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Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is a German-Catholic American author, syndicated columnist, and television commentator. In 2000, he ran for President of the United States on the Reform Party ticket. He had twice unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president. He has written several books on his political and religious views.

He is also one of the founding editors of and main contributors to The American Conservative magazine and a regular commentator on the cable news station MSNBC, particularly on the McLaughlin Group.

His wife is Shelley Buchanan. They have no children.

Though Buchanan appears in mainstream media outlets, he often has been accused of anti-semitism, based upon his frequent, one-sided critiques of Jews and Israel. In one famous instance, Buchanan's fellow conservative, William F. Buckley, used an entire issue of the National Review to point up instances of Buchanan's anti-semitism.

Buchanan famously referred to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "One of the most divisive men in contemporary history."

Buchanan also opposed offered support to apartheid-era South Africa, when he opposed any sanctions on its racist government. Buchanan characterized pressure on apartheid South Africa as, "collaborating in a United Nations conspiracy to ruin her Africa with sanctions."

Early life

Pat Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C., one of nine children born to William Baldwin Buchanan and his wife Catherine Elizabeth Crum. (One of his sisters is former U.S. Treasurer Bay Buchanan.) He is often regarded as an Irish Catholic, but in reality he is one-half German, one-quarter Scots Irish, and one-quarter Irish.

He was educated in Roman Catholic schools, including Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. and Georgetown University where he graduated with degrees in English and Philosophy in 1961. He earned a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University in 1962*.

The same year Buchanan obtained his journalism degree, Buchanan became an editorial writer for the now-defunct St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper.

Speechwriter in Nixon White House

Buchanan was an early supporter of Richard Nixon's political comeback, and in 1966 began working as an advisor to Nixon's campaign, primarily as an opposition researcher. When Nixon took office in 1969, Buchanan worked as a White House advisor and as a speechwriter to Nixon and to Vice-President Spiro Agnew.

Buchanan was not implicated in the Watergate Scandal, although he was mentioned as a possible (but incorrect) identity of "Deep Throat". When the actual identity of Deep Throat was revealed in 2005 as FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, Buchanan called Felt "sneaky," "dishonest," and "criminal," commenting that "What he should have done, was if he felt the investigation was corrupted, stand up and say, 'I'm going to resign from the FBI because I don't want to be a party to what's going on. This is not correct, I think things are going on in the White House that are wrong. I don't believe they're investigated. I don't believe they're being investigated properly.'"*

Journalist and television commentator

When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly fulfilled the same duties under President Gerald Ford before quitting the same year. After leaving the White House, he became a syndicated political columnist and began his regular appearances as a host and commentator on various national television public affairs programs, including The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire. He and liberal commentator Bill Press cohosted Buchanan & Press on American cable channel MSNBC from 2002 until its cancellation in November, 2003. Buchanan is still with MSNBC as an analyst, and he occasionally fills in for Joe Scarborough on the nightly show Scarborough Country.

Communications Director for Reagan

Buchanan returned to the White House in 1985, serving until 1987 as White House Communications Director for the Ronald Reagan administration. As Communications Director, he was known for coining the phrase "I'm a contra too," which was a line in one of Reagan's speeches and was intended to indicate opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government and support for the contra rebels fighting against it. He also recommended that Reagan lay a wreath at a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, a move that later proved controversial when it was discovered that several SS members were also buried there.

Presidential campaigns

Buchanan has run for president three times on a platform of protectionist trade policies, immigration reduction, and opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights.

1992

In 1992, Buchanan unsuccessfully challenged George H. W. Bush for the Republican Party Presidential nomination, garnering some 3 million votes in state primary elections. Buchanan won 38% of the seminal New Hampshire primary, seriously challenging sitting Republican President George H. W. Bush, whose popularity was waning. It is said that Buchanan's strong potential in the primaries pushed Bush to run a more conservative campaign than he had in 1988. Buchanan later threw his support behind President Bush, and delivered the controversial keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention which has since been dubbed the culture war speech. In it, he strongly attacked the liberalism of Bill Clinton, saying:

The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America — abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat — that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.

