Loyal Opposition

David Corn's
Loyal Opposition

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

Pat's Party

It was what you might expect of a fete for Pat Buchanan.

At tony Morton's steakhouse--three blocks from the White House--scores of Patniks assembled last week to celebrate the publication of his new foreign policy book, the now-infamous tract that argues that Western Europe and the United States should have, more or less, left Hitler alone in the pre-Pearl Harbor years, in the hope he would have turned his war machine against the Bolsheviks in Russia. At the party, there was much guffawing over the hyped-up media outrage provoked by the book. Buchanan thanked William Safire, Alan Dershowitz, and Chris Matthews for the attacks that pushed the book on to the bestsellers list. He clearly relished the tussle, noting triumphantly that two months ago he was merely a back-of-the-packer in the Republican contest who had no idea how he was going to promote his latest book. Now, beaming in the crossfire of television lights, Buchanan boasted that he was running first in the polls in the Reform Party (yeah, ahead of Donald Trump, Heather Locklear, and Jar Jar Binks) and that he was receiving "more attention than anytime in my life." He even proudly informed the crowd that when he recently entered a chauffeured car to head toward yet another media appearance, the driver looked at him and exclaimed, "I know you. I know you. You're the guy who wrote the Hitler book!" And Buchanan belly-laughed when Robert Shogan of The Los Angeles Times jokingly cried out "Sieg Heil" at the end of Buchanan's remarks.

Buchanan was basking before a group mostly of ardent believers. While talking with his chief fundraiser--who was asserting that anyone who wants to break the same-old/same-old two party model should support a Buchanan bid for the Reform Party presidential nomination--I expressed my sympathy for the fundraiser's smash-the-status-quo sentiments but did not agree with his boss on a host of issues. "Such as?!" his wife interrupted. All the social issues, I replied: gay rights, school prayer, abortion. "Have you ever seen an aborted 23-week-old fetus?" she shot back. I politely said that I had seen all the photos, had gazed at my infant daughter in utero courtesy of sonogram technology, and that this was clearly not an argument in which either one of us would persuade the other. But she had already locked and loaded: "If you haven't seen a 23-week-old fetus in person, then you don't know what you are talking about. I'm tired of hearing about the Holocaust, when there is a genocide of infants going on right now." As for gay rights, she asked how I would feel once the gene determining a predisposition toward homosexuality was discovered and people began aborting fetuses possessing that genetic ingredient. "Then you'll see all those gay rights guys backing Pat on abortion," she declared.

Tell me how you really feel on the issue, I said to her, before coming up with an excuse to disengage and move on. No sooner had I escaped the antiabortion rant a sixty-something man I did not know read my name tag and started accusing me of being prejudiced against Christians. What are you talking about? I asked. He said that years ago I had written "that article" about Oliver North in which I had assaulted North for being a Christian. I had no idea to what he was referring and replied that I had written several pieces on North, including a profile when he unsuccessfully pursued a US Senate seat in 1994. My complaint with North, I said, was that he was a convicted Iran-contra felon, a lying religious right ringleader, a Constitution-shredder who had managed a secret (and thus illegal) war in Central America during which he supported a band of rebels that committed torture and other human rights abuses. That's all. "You used the word 'Christian' as code," he shouted at me. (Had this fellow been stewing over a sentence I penned five years ago, one I could no longer remember? If so, good. I'm glad I got under his skin.) I have nothing against Christians I said; I married one. "Don't give me that," he went on. "You're against Christians."

I left him at that point and chatted for a few minutes with Bay Buchanan, Pat's sister and altar-ego. The former cohost of Equal Time was all geared up for Buchanan's defection from the Republican Party. It was obviously an all-but-done deal, and she gleefully reported she would be running his Reform Party presidential campaign. She displayed not a whiff of reluctance about saying bye-bye to the Grand Old Party. Then Oliver North, Bay's successor on Equal Time, came over to speak with Bay. I pointedly ignored him, but he probably didn't notice my snub. His producer, though, gave me a curt greeting. He has invited me on the show several times, and I have repeatedly declined. It's the one pundit gabfest to which I say no, for while I may be a camera-hog, I draw the line at legitimizing crooked, underhanded warmongers.

Yo, Jude!

The highlight of the evening was when I stumbled into a conversation between Jude Wanniski, the former Wall Street Journal editorialist and Reagan-era, supply-side tax-cuts evangelist, and John Lofton, a religious-right commentator. (Promotional material for Lofton's newsletter proclaims, "Support Your Local Calvinist!") Wanniski, for some reason, was defending Louis Farrakhan, maintaining the Nation of Islam leader was neither a racist nor a nut but a sincere "man of God." Wanniski said that he had reached this judgment after watching 100 hours of Farrakhan videotapes and after having met with him several times. Lofton was flabbergasted. Yes, right-of-center politics has gotten interesting. Wanniski, the Reaganaut who was one of the first to encourage flat-taxer Steve Forbes to run in 1996 and then served this year as a tax-cut-adviser on Dan Quayle's team, is now talking up Farrakhan and informally advising Buchanan, who, by the way, has struck an alliance with Lenora Fulani, an African-American pseudo-Marxist who heads a wacky political cult that has infiltrated the Reform Party. (Fulani has her own anti-Semitism problem.) Lofton did not know how to argue with Wanniski regarding Farrakhan and left us. In search of a very stiff drink, I imagined.

Alone with Wanniski, I inquired why he was not in Forbes' corner. After all supply-siders and flat-taxers, more or less, inhabit the same turf in the conservative cosmos. His answer was not one I could have anticipated. He told me his main beef with Forbes is that Forbes ignored Wanniski's 1996 advice to put John Sears, Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign manager, in charge of his own effort and instead placed his campaign in the hands of "white supremacists." I swear that is what he said. This former guru of Reaganomics talked about the Forbes crew as if they are no different than David Duke. Wanniski then added that most white people are benign white supremacists. But Wanniski, Caucasian himself, appeared to think Forbes handlers (now and in 1996) are more prejudiced than your average whitey. I failed to obtain an adequate explanation of why he believes this. But I wouldn't mind seeing the headline: "Buchanan Adviser Calls Forbes Campaign Racist." There's man bites dog.

A Buchanan Split

A few days before the Buchanan event, The Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove reported that several prominent Washingtonians would not be attending the gathering. Perhaps that is why Grove was cold-shouldered by Buchanan at the party. Indeed, Buchanan did not draw too many of the media elite. John McLaughlin showed and provided a supportive slap on the back. Brit Hume of Fox News Channel was there. John Sununu, another former from-the-right host of Crossfire (last noticed helping Quayle with his presidential campaign) paid his respects. Editors of The American Spectator and Human Events, two conservative magazines, were in attendance, but I spotted no one from The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol's publication. (Kristol had been enthusiastically bidding good-riddance to Buchanan for weeks.) Buchanan has caused something of a split in the conservative movement. The neo-neocons--led by Kristol--want to drum him out of the right and their Republican Party. The classic cons are more forgiving, even if they don't support Buchanan's bolt from the GOP. Political opportunists, like George W. Bush and the leadership of the Republican National Committee, entreated him to stay not on principle but because they feared he might swipe votes from the Republican standard bearer.

Buchanan's most sympathetic ally of late, Pat Choate, was