The Bill & Bobby Show

POLITICS The Bill & Bobby Show

Robert F. Kennedy and William F. Buckley Jr. have much in common. They are both young, attractive, wealthy, Roman Catholic, of Irish descent and Ivy League background. Both married daughters of wealthy families and chose to spend their lives in politics (and related professions) rather than in merely enlarging the fortunes their industrious fathers gave them. Both are aggressive combatants.

There the similarities end. Senator Kennedy is a liberal Democrat who is pitching his woo farther left. National Review Editor Buckley, who last year ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, wants to make the Republican Party more conservative. With both now calling New York home base, conflict is inevitable. "We will soon have a vendetta going," Buckley said happily last week.

Kennedy declined to debate Buckley last fall on the grounds that he was not a candidate in the municipal election. Now Buckley is starting a television series matching himself against liberal sparring partners. He invited Kennedy to appear on the first show, scheduled to be broadcast this week, offering him 1) a choice of time because the program is taped, 2) a $500 honorarium and 3) a role in planning the format. Kennedy had an aide send terse regrets. As to why Kennedy refused, Buckley explains: "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"

Buckley, whose forte is devastating repartee delivered in a droll drawl, intends to conduct a debate with or without Kennedy. Indeed, he keeps writing about Kennedy in his column, "On the Right," carried in 148 papers. Last week he had a piece titled "The Inevitability of Bobby Kennedy," which reported with some humor and without alarm that Bobby is headed for higher things.

"He is indestructible," wrote Buckley. "He can say silly things, as he did all over Latin America, and somehow, not be taken as silly. He can say outrageous things, as for instance that he would not object to American blood flowing into Viet Cong veins, and when the public winces, he will issue a torrent of explanations and modifications which are gratefully and instantly accepted, and emerge as the forward-looking thinker. He can back the machine and somehow escape the normal consequences. It is, so far, a winning combination."

With praise like that, does Bobby need enemies?

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