Buckley landed as he wanted

My memory of William F. Buckley Jr., the pioneering conservative writer who died at 82 last week while writing at his desk in Connecticut, is from the prime of his life -- but also about the end of life.

It began with an unexpected phone call to my Tokyo home around 1977. The caller had that distinctive, erudite vocabulary; a wisp of a Southern accent; and patient cadence, as if . . . he . . . spoke . . . slowly . . . to . . . kindly . . . allow . . . me time to grasp his meaning.

Buckley, concluding a long Asian trip, wondered if I could tutor him in Japanese politics that evening in exchange for a dinner at his hotel. Me, teach William F. Buckley Jr. about politics. I said I thought I could squeeze him into my otherwise impossible schedule.

Buckley was a remarkably good listener. As the long evening quickly passed and his tie came down and he proffered cigars, I turned the questioning to contemporary politicians. He was critical of some ideas but he demonized no one.

Then his eyes lit up. He wanted to share a recent story about “a dear friend,” Hubert H. Humphrey, the former pharmacist, Minneapolis mayor, Minnesota senator and vice president whose liberal politics were as far from Buckley’s as Tokyo from Connecticut.

Humphrey was called “the Happy Warrior” for his endless enthusiasm and energy for fixing things.

He had returned to the Senate after being crushed in the presidential election by Richard Nixon and a badly fractured Democratic Party in the antiwar violence, assassinations and political violence of 1968.

As Buckley talked that evening, Humphrey was dying of cancer, slowly, surely. It was widely known, but the Minnesotan did not let on that he was ill.

Buckley had been on a recent flight from New York to Britain, he said. The in-flight movie projector had broken, so Buckley was reading, legs crossed, spectacles perched on his nose. A noisy ruckus erupted behind and above him.

Buckley wheeled around and there, coat off, sleeves rolled up, was Humphrey inserting himself into the aircraft ceiling and the broken projector situation, muttering while he tried to fix the balky machine, without success.

Meanwhile, a flight attendant approached Buckley, said the captain was a fan of his and invited him into the cockpit to watch the landing in the London night.

Buckley recalled being awed by the scene approaching ahead, the horizon aglow from the ancient city, the modern airport closer with all its lights, as the giant plane slowly descended through the darkness. Suddenly, the cockpit door flew open. “Bill!” shouted Humphrey. “What are you doing in here? Why wasn’t I invited? What’s going on? Oh, my goodness! Bill, will you look at that sight? Isn’t that beautiful? Oh, my. Look!”

And, Buckley said, instead of the focusing on the scene outside, he ended up that night in the dark cockpit watching his dying friend in admiration, still excited, still himself, exulting at the world’s beauty as the plane came down slowly for a landing at the end of a long trip. Then, Buckley looked at me and took a sip of his drink. “I hope at the end,” he said, “I come in for my last landing the same way.”

I think he did.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Texas phone barrage

Texans who have made up their minds between the two Democratic presidential contenders, who don’t want to hear anything more about the campaign or who simply don’t care to chat with strangers, had best head for the hills today. That’s because the political arm of MoveOn.org, the liberal online advocacy group that is nothing if not energetic, plans to swamp the state with telephone calls urging support for its candidate, Barack Obama.

Most of the rings apparently will come in the evening, in conjunction with close to 2,000 “Yes We Can” house parties the group is convening. Overall, according to MoveOn, members, aim to make more than 400,000 calls to Texas to help Obama in Tuesday’s primary/caucus.

In the poll margins

Dig deep into the recent L.A. Times/Bloomberg nationwide poll, and the sources of Hillary Clinton’s frustration over Barack Obama eclipsing her -- at least at the moment -- in the Democratic presidential race become obvious.

Overall, the survey found Obama edging ahead of Clinton, 48% to 42%, when those who have voted in a Democratic nominating contest or plan to were asked whom they support. Not long ago, Clinton was the runaway leader.

But Clinton, on some key subjects, still appears to be in a stronger position than Obama when all voters polled -- Democrats, Republicans and independents -- were asked a series of issue-related questions that put John McCain into the mix.

For instance, Clinton had a 9-percentage point advantage over McCain, 43% to 34%, when voters said who’s best able to handle the economy.

Conversely, Obama ran behind McCain by 8 points, 42% to 34%, on this same issue, which concerns voters most. Both Democrats rate better than McCain on grappling with the healthcare issue.

But this appears to be Clinton’s Achilles heel: favorability.

Significantly more voters have positive views of Obama and McCain than negative opinions. For Obama, the numbers are 61% favorable, 30% unfavorable; for McCain, 61% favorable, 26% unfavorable.

For Clinton, it’s much closer: 51% favorable, 42% unfavorable.

McCain’s big pluses over both Democrats crop up in foreign policy.

On dealing with terrorism, he had a 37-point advantage over Obama and 27 points over Clinton. On handling Iraq, he led Obama by 13 points and Clinton by 16.

On who has the right experience to serve as president, McCain posted a lead of 31 points over Obama. He also ran ahead of Clinton but by only 12 points.

These findings help explain McCain’s slight edge over each Democrat in a general election match-up; he led Clinton, 46% to 40%, and Obama, 44% to 42%.

In both cases, the margins fall within the poll’s error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at latimes.com/ topoftheticket