"Of all human failings, he found humorlessness the funniest. Back then, the political left was so earnest about saving the world..."

"... that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down. Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom. A sense of humor, much less self-awareness, are not traits found in cults of personality. If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there."

Writes Christopher Buckley in "P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor" (NYT).

 Did you chuckle at "myrmidons of MAGAdom"? It's got a nattering-nabobs-of-nepotism air about it.

"[P]erhaps the funniest aspect of 'Make Russia Great Again' is how calmly Herb conveys the craziness of the Trump administration."

"With the unruffled decorum of a five-star resort manager, he describes all the complicated maneuvers needed to entertain a president who does not read, who cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes and who will not listen to anything but soliloquies comparing him to 'Napoleon, or God.' The big rally that Trump wants in Testicle, Ohio, may strain the staff’s organizational expertise, but [White House chief of staff Herb Nutterman] is never anything less than brightly complimentary as he watches his boss strong-arm Sen. Biskitt into attending. 'I marveled at the president’s powers of persuasion,' he says. “Come with me to Testicle, Squiggly, is up there with "I have seen the promised land." I got goose bumps.'... There’s a Twain-like quality to this loyal naif who skewers without intending to. While 'Make Russia Great Again' rushes along from one folly to the next, Herb’s increasingly pained efforts to see only the bright side of Trump’s reign is the joke that keeps on winning."

From a review in The Washington Post of Christopher Buckley's new novel, "Make Russia Great Again." Buckley is the son of William F. Buckley Jr., and he was the chief speechwriter for Vice President George H. W. Bush.

"Susan Cheever... includes a heart-lacerating quote by her father: 'If you are an artist, self-destruction is quite expected of you.'"

"'The thrill of staring into the abyss is exciting until it becomes, as it did in my case, contemptible.' She notes that 'all five of our twentieth-century literature Nobel laureates were alcoholic — Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.' (A proud tally.) And those are the ones who made it to the top. Lots of other great writers who didn’t receive the Nobel laurel were just as pie-eyed. Today, the pendulum seems to have swung again. Cheever says that most of our leading literary figures are fairly abstemious. Whether this will make for more interesting biographies remains to be seen."

From Christopher Buckley's review of Susan Cheever's "Drinking in America: Our Secret History."

"Politics in a democracy are always 'vulgar' — since democracy is rule by the 'vulgus,' the common people, the crowd."

Writes William Kristol, rankling at Peggy Noonan's "In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics."

I've read both columns, and it is Noonan's that moves me to quote more:

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing.

Noonan isn't looking for an eggheadedness, just coherence.

I gather this week from conservative publications that those whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives. In one now-famous case, Christopher Buckley was shooed from the great magazine his father invented. In all this, the conservative intelligentsia are doing what they have done for five years. They bitterly attacked those who came to stand against the Bush administration. This was destructive. If they had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position.

And now I'm moved to go back to Buckley's column, which I only skimmed last week:

This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic....

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days....

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves....

Buckley's explanation makes perfect sense to me.

Saying "He is also a lefty. I am not," Christopher Buckley endorses Obama.

Why would a conservative back Obama?

I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian....

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind...

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

By comparison:

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed.... A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

His positions change, and lack coherence....

Is Buckley not right?