Buchanan's stances were controversial within the Republican party. His characterization of the United States as being in the center of culture war, as well as his strongly negative depictions of the economy, was criticized by some of Bush's supporters. Some outside the party saw the speech as intolerant. But President Bush received his greatest single night increase in the polls the night Buchanan delivered his prime-time convention speech.

1996

Buchanan again sought the Republican nomination in 1996. It was in this campaign that Buchanan voiced his opposition to NAFTA. Buchanan won a surprising victory in the New Hampshire primary in February, defeating Senator Bob Dole by about 3,000 votes. However, Dole defeated him by large margins in the subsequent Super Tuesday primaries. Buchanan dropped out of the race in March. He had collected 21% of the total votes in Republican state primaries. Buchanan threatened to run as the U.S. Taxpayers Party candidate if Dole were to choose a pro-choice running mate. Dole ultimately chose pro-life Jack Kemp and Dole received Buchanan's endorsement.

2000

In October 1999 Buchanan sought the nomination of the Reform Party, announcing that he was leaving the Republican Party, which he disparaged along with the Democrats as "beltway parties." The Reform Party was bitterly divided between nominating Buchanan and nominating John Hagelin, an Iowa physicist whose platform was based on transcendental meditation. Many members of the party were uncomfortable with Buchanan's strong rhetoric on abortion and gay rights, perceived racism and anti-Semitism, and supposed involvement with "dirty tricks" in the Nixon administration. Party founder Ross Perot did not endorse a candidate, but his former running-mate Pat Choate endorsed Buchanan.

Supporters of Hagelin charged that the results of the party's open primary, which favored Buchanan by a wide margin, were "tainted." The Reform Party divisions led to dual conventions being held simultaneously in seperate areas of the Long Beach Convention Center complex. Both conventions' delegates ignored the primary ballots and voted to nominate their presidential candidates from the floor, similar to the way the two major parties putatively nominate presidential candidates at their national conventions. One convention nominated Buchanan while the other put forth Hagelin, magnifying a split in the party with two camps claiming to be the legitimate Reform Party and offering separate candidates. Ultimately, Buchanan won the nomination when the Federal Elections Commission ruled that Buchanan would receive ballot status as the Reform candidate and some $12.6 million dollars in federal campaign funds secured by Perot's showing in the 1996 election. In his acceptance speech, Buchanan proposed leaving the United Nations and kicking them out of New York, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, taxes on inheritance and capital gains, and affirmative action programs. Buchanan chose Ezola B. Foster, an African-American activist and retired teacher from Los Angeles, as his running-mate.

He finished in fourth place nationwide with 449,895 votes, or 0.4% of the popular vote. (Hagelin garnered 0.1% as the Natural Law candidate). In Palm Beach County, Florida, Buchanan received 3,407 votes - which some saw as inconsistent with Palm Beach County's liberal leanings, its large Jewish population and his showing in the rest of the state. He is suspected to have gained thousands of inadvertent votes as a result of the county's now-infamous "butterfly ballot." (see 2000 Presidential Election) When Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer stated that "Palm Beach county is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there," Reform party officials strongly disagreed, estimating the number of supporters in the county at between 400 and 500. Appearing on the "Today" show, Buchanan said: "When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night ... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore."

Buchanan resisted overtures from the remaining Reform Party organization to take an active role with the party following the 2000 election, though he did attend their 2001 convention to offer his gratitude for their prior support. He identified himself as a political independent in the first few years afterwards, choosing not to align himself with what he viewed as the watered-down, neo-conservative Republican party leadership. Prior to the 2004 election, Buchanan announced that he once again identified himself as a Republican, had no interest in ever running for president again, and endorsed George W. Bush for re-election.

