New York's James Buckley

ANYONE waiting around the Senate chamber next January expecting certified Conservative James Buckley, the self-proclaimed voice of the new right, to storm in and begin breathing fire, is in for a surprise. Buckley, to political friend and enemy alike, is a thoroughly pleasant man.

His smile is warm and real, he delivers unbending conservative judgments calmly and in carefully chosen language. Removed from the shorthand rhetoric of a campaign, the judgments are often buttressed by soundly reasoned arguments. Even on campuses, his personality won attention for ideas that were anathema. He holds doors open for strangers and carries suitcases for traveling companions. His brother, the contemporary conservative Voltaire, is high on him: "Jim's mild mannered, much less abrasive than I. And he has the happy faculty for not antagonizing people ever." Though his tone is less acerbic than William's, James' wit is an effective weapon. Describing deposed Senator Charles Goodell's switch from conservatism to liberal anti-Nixonism, James observed: "It was the most stunning conversion since St. Paul took the road to Damascus."

To some, like Writer Pete Hamill, the unusual family to which both men belong is an American version of the Castle Irish, a hated nobility. To admirers, the Buckleys represent what is good in family life: unselfconscious affection, vitality, devotion to excellence, a felicitous mix of principle and hedonism. The ten Buckley children received a steady stream of good-humored, constructive memoranda from their frequently traveling father, William F. Buckley Sr. In one, occasioned by their overuse of the many family cars, he suggested "a course of therapy designed to prevent atrophy of the leg muscles, if only for aesthetic reasons."

James Buckley comes by his minority party seat through inherited establishment tilting: his Catholic grandfather was once a sheep rancher in Baptist cattle-ranching country in Texas. The family fortune was eventually made in oil, and James Buckley has spent most of his business life with the family firm, the Catawba Corp., which provides expert help in oil and mineral exploration. A lawyer and vice president of the firm, he has traveled extensively on company business.

New York's new Senator has been a naturalist all his life. As a prep-school student, he persuaded his father to invite a biology teacher to the Buckley home in Sharon, Conn., for the summer. The teacher came with his animals. By summer's end, there were more than 70 of them. The pupil later had his own smaller, but equally renowned zoo at Yale: one boa constrictor. Buckley has made two trips to the Arctic on scientific expeditions, and once considered becoming an ornithologist. On that, Brother William reverts to form: "Jim used to get up at 4 in the morning, when he was at Yale, to bird watch. Always struck me as ludicrous."

James Buckley is, in almost all other ways, less flamboyant than his previously more famous brother. He dresses conservatively, sometimes wears a bow tie, and his graying hair is in a longish crew cut. He and his wife Ann have what he calls a planned family of six: "I wanted no less than six children and Ann wanted no more than six."

His wife appeared on the campaign trail only at its end, and shared in his satisfying moment of victory. A private person, she could not have taken much comfort from a friend's comment: "I have the strange feeling we've seen Jim as a private person for the last time."

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