Notes & Asides.

Remarks by WFB at a dinner honoring Robert L. Bartley, October 17. The master of ceremonies was Daniel Oliver, and other speakers were David Frum, Christopher Buckley, Tom Wolfe, and Paul Gigot. Christopher Buckley's toast is reproduced first:

When my father asked me to be on the program I happily agreed, for I feel that it is now safe for the world to know about the Other Bob Bartley. Not Bob Bartley, the great writer of editorials, or Bob Bartley, the scourge of liberals, or Bob Bartley, the 34-year-old wunderkind, but-as the character Max Bialystock in the movie and play The Producers put it-"the Fuhrer with a song in his heart."

I first met Bob at the National Review anniversary dinner in 1985. At this grand occasion-attended by President Ronald Reagan, blessings be upon his name-I found that I would be seated next to him. When I noticed this placement on the program, I was overcome with nervousness. I had worked in the previous years in the White House, where the Wall Street Journal editorial pages were taken as Holy Scripture, and now I was about to have several hours of close proximity to The Great Bob Bartley.

In something very close to panic, I sought guidance during the cocktail hour from someone I knew who was close to him personally. What was he like? I asked. What topics of conversation should I pursue? Did he have any hobbies? This person, who shall remain nameless, but whom, at the time, I underestimated, took in my distress and suavely replied, "Oh, not to worry. He's casual as can be. A great one for small talk. And he loves-loves-above all things in life-a really good off-color joke. As for hobbies, not many people know about it, but he has this thing for soap opera. He tapes them and watches them at night. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of As the World Turns and Guiding Light. Get him going on soap opera and you'll have to stuff a napkin in his mouth to shut him up."

I was greatly relieved by this intelligence. I would be spending the dinner hour not only with one of the great minds of our time, but also, clearly, with a regular guy, a man of the common touch. Indeed I found myself wishing I knew more about soap opera. Presently I found myself at Table 38 with the great man. I found him entirely pleasant, if not quite the bubbly small-talker I had been told to expect. Perhaps it had been a hard day at the office. So I awaited my chance. As soon as my wife and Edith Bartley were engaged in their own conversation, I leaned over and said, "So, how many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

His reception of my little jeu d'esprit seemed somewhat muted. I put it down to the acoustics of the Grand Ballroom. When the main course had been served, I seized my chance to engage him in something I knew to be close to his heart. And in full hearing of all at the table said, "So, Bob, I hear you're a great aficionado of soap opera. Do you think Susan Lucci will finally win a daytime Emmy this year?" Again his response struck me as muted. Indeed, quite so. He looked at me owlishly, with an expression of seven-eighths disdain and one-eighth contempt, as if he had been suddenly thrust into the company of someone prematurely released from an asylum for the mentally feeble. My wife, who at the time worked for the CIA and was adept at evaluating disastrous situations, kicked me under the table.

Thus began-and ended-my long personal association with Robert Bartley. After the dinner was over, I sought out the person who had given me the pre-dinner briefing. I found him hiding in a bathroom stall, convulsed in hysterics.

I shot him, and disposed of the body in what is now the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

And yet as I look back upon it, I'm somewhat grateful to the fellow. If he hadn't given me that meretricious briefing, I probably would have attempted to engage the Great Man conversationally in such matters as the Laffer Curve, the conquest of Grenada, or David Stockman. And no doubt he would have found my offerings on those banal, if somewhat less alarming than the conversation I ended up offering him. This way I can at least look back and say that for a brief, if not shining, moment, I had the whole of Robert Bartley's attention. We connected. If he himself has no recollection of it-having put it out of his mind long ago-I do, a vivid one, and it remains somehow one of the great moments of my life, rococo, improbable, proud.

Thus the theme of my toast to him. I feel like the tumbler in the medieval tale who, amidst all the wise and scholarly monks, had only his one small talent to offer up, and performed his humble and awkward obeisance. But seldom do I get the chance to play the fool so gladly, or with such awe and respect.

* * *

WFB: It's obvious at this point that you are glad to join me in this opportunity to affirm our enthusiasm for the labors of our guest of honor. I had a preview of some of the remarks we have listened to, and so had an intimation of how well they'd express our feelings. I was not made privy to how our master of ceremonies would handle himself. But I was reminded of his meticulous sense of duty and of the depth of his self-assurance when I got his e-mail a week ago in which, responding to my ukase limiting the speakers to four minutes each, he caviled that four minutes would not allow time for anticipated applause.