Political views

Buchanan refers to himself as a "traditional conservative" (in contrast to a "neo" conservative). Although he was a longtime member of the Republican party, he has commented that the party has largely abandoned its traditional conservative principles in favor of neoconservatism. In 2006 on Hardball with Chris Matthews before President Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address, he called Bush a "Great Society Republican" and compared him to Woodrow Wilson (on foreign policy), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (on trade policy) and Lyndon Johnson (on immigration policy). However, in 2004 Buchanan reluctantly endorsed Bush's reelection, writing in The American Conservative that although he strongly disagrees with him on numerous issues, "Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing." He has said both parties are barely distinguishable anymore and that "The Republican party in Washington D.C. today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town."

He supports abolishing many government bureaus that he believes are inconsistant with the traditional 'small-government' philospohy of the Republican Party.

Many of his positions are in line with conservative Republicans of the first half of the 20th century, with views that have become less popular in recent decades. Buchanan proudly asserts that he comes from a tradition of Republicans fiercely opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt until they had to step down after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and in his view later conservative ideologies were tainted by leftist impostors*.

Social conservativism

Buchanan opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest. He supports allowing voluntary prayer in public schools.

He has described homosexuality as leading to "a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family." Buchanan wrote in 1983 that "The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution (AIDS)."* Later that year, he demanded that New York City Mayor Ed Koch and New York State Gov. Mario Cuomo cancel the Gay Pride Parade or else "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." He later wrote in 1990, "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide", and in his 1992 campaign, he declared: "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature."

Buchanan also supports what he sees as a traditional role for women. In a 1983 syndicated column, Buchanan wrote that women are "simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." In 2000 he revealed that his sister Bay, herself a noted critic of feminism, felt this statement went too far. In Right from the Beginning, his autobiography, Buchanan wrote that "The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." He further believes in not allowing women to serve in combat.

Immigration

Buchanan has described multiculturalism as "an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage" and supports restricting immigration into the United States. Though his immigration stands have been labeled xenophobic, Buchanan disagrees, saying that he is a patriot and a defender of traditional Anglo-American values. Buchanan has pointed out that he himself is not Anglo-American but his ancestors learned to speak English and assimilated into American culture, which he feels many immigrants today are not doing.

Buchanan also believes that immigrants pose a potential security risk. In Where the Right Went Wrong he noted that "the Communist Chinese government has the secret loyalty of millions of 'overseas Chinese' from Singapore to San Francisco."

Race

Buchanan has stated that he did not oppose all the aims of the Civil Rights Movement, but he deplored what he saw as its left-leaning politics. Though he does not approve of treatment of blacks that took place before the Civil Rights Movement, Buchanan prefers the social and cultural views of most of black America prior to the baby boom generation. He is known to strongly dislike the cultural legacy of that generation in general, and blames it for current problems in the black community as well as what he sees as the decline of white America and Europe.

Buchanan believes that the American Civil War was not fought over slavery, and has ridiculed opponents of the display of flags of the Confederate States of America in state capitals.

The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance. How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?

Buchanan had a grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side. Though his political views are often considered traditionally Midwestern in origin, Buchanan is proud of his Southern heritage. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans*.

Buchanan opposed economic sanctions designed to punish South Africa for its racial policies, which he characterized as, "collaborating in a United Nations conspiracy to ruin her Africa with sanctions."

However, Buchanan's running-mate in his 2000 presidential bid was African American, and he had reportedly offered the spot to Alan Keyes, another African American conservative. While Buchanan's views had hardly changed since his previous campaign, after he left the Republican party many observers noticed what they considered a less racist tone and a desire to spread his message of nationalistic populism beyond his white base*. Buchanan, in an interview conducted with him by Norman Mailer in GQ magazine, also claimed that Jesse Jackson is a close friend of his.

As a member of the Nixon administration, Buchanan urged Nixon not to visit Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. He said that "...Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse.... One of the most divisive men in contemporary history." During the 1980s, he opposed making King's birthday a national holiday. His 2001 book The Death of the West shows a shift toward a more positive opinion of King and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 compared to his earlier writings, but assails African-Americans who do not consider themselves a part of American culture and Western Civilization. *.

