Kennedy were assassinated not long after, the former death sparking riots across the country. The Tet offensive in the winter showed the Vietnam War spiraling toward disaster. These exchanges came in the context of an America that was “being split at the seams,” as one commentator puts it.
As one interviewee, the late Christopher Hitchens, understates, “They really did despise each other.” That antipathy, which evidently owed much to Vidal’s taunting pan-sexuality and Buckley’s rigid Catholic revulsion at same, didn’t erupt into history-making acrimony till the ninth of the ten debates, but it’s in plain view from the first. They had crossed paths at political events in 19 and come away with a profound mutual loathing. So the network of course enlisted Vidal, a celebrity provocateur from the left side of the dial, and persuaded Buckley to accept it. Asked by the network if there was anyone he would not debate, he said he would refuse any Communist, or Gore Vidal. Buckley, editor of the National Review and host of PBS’ “Firing Line,” was already the nation’s leading conservative media celebrity.
The choice of antagonists could not have been more incendiary. Poor third-place ABC, with neither the stars nor the resources to match its competitors, needed a gimmick, and it lit upon a corker: have two ideological opposites debate the conventions as part of the network’s coverage. CBS and NBC had their star anchors ( Walter Cronkite on the former, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the latter) and set out to broadcast the events gavel-to-gavel. It was not an even playing field for the three networks, though. The 1968 conventions were the first to be broadcast in color, and an estimated 80 percent of Americans watched them.
#THE BEST OF ENEMIES FULL#
Like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, the Buckley-Vidal throwdown was the product of the decade when television was truly in full effect in American life, and much was brand new.
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