers to them here, are nudged both directly and indirectly by these intellectual and fringe movements. Think Ayn Rand's high-brow philosophy had no effect on modern Republican thought? Guess again (also, see Greenspan). For me, it underscored how any standing "President" is truly just a figurehead for a broader movement when so many seem to overlook this and assume that he is where it all starts and ends......or "voting for the man", as I've heard it put. In other words, George Bush doesn't have to know the intricacies of everything that happens in relation to foreign policy because he's not basing decisions merely on his personal ideas anyway. That wasn't the point of the book, but an interesting aspect of it, I thought.
If you are far too into politics, as I am, you'll definitely enjoy this insight into the forces that determined the direction of the conservative movement in the last century.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be deceived.
Review: Last year, John F. McManus published a book through the John Birch Society entitled "William F. Buckley: Pied Piper of the Establishment." In that book, McManus explains how he, like so many others, was deceived by Buckley's and his pseudo-conservative propaganda. In that book, you will find out that in 1952, Buckley wrote in the Jan. 25 issue of "Commonweal," about how he felt that all governmental power should be centralized into the hands of bureaucrats, "even with Truman at the reins of it all." Not only that, you will also find that in the February 2001 issue of "Linga Franca," Buckley expressed that he would be a "Mike Harrington socialist" or "even a communist" had he been given another chance to relive his college years. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Mr. Buckley has taken revenge against the Society with his new book "Getting it Right." Unlike McManus however, Buckley does not arm himself with facts, but instead takes aim against the Society through clever use of fictional accounts, and liberal cliches such as "communist under every bed." This is the kind of book you might expect from a liberal author, not a conservative. In summary, I recommend buying the book by McManus. Truth is stranger than fiction, and in my honest opinion, makes for much more interesting reading.
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