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Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938), is an 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.

Early life

Pat Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C., one of William Baldwin Buchanan's and his wife, Catherine Elizabeth Crum's nine children. He is often regarded as an Irish Catholic, but in reality he is one-half German, one-quarter Scots Irish (Protestant), and one-quarter Irish. He was christened Patrick Joseph Buchanan, and later took the name Francis at confirmation.

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

The same year he obtained his journalism degree, Buchanan became an editorial writer for the now-defunct St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper. 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, authoring the famous "nattering nabobs of negativism" phrase used by Agnew. He was associated with some of Nixon's "dirty tricks" campaigns to harass and embarrass opponents during the 1972 election, revealed years later in a memo that contradicted his testimony before Congress on the subject in 1973, where he said that he did not know of any covert operations.

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.'"

In a 1972 memo to Nixon, Buchanan suggested that Nixon link a primary opponent with "New York Jewish money".

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. Buchanan returned to the White House in 1985, serving until 1987 as White House Communications Director for the Reagan administration.

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. His wife is Shelley Buchanan. They have no children.

Political views

Buchanan is typically categorized as paleoconservative, right-wing, or even far right-wing. His political views include elements of populism (such as protectionist sympathy for displaced factory workers) as well as a strong anti-war position adopted after the end of the Cold War (he vehemently opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq). He is conservative on almost all social issues.

Buchanan refers to himself as a "traditional conservative" (in contrast to "mainstream 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). He also feels that Bush "is Reagan on judges," which was the key reason that he voted reluctantly for Bush in 2004. 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 has described multiculturalism as "an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage" and supports restricting immigration into the United States. He has described homosexuality as leading to "a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family." He opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest. He supports allowing prayer in public schools. He supports abolishing many government bureaus and advocates a flat tax. He is in favor of ending treaties that 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.

In contrast to many conservatives, Buchanan opposes free trade and interventionist American foreign policy. 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.'"

Buchanan also 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. Critics of this view often described him as an isolationist, which Buchanan says he is not.

He accuses the Bush administration of being overinvolved in world affairs to the point where it is committing 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 describes the term 'isolationist', frequently applied to him, as a derogatory label used by political groups which put foreign or global interests ahead of U.S. interests. Though he has been often labled as a xenophobe, Pat Buchanan tends to consistently disagree and state that he is a patriot and a defender of right wing, conservative and Anglo-American ideals. He has also been labeled as a racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist by his many critics, especially political and social conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike (one of his most vocal critics, for example, is former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura).

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.

In Britain, he was supported by the conservative journalist Auberon Waugh, whose position relative to Britain's Conservative mainstream post-Thatcher was very similar to Buchanan's position relative to the modern Republican mainstream. The British political thinkers most similar to Buchanan in this respect - notably those in the Conservative Democratic Alliance -would be unlikely to acknowledge the similarity because they tend to be strongly anti-American, seeing the pro-US policies of the modern Tory party as its greatest betrayal.

In 2004 Buchanan reluctantly endorsed Bush's reelection, writing in The American Conservative that although he disagrees with him on numerous issues, "Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing."

Presidential campaigns

Buchanan has run for president three times on a platform of protectionist trade policies, immigration restriction, 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. 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, clashed with some of Bush's supporters. Some outside the party saw the speech as intolerant. 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

After leaving the Republican party in October 1999, Buchanan sought the nomination of the Reform Party. The 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 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 write-in primary, which favored Buchanan by a wide margin, were "tainted." The party's delegates ignored the election and voted to nominate Hagelin, creating a split in the party with two camps claiming legitimacy for 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 - extremely inconsistent with Palm Beach county's liberal leanings 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."

Controversial views

Statements about 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 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." This quote however is often taken out of context, as it is in this form. In full context, Buchanan was making a point that these time saving devices allowed women time for the first time in social history to do as they please and gain rights for themselves, downplaying the role of the Women's Liberation Movement.

He also wrote, "If a woman has come to believe that divorce is the answer to every difficult marriage, that career comes before children ... no democratic government can impose another set of values upon her."

