Best of Enemies: Left Hot American Summer

-Written by guest reviewer Nick Hartman

An endless stream of pundits belching invective and outrage from the left and the right is how most Americans get their “news.” But it wasn’t always that way.   

“Best of Enemies,” the 2015 documentary recently released on Netflix, serves as an origin story for how political commentary supplanted news, and most intriguingly, the toxic relationship between the two men ultimately responsible.  

The 88-minute documentary chronicles 10 debates between liberal author and socialite Gore Vidal and National Review founder and conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. during the 1968 presidential conventions in Miami Beach and Chicago. Desperate for ratings and unable to outspend rival networks, ABC needed a different angle for its election coverage. It simply wasn’t going to out-network NBC and CBS.

The ‘68 conventions were far from political pep rallies; they were crucibles. The very idea of what it meant to be an American was being called into question. The widening fissures could be seen and heard on the evening news: the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, anti-war demonstrations. The conventions served as a platform for each party to articulate its vision. Enter Vidal and Buckley.  

But were Vidal and Buckley battling for control of America’s soul on live television, as some commentators have suggested. Or were they just two assholes who hated to lose an argument?

Fortunately, “Best of Enemies doesn’t traffic in either/or propositions. Peppered with obvious homages to Errol Morris, most notably Jonathan Kirkscey’s music, “Best of Enemies” provides a riveting character study of both men - their lifestyles, their philosophies, their fear of what America might become if the other won.

Where directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville deserve the most credit, however, is for showing the increasingly mouth-clenching enmity between Vidal and Buckley with each passing debate. During one exchange, Vidal blithely poked at Buckley, “As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” A visibly seething Buckley leaned over his chair toward Vidal and hissed, “Now listen, you queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” What began as a joust between two blue-blooded polemicists hurling Gatsby-esque insults at one another, ultimately yielded something far darker and wholly personal, not only about Buckley and Vidal, but also about the American public. What began as a legitimate and heartfelt attempt to save the soul of America ultimately became a money-making scheme that still taints they way America gets its “news.”

Live television had never seen anything like it. Once the convention floors were torn up and the flags stopped waving, one thing became clear: the debates were a ratings coup. ABC unwittingly generated a template for the 24-hour news cycle that remains not only intact, but arguably more virulent and even less informative.

Thirty-eight years later, many are inured to the yelling. Perhaps more depressing is the thought that while the production values have improved, the topics of conversation that Vidal and Buckley debated on those makeshift stages in the summer of 1968 remain largely the same.

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