I have mixed feelings.  Upsides, WFB helped elevate conservatism and American exceptionalism in the US political dialogue.  He improved my vocabulary.  Downsides, I disagreed with some of WFB's views, especially those regarding racial minorities and their assimilation into our society and the proper role of religion in US government.  He also promoted elitism simply for its own sake, slavishly borrowing from the UK aristocracy.  His economic and political positions were either hit or miss in terms of their reasoning and support with some spectacular logic failures and blind faith.  Finally, I read several WFB "Blackford Oakes" novels as a kid and even then detected implausibilities that prevented me from buying in to the plots.  WFB was his own man in some ways like Hugh Hefner -- I was never a particularly keen fan of either man but must admit that I tended to like Hefner's published works a bit better during my formative years.

v^2