SOURCE: Simonds, C. H. “Bumbling Down the Corridors of Power.” National Review 38, no. 8 (9 May 1986): 52-3.

In the following review, Simonds praises Buckley for maintaining the balance between satire and insight in The White House Mess.

Once in too great a while comes along a book that does in, for good, a whole dubious genre. Jane Austen and Catherine Morland finished off the Gothic novel (at least in its eighteenth-century manifestation; the modern form awaits, bodice unlaced, at your pharmacist's). Before Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, readers could dislike the efforts of Mary Webb and her school, or be bored to tears by them; after Miss Gibbons, the only possible response was a snicker. Pick up Precious Bane, browse anywhere, and you'll recall only Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed, and the rotting farm hung to distraction with Sookbine, and the porridge boiling over. Now...