Empire Builder

Jack Kemp's death summons the mists. In years seemingly as distant as Avalon's, the editor of these Editorial Pages dabbled in New York politics as a factotum for Sen. James L. Buckley (brother of the late WFB).

After winning election in 1970 on the Conservative line, Buckley caucused with Senate Republicans. Kemp also won his first election in 1970, with the endorsements of the Republican and Conservative parties. Kemp's district lay in the Buffalo area and included portions of the immortal Cheektowaga. While reconnoitering the region with another Buckley aide, our greenhorn first encountered the Anchor, a bar that lured regulars with spicy chicken wings dunked in blue cheese dressing and served with celery. Sources said they went well with Genesee.

Although underdogs back then, Republicans still could put up a fight. In 1970, they claimed 16 of New York's 41 House seats -- not a majority but not bad. They prospered Upstate. The GOP carried districts in the city's suburbs, too. Indeed, it even had a "machine" in Nassau County, endowed, perhaps too generously, with goons and popinjays. The roster of more estimable Republican representatives included not only Kemp but also Norman Lent, Barber Conable, and Hamilton Fish. A Republican congressman in 1970, Ogden Reid won re-election in 1972 as a Democrat. The Reids ran the Herald Tribune of sainted memory. Whitelaw Reid, Ogden's brother, died last month. His grandson, Whitey, covers UVa sports for The Daily Progress, our sister paper in Charlottesville.

Buckley and Kemp hit it off. Their staffs cooperated. The editor can claim admiration for the late congressman, not friendship with him. (He was a kid; give him a break.) Buckley lost in 1976, when he suffered defeat at the hands of Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a campaign that descended into the gutter when Buckley called Moynihan a "professor" and Moynihan called Buckley a "businessman." Buckley, by the way, was green in senses Irish and ecological. In those days a conservative could be an environmentalist without being denounced as a traitor to a movement fast becoming an obscurantist cult. Teddy Roosevelt invented environmental politics and was a Republican and a New Yorker and would be an outcast today. There was a time when conservatism referred to a temperament, a habit of the mind, a cast of the imagination. Oh my.

. . .

Republicans just lost a special election in a House district rated their strongest in New York. Democrats hold both Senate seats, and 26 of the state's 29 seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans have collapsed to three. The GOP's only recent bright spots were the two mayoral terms of Rudy Giuliani in Gotham itself; less bright but still flickering has been the tenure of Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani in Gracie Mansion running as a Republican without being much of one (but overall perhaps the best hizzoner circumstances would have allowed).

Decades ago all was not cakes and ale, make no mistake. The Conservative Party rose out of frustration with a GOP establishment epitomized by the likes of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and John Lindsay. For various reasons the conservative intellectual movement was more vital (and wittier) in Manhattan than in climes colored red -- and still is. Tories were simultaneously street-corner and high-church. They addressed their expectations with melancholy and joy, those eternal twins. Time, we learn, softens attitudes even as the relentless now makes hearts hard. Rocky and the rest look pretty good in retrospect. Republican infighting seemed more consequential back then; internecine warfare is not what it used to be, either. Everything stinks. We were young once, and by gad, sir, what days they were.