Best of Enemies (2015)

BEST OF ENEMIES  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
Like a lot of people who were around back then, I watched the television coverage of the 1968 political conventions with some interest. I was draft age and in college and there was a war on, to begin with. Everywhere you looked, culturally, racially, generationally, the country seemed to be cracking up. There were riots and assassinations to go with a lot of unfortunate rhetoric, and when the Democrats met in Chicago and the counterculture collided with Mayor Daley's cops, the '60s just kind of went kablooey. Apart from that, and a part of it, holding forth on ABC, were Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr., hired by the network to provide commentary while the two major parties went through the motions of nominating candidates for president. Both men were brilliant, articulate, opinionated elitists. They disagreed on virtually everything. And they despised each other. Their televised debates were unprecedented and unforgettable. Whatever they contributed to the political discourse, they made for irresistible theater. That's what this documentary's about, and it's a fascinating look at a pivotal couple of weeks in the life of the country and the lives of its two protagonists. Who "won" the debates is a matter of dispute, but there's no doubt they reached some sort of dramatic climax in Chicago, when Vidal referred to Buckley as a "crypto-nazi," and Buckley responded by calling Vidal a "queer" and threatening to punch him in the face. What's startling watching it even now isn't Buckley's verbal assault, but the undisguised malice with which he delivers it, and this was going out live on TV. The exchange haunted both men for the rest of their lives, and the movie suggests that Buckley especially never recovered from it. That point seems arguable, but they both knew they'd shared a cultural moment that could never be repeated and neither could completely escape. I wouldn't want to bring back 1968 necessarily, but take a quick look at what passes for political commentary in some places today, and you can't help missing the level of intelligence, even mixed in with the low blows and vitriol, that these guys brought to the conversation.