The morning after: American successes and excesses 1981-1986.

The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986

by George F.Will (The Free Press, 417 pp., $19.95)

THEY HAVE been going after GeorgeWill here & there, including mildly hostile social scrutinies in the Washington Post and Esquite, and very heavy going by The New Republic's standup bore, Henry Fairlie. So? It happens to all important American journalist-pundits with only such exceptions as Walter Lippmann, who was before TV, and who ended his career by becoming progressively more unreadable. George Will is a success as a columnist and as a television commentator and critic, and his manner (superior) invites denigration mostly by those who cannot imitate him but gladly would if they had an equivalent talent--hard to say about anyone in America. This book is a collection of GW's columns, which stand up well, suggesting the variety of his thought, the range of his enthusiasms, and the resourcefulness of his wit and talent. He is subject to criticism for his failure to explicate those points on which he differs (sometimes a little rancorously) with his brother conservatives. He wants more taxes, but does not specify of what kind (except for an oil-import tax); he wants government to transubstantiate the law into an agent of goodness, but doesn't tell us how or where. He is a friend of big government whose favorite book is Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty. But that is neither here nor there: The Republic is blessed by his intelligence, his adamant anti-Soviet acuity, his wit and eloquence. His columns should be regularly collected, and read out loud to students of government and of expression.