@revelette2,
Quote:I confess I never paid that much attention to him, just thought of him as a conservative hawk, and that was that. However, he has poetic side to him.
He's an important element in movement conservatism, as was his father, Irving who was one of the key figures in neoconservatism. A very good source on Bill is Sheena Easton's Gang of Five. But just for a quick taste, see Josh Marshall's piece on Kristol's important 1993 memo that set the strategy for defeating Hillarycare (the memo is linked)
http://bit.ly/29IJQKh
Most people writing or speaking about Bill pass him off as the guy whose predictions are always wrong. That misses most everything of importance. As Bill is a propagandist/cheerleader, the accuracy of any predictions is quite beside the point as they are with any propagandist or cheerleader. He plays the role of an analyst on TV and in press but that's what propagandists/cheerleaders must do in order to appear as objective and honest agents.
As to his writing, he clearly aspires to a high intellectual mode with frequent allusions to or quotes from scholars and key conservative voices (Burke, Churchill, etc). The Churchill reference in the piece I linked is more than typical for him - he has Churchill Tourettes and can't go more than two weeks without some reference to Churchill/Chamberlain. But he's actually a pretty poor writer. When he got a column in the New York Times a few years back, they dropped him after the first year was up because, I presume, everyone else found his columns as I did - boring and cliched. He's read a lot so he can't help but be influenced by good writers, thus the odd good line such as the one you point to.