Trade

Buchanan opposes free trade. He supports repealing NAFTA and raising tariffs on imported goods to provide tax relief to domestic industry. Arguing that "you need imports to pay the taxes," Buchanan sees tariffs as a vehicle for allowing for tax relief for domestically made products, making them more competitive. He does not view tariffs as something that should be set so high as to ensure the foreign product will not be bought (and the tariff hence uncollected), but something that should be adjusted to maximize tax flow. As he writes in his 2004 book Where the Right Went Wrong, "Tariffs raise the prices of goods. True. But all taxes — tariffs, incomes taxes, sales taxes, property taxes — are factored into the final price of the goods we buy. When a nation puts a tariff on foreign goods coming into the country, it is able to cut taxes on goods produced inside the country. This is the way to give U.S. manufacturers and workers a 'home-field advantage.'" He proposes "economic nationalism" based on the principles of the American School, embodied in Henry Clay's American System (economic plan).

Foreign policy

Buchanan was a staunch supporter of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, positions he justified on the basis that Communism directly threatened the safety of the United States. He does not approve of the way the Vietnam War was fought, but believes the Unites States could have won the war if it had been fought correctly.

More recently he has opposed U.S. military actions abroad in the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars. Buchanan opposes the modern Republican Party's neo-conservative foreign policy. He supports the tradition of 'neutrality' or 'non-interventionism' which was the policy of United States prior to the onset of the Cold War. He has said that "Unless American honor, vital interests or citizens were at risk or have been attacked, U.S. policy should be to stay out of war." He is credited with reviving the slogan "America First," which was the name of a group headed by aviator Charles Lindbergh that opposed American intervention in World War II. In his 1999 book A Republic, Not An Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny he applauds that organization's efforts to keep America out of war prior to the Pearl Harbor attack and portrays Lindbergh and his supporters as maligned patriots. He has also argued that they deserve credit for the fact that Soviet Russian casualties far outnumbered American ones on the European Front*. Buchanan's critics often describe him as an isolationist, which he denies.

Buchanan believes U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is supportive of and controlled by Israeli interests. Over the years, Buchanan has been a vocal critic of the State of Israel and of US policy toward it, though he does believe the country has the right to exist. In particular, he has argued that much American "meddling" in the Middle East is only done to appease and protect Israeli interests, and serves no legitimate American interests. Buchanan has referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory." During the run-up to the Gulf War, Buchanan said "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East -- the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." He also believes the Middle East would have fewer problems if Israel gave the Palestineans their own state, but he was also critical of Yasser Arafat's leadership*. He compared the Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and accuses Israel of spying on the United States in many instances other than the well-publicized case of Jonathan Pollard (whom Buchanan calls a "treasonous snake").

He accuses the Bush administration of being overinvolved in world affairs to the point where it is guilty of imperialism. He believes that Islamic terrorist attacks, such as the events of September 11, 2001 come as a result of intervening in foreign countries, saying "terrorists hate us for what we do, not what we are."

He is in favor of ending treaties that he believes do not protect the interests of the United States, such as one-way defense treaties where the U.S. must militarily come to the defense of another country, but not vice versa. For example, he believes that the U.S. no longer has any legitimate reason to be a member of NATO ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and opposed the Yugoslav Wars.

The Holocaust

In a 1977 column, Buchanan wrote,

"Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."

Defenders of this statement say it was written in the context of a review of a popular biography of Hitler, and that Buchanan has condemned anti-Semitism and praised Yitzhak Rabin just as strongly as he has condemned some Jewish leaders**.

As an advisor to the Reagan Administration, Buchanan urged the President to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg, in which were buried 48 members of the SS, over the objections of Jewish groups. Buchanan was credited with crafting Reagan's statement: "These were the villains, as we know, that conducted the persecutions and all. But there are 2,000 graves there, and most of those, the average age is about 18. I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." Buchanan says they were Reagan's extemporaneous remarks in response to a question.

