Ezra Klein: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why? He built a tremendous institution, and I both mean that in terms of National Review and probably in terms of the American right for quite a while. It is hard now to appreciate because it feels so much with us of what an achievement fusionism really was. It is also — National Review has been an important, and to some degree played a pretty consistent role, on the American right for many, many, many decades. That’s a part of Buckley that is also easy to underrate. I thought what National Review did around Trump was very much — I don’t know that it would have happened at a place that didn’t have as clear an internal character as what Buckley gave that institution. If it had been just a more normal magazine it just wouldn’t have tried to play that role. That role was something worth trying to play. What Buckley achieved, whatever you think of his politics, I think he’s definitely underrated at this point. The most underrated person in the Obama administration. They don’t have to be there now.…

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