Thank God they didn't have Twitter. (Magnolia Pictures)

The study of arguments is one of the thriving intellectual pursuits of a time — and is it any wonder? Social media’s business model depends on perpetual rancour and the amplification of extreme points of view. Twitter often reminds me of an old-fashioned cartoon of a bar fight: an impenetrable cloud of dust spiked with fists and boots. We argue about important things, like Covid policy, but also, with no less passion, the movie Don’t Look Up or the depiction of goblins in Harry Potter movies. We argue about how we are arguing, and we do it every day.
This field of inquiry doesn’t just include behavioural science books such as Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind and Ian Leslie’s Conflicted. James Graham’s new play Best of Enemies, currently running at the Young Vic, and Jon Ronson’s recent Radio 4 series about culture wars, Things Fell Apart, are in the same business. Both men are known for their empathy and even-handedness: Ronson has written thoughtful bestsellers about extremists and online shaming, while Graham’s work for stage and screen gravitates towards periods of disruption and division. Taken together, their latest projects shed light on the crucial distinction between debate and dialogue.
Best of Enemies is based on a 2015 documentary about a series of landmark televised debates. In the summer of 1968, the struggling ABC network decided to build its slim coverage of the national party conventions around 10 debates between William F Buckley Jr, the editor of The National Review and host of Firing Line, and Gore Vidal, the novelist and playwright. Born just a few weeks apart in 1925, both men were sons of dynastic privilege who had run for office and attained considerable celebrity, both on screen and in print, by being as combative as they were erudite. But as Buckley later remarked: “There is an implicit conflict of interest between that which is highly viewable and that which is highly illuminating.”
Casting Buckley and Vidal was a vote for viewability. For one thing, they represented not Republicans and Democrats but the most radical expressions of conservatism and progressivism: what we would now call culture warriors. Neither, for example, cared for the eventual Democratic nominee, the cheerful moderate Hubert Humphrey. Electoral strategy and policy platforms interested them less than a battle for the soul of America.
For another, they displayed mutual disgust. Each man considered the other not just dangerous but obscene. Even before the vicious exchange of slurs that made their penultimate meeting notorious, the debates were a gruesome display of smirks and sneers, sly digs and barbed crosstalk. The host, Howard K. Smith, often seemed taken aback by the heat of their animosity. Vidal dubbed Buckley “the leading warmonger of the United States”; Buckley branded Vidal “an agent for the end of democratic government”.
The debates shot ABC from the bottom of the ratings heap to the top. In 1968, the spectacle of two very clever, eloquent men tearing chunks out of each other was a delicious novelty. Even today, in the play, many of the biggest laughs come from verbatim re-enactments of their showdowns, which Graham structures like the bouts in a boxing movie.
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