Margaret Hoover, a conservative, and John Avlon, an independent, are television pundits who are married to each other. Quite happily, if a recent visit to their Gramercy Park apartment is any measure. Their telegenic union may be a lesson in overcoming the orthodoxies that divide us.

Ms. Hoover, a former Fox News contributor who once scuffled with Bill O’Reilly when he got her name wrong (“I’m sorry, there’s a lot of blondes in this operation, I can’t keep you straight,” he told her), is a great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, the man who until recently was one of only two presidents who had never held previous public office to be ranked by some political scientists among the worst 10. (President Trump now shares that twofer.)

She is also the new face of “Firing Line,” the PBS talk show and playground of William F. Buckley Jr., the mischievous and polysyllabic conservative warrior who died in 2008. The show ran from 1966 to 1999.

To compare the drawling, sprawling Mr. Buckley, whose performance style Norman Mailer once described as a combination of “commodore of the yacht club, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Mitchum, Maverick, Savonarola, the nice prep school kid next door, and the snows of yesteryear,” with the diminutive, polite and well-prepared Ms. Hoover, 40, is impossible, so let us move on.