He was certainly right, and he has now my own applause, spoken, not handclapped, happily wrenched from the four minutes I allotted myself, applause for his wit and ingenuity. Norman Podhoretz told me months ago that the highlight of the dinner in Indianapolis celebrating the anniversary of the Hudson Institute had been Dan Oliver's introductions. I would say as much for what we have heard tonight- except that to acclaim him as the evening's highlight would subordinate the performance of the Jim Cullum Jazz Band. Nothing spoken can, finally, compete with the spectrum of sentiments rendered in music, certainly not when competing with the music of Jim Cullum, with my idol John Sheridan at the keyboard. Dan Oliver has the option of turning, in later life, to music, for the next time around-which will be when? On the retirement of Paul Gigot?

On the other hand, that leaves open the question, Will we be disposed to celebrate the retirement of Paul Gigot, down the line? That should be phrased more carefully, inasmuch as we are here, after all, to celebrate not Bob Bartley's retirement, but his achievements upon retiring. It never surprised me or my colleagues that Paul should achieve his high station. It isn't easy to bump into the datum from routine accounts of his biography, but we on 35th Street never made a secret of it that after leaving Dartmouth, he spent two years as an assistant editor of National Review, before going abroad to tame the alien beasts. How could he fail?-it being as unthinkable that he should do so as that supply-side economics will be discredited.

That will happen over Bob Bartley's dead body, and he seems very full of life tonight, however singed he and his staff were by the energumens of September 11. It is a great pleasure to read, in his celebration of the Seven Fat Years brought on by economic policies associated with President Reagan, his account of the evolution of the idea of supply side, accomplished bit by bit at myriad lunches at a little restaurant downtown-Michael 1, it's called- which seems to have served as the Garrick Club of Wall Street. There they met to reify their insight, to distill supply side and explore its ramifications. There, with Bob Bartley, we would come across others, including Bob Mundell and Jude Wanniski, and Craig Roberts and Alan Reynolds, and of course Arthur Laffer.

The crystallization of those insights was once described by John Kenneth Galbraith. Supply-side economics, he wrote, was deduced from a curve sketched by its author, Laffer, on a napkin, or a piece of toilet paper, whichever, normally put to better use. In a televised exchange on the subject, done in Miami in 1972 when we were reporting on the Democratic Convention, the Laffer Curve came up. I volunteered my own definition, which was that supply-side economics is the perception that economically valuable activity is generated by diminished taxation, regulation, and other impediments to commerce. He nodded his head condescendingly and told our audience on the Today show that all this was in any case irrelevant, given the predictable victory next November of Candidate George McGovern; wherein Professor Galbraith established that his vaticinations in politics were as reliable as those in economics.

It isn't the supply-side epiphany that memorializes the career of Bob Bartley at the Wall Street Journal. David Frum, telling us about it all as a one-time insider, and Paul Gigot, speaking to us from the perspective of the successor, hint at the great weight of his editorial deposit. His achievement was cumulative. Day by day, year by year, he showed his lively intelligence, and gave us his stylish defense of freedom, exploring its implications. He stood by convictions arrived at by research and analysis, and advanced a civilized integration of major human events into the democratic moral scene. To be sure, Mr. Clinton was not ejected by the Senate, but he was impeached. He did not go to jail, but he was disbarred. Reflection on the events of those years doesn't tell us that the conclusions of Robert Bartley were wayward, or that those of Senator Moynihan and the New York Times evolved from impetuosity, when they deplored Clinton's behavior, to considered constitutional and moral acuity when they chose to overlook it. It is closer to the point to note that what is finally tiresome is public indifference, not fidelity of standard. Cato taught us that, or tried to.

Modes of expression change. Not always for the better. It is a mystifying question, inasmuch as we don't know for sure how best to judge that which is better, or worse. I, to serve myself up as an offering on the altar of progress, am perfectly prepared to acknowledge that the National Review currently edited by a successor is an improvement, inconceivable though that would once have been thought.

As inconceivable as that the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, under Paul Gigot, will improve on that of our guest of honor, though we concede the hypothetical possibility. But the day will never come when the singular cast of Bob Bartley's thirty years will lose its special character, and the day won't come-certainly not in my lifetime, let alone Irving Kristol's, or, maybe, even Tom Wolfe's!-when studied reflection on the contributions of Bartley to right reason, and on his lovely expressions of it, will incur anything less than the gratitude we express here tonight.

-WFB