Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal

In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in 1968, which would see Richard Nixon becoming president, ABC TV invited two leading thinkers to discuss the state of the nation. In the resulting series of spectacular live broadcasts, the ultraconservative journalist William F. Buckley and the progressive author Gore Vidal hurl increasingly violent verbal abuse at one another—on personal as well as political issues. The debates would become the first American example of on-air political mudslinging.