On my way home from Chevy Chase after celebrating Mighty Julian Levi Moore’s fifth birthday, I recognized the journalist George Will sitting primly at one of the gates at Charleston International with a white-haired woman I assumed was his wife. 

He had on a blue-and-white seersucker sports coat (but no bow tie, dammit), and his hair— [cue Warren Zevon]—was PERFECT. 

Mr. Will took note of my double take and sat up a little bit straighter.

“Mr. Will,” I said, “I’ve been reading you for years.”

He stood up and shook my hand. 

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been writing for years.”

There was a beat of awkward silence.

“By the way, you look great.”

He didn’t smile. “Must be clean living.”

Whenever someone lies and tells me I look great, “clean living” is my tongue-in-cheek go-to quip.

 “Well, see you,” I said, then added, “Maybe this national nightmare will be over soon.” 

He winced but said nothing.

Of course, in my youth when I fancied myself one part Hunter S. Thompson, one part Mick Jagger, and two parts Dorothy Parker, I held George Will in utter contempt, considering him a privileged prig cosplaying William F. Buckley Jr.. 

Now, however, as I have mellowed into a neo-post-Burkean bon vivant, I can appreciate Mr. Will’s steadfastness in maintaining his integrity by castigating the Vaudevillian villain who is laying ruin to the American experiment. Indeed, I find myself in my twilight years agreeing with Bill Kristol, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, and other Republicans I once held in low esteem.

Anyway, if I had to do it all over again, I’d skip politics and ask him what he thought of Dansby Swanson. That’s probably the conversation George Will would have preferred, and in retrospect, so would I.

Dansby Swanson