Buchanan vocally asserted the innocence of some who were accused of Nazi-era war crimes, most a famously retired Cleveland autoworker, Ukrainian born Ivan Demjanjuk, comparing his trial to the Salem witch trials. Demjanjuk was convicted by an Israeli court, but his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel on the grounds of mistaken identity.

In a 1990 New York Post column defending Demjanjuk, Buchanan claimed a diesel engine could "not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." When asked for his source, Buchanan cited an article about children surviving the fumes of idling diesel engines while trapped in a tunnel. The article came from the Newsletter of the German American Information and Education Association, a publication accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial *.

Buchanan thinks the accusations of anti-Semitism frequently leveled against him are unfair smear attacks, stemming from his political incorrectness and his controversial views on foreign policy. He has pointed out that the Holocaust did not become a Final Solution until 1942 when the Pearl Harbor attack had already ended any debate there was about U.S. involvement in World War II, and that the Holocaust was no more of a concern for the leaders who supported intervention than it was for the isolationists He has also accused neoconservatives of instantly labeling anyone critical of Israel's actions and America's pro-Israel policies an anti-Semite[http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html.

Canada

Buchanan has a history of unflattering references to Canada. On October 31, 2002, Buchanan denounced Canadians as anti-American, described the country as a haven for terrorists, and applied the label "Soviet Canuckistan" on his MSNBC television show. His comments followed a warning issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs stating that Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria should be cautious while travelling to the United States, prompted by a U.S. law requiring photos and fingerprints of anyone born in those countries and visiting the U.S., as well as the case of Maher Arar.

Following Buchanan's comment, many Canadians adopted "Soviet Canuckistan" as an ironic, humorous self-reference. At the same time, some conservative Canadians adopted the term to express dislike for the Canadian political system and Liberal Party of Canada leadership.

In 1990, he stated that if Canada were to break apart due to the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, "America would pick up the pieces." In 1992, he stated that "for most Americans, Canada is sort of like a case of latent arthritis. We really don't think about it, unless it acts up."

Buchanan's interest in Canada dates back to his "major paper" at Columbia University. The subject of the paper was the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba. It had tripled in 1961, the first year of the United States embargo against Cuba. Buchanan was able to publish a rewrite in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba - And Prospers." This was a milestone in his early career as a business editor and occurred just eight weeks after he started at the paper, according to his memoir, Right from the Beginning.

Trivia

  • Buchanan won the 2005 "Strongest Backbone" Proggy Award from PETA for his efforts on animal rights issues. *

  • Buchanan has opposed every major military campaign the U.S. has engaged in since the end of the Cold War except for the United States invasion of Afghanistan. On The McLaughlin Group in December 2005, Buchanan referred to the current war in Iraq as the worst foreign policy disaster of his lifetime.

Books

  • State of Emergency: How Illegal Immigration Is Destroying America (August 22, 2006) ISBN 0312360037
  • Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (2004) ISBN 0312341156
  • The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2001) ISBN 0312285485
  • A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (1999) ISBN 089526272X
  • The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy (1998) ISBN 0316115185
  • Right from the Beginning (1988) ISBN 0316114081
  • Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed (1975) ISBN 0812905822
  • The New Majority: President Nixon at Mid-Passage (1973)

See also

External links

Buchanan-affiliated

News and analysis

Opposing views

Supporting views

Miscellaneous

1938 births | American columnists | American political writers | American speechwriters | Christian leaders | Christian people | Columbia University alumni | Georgetown University alumni | German-Americans | Intelligent design advocates | Irish-Americans | Knights of Malta | LGBT rights opposition | Living people | Paleoconservatism | People from Virginia | People from Washington, D.C. | Pro-life politicians | Roman Catholic politicians | Roman Catholic writers | United States presidential candidates | Watergate figures

Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan

 

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