Statements about Afro-Americans, the Civil War, segregation, etc

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." Buchanan's defenders argue that his comments must be considered in the context of Buchanan being a consultant, and that they are not necessarily his beliefs. Furthermore at the time, Dr. King was in fact considered a very divisive man.

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 opposed economic sanctions designed to punish South Africa for its racial policies: "Collaborating in a United Nations conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions."

Buchanan's defenders counter charges of racism by pointing out that Buchanan's running-mate in his 2000 presidential bid was African American, and that he had reportedly offered the spot to Alan Keyes, another African American conservative. Buchanan, in an interview conducted with him by Norman Mailer in GQ magazine, also claimed that Jesse Jackson is a close friend of his.

Statements about Israel, Hitler influence, the Holocaust, and German-Americans accused of Nazi-Era War Crimes

Over the years, Buchanan has been a vocal critic of the State of Israel and of US policy toward it. 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 once referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory" in a column. During the run-up to the first 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."

An article on Buchanan's 1996 campaign web site— which Buchanan did not write or authorize, blamed the death of White House aide Vincent Foster on the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. The article also alleged that Foster and Hillary Clinton spied for Mossad. The campaign later removed the article.

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."

Buchanan has also called Spanish dictator Francisco Franco a "Catholic savior," and compared the Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

As an advisor to the Reagan Administration, Buchanan urged the President to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg, 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 and courageously asserted the innocence of some German-Americans accused Nazi-era war crimes, most famously retired Cleveland autoworker John (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.

It is estimated that engine exhaust gas chambers were used to suffocate at least 1.5 million people (mostly Jews) at the Treblinka, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Chełmno death camps. 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 notorious for anti-semitism and Holocaust denial

Statements about the Chinese

In his 2004 book, Where the Right Went Wrong he noted that " has the secret loyalty of millions of 'overseas Chinese' from Singapore to San Fransico"

Statements about 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

Was interviewed by Ali G on Da Ali G Show, where he was tricked into referring to WMDs as BLTs.

Hunter S. Thompson considered him a friend. Buchanan (among dozens of other people) offered a statement about Thompson in Rolling Stone after Thompson's suicide in 2005.

Was referred to as a past President of the United States in Robert J. Sawyer's 2005 novel Mindscan, which takes place in 2045 and features an ultra-conservative United States of America and an ever-more-liberal Canada.

Has opposed every major military campaign the U.S. has engaged in since the end of the Cold War except for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. On The McLaughlin Group in December 2005, Buchanan referred to current war in Iraq as the worst foreign policy disaster of his lifetime.

Books

• 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

• Reform Party
• Paleoconservative
• Protectionism
• Populism
• Conservatism
• American System of Economics

External links

• NNDB.com profile
• http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2553

Buchanan-affiliated

• Buchanan's twice-weekly column
• Pat Buchanan archives on LewRockwell.com
• The American Conservative magazine
• The American Cause
• Buchanan for President 2000 archive
• Opening night "Culture war" speech at 1992 Republican National Convention
• Buchanan appears on public radio show "Open Source," says of the Bush administration "The Republican Party in Washington DC today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town."

News and analysis

• PBS.org - third party presidential candidates in 2000
• BBC News - Reform Party Split Deepens. August 12, 2000
• CNN.com Buchanan claims Reform Party nomination. August 12, 2000
• Buchanan 2000: What Went Wrong (enterstageright.com)
• Buchanan and Palm Beach county controversy
• Buchanan attacked with salad dressing. April 1, 2005

Opposing views

• CampusProgress.org - Know Your Right Wing Speakers
• RealChange.org - Pat Buchanan's Skeleton Closet
• Overview and refutation of Buchanan's diesel engine assertion

Supporting views

• Murray Rothbard's 1990 defense of Buchanan
• The New American - "Targeted for Destruction"
• Political profile of Buchanan

Miscellaneous

• A page featuring his ancestry through nine generations

• 1938 births
• American columnists
• American political writers
• American speechwriters
• Christian leaders
• Christian people
• Columbia alumni
• Georgetown University alumni
• German-Americans
• Intelligent design advocates
• Irish-American politicians
• 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
• United States presidential candidates
• Watergate figures