A second Washington Monument for half a century, Patrick Buchanan is retiring his syndicated column. No one voice on the right can replace him, but aspiring pundits can emulate the wit, intellect, and hard work of this happy warrior as he returns to his metaphorical farm.

The first time I met Pat Buchanan, he was smiling. It wasn’t the pasted-on job one might expect from a politician who ran for president three times, shocking the world in 1992 by defeating the incumbent Republican, President George H. W. Bush, in the New Hampshire primary.

The smile consumed Mr. Buchanan’s entire face, filling his eyes with twinkles. I had grown up watching him Sunday mornings on “The McLaughlin Group” and learned from his debates with a liberal journalist, Michael Kinsley, on CNN’s “Crossfire,” which soon became a tentpole of the first 24-hour news network.

I preferred Mr. Buchanan’s style over that of his fellow conservative columnist, Robert Novak, who embraced the Prince of Darkness nickname on both programs. Slouched and at times brittle, he — like silent film star Clara Bow when the talkies arrived — never seemed quite comfortable on camera.

After he stood on the Reform ticket in 2000, I ran into Mr. Buchanan at a barbecue thrown by my friend Brian Doherty, who served as spokesman. It was Mr. Doherty who once described a Beltway subspecies that’s always searching over your shoulder, hoping to spot someone more important.

This was not Mr. Buchanan. We chatted about history, politics, and his cat “Gipper” — me a kid from New Jersey with only a few years in television and he a scrivener who was a member of the camarilla of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. I would say he lived the curse credited to the Chinese: “May you live in interesting times” — except that he made his times more interesting still.

That Mr. Buchanan hired Mr. Doherty, who’d never worked a campaign, spoke to his eye for talent, but beyond that, the two — along with Mr. Buchanan’s wife, Shelley; and his celebrated sister, Angela Marie, or “Bay” — welcomed Mr. Doherty into their family.

When Mr. Doherty moved to Washington from our apartment in Hoboken, Mr. Buchanan knew he’d need wheels, so he gave him his classic ‘82 Cadillac Eldorado. I dubbed it “the Patmobile,” because it embodied the steel, class, and reliability of its former owner. Pure Americana.

The Patmobile came with only one string attached: If Mr. Doherty sold it, he had to wheel it around to Mr. Buchanan’s home for a final spin. The car, by the way, has its own place in history, defusing a kerfuffle in 1992. 

While stumping for automaker votes in the Michigan primary, the Bush team pointed out that Mr. Buchanan owned a Mercedes-Benz. Mr. Buchanan pointed to the American-made Patmobile and promised the next car he bought would be American, too, because he wanted the nation “hooked” on them again. 

Contrast this with leftists abandoning their Teslas in fits of pique against its owner, Elon Musk. Mr. Buchanan’s car reminds us of a time when politics didn’t infuse every choice of even the fiercest America First patriots.

Keeping Bush loyal to conservatives was a goal Mr. Buchanan shared with my late boss and Mr. Doherty’s, Rush Limbaugh, who made a rare endorsement of the challenger. I can still hear the joy behind Mr. Buchanan when he called the show from his campaign bus. This was a run about principle, not to boost his profile by stoking grievance like so many long-shot candidates today.

Even Mr. Buchanan’s sparring partner on “McLaughlin,” Eleanor Clift, couldn’t muster much vitriol for her colleague, with the liberal columnist offering only that having a second President Buchanan would confuse schoolchildren. Such comity is extinct on television today.

This is not an obituary, of course — just a “well done” for a longtime friend. It’s easy to be nostalgic for a past that never was, but Mr. Buchanan may be the last pundit willing to exchange crossfire without aiming below the belt. As he lays down his pen, conservatives who seek to fill his bucket seat would do well to embrace his example and learn to snipe with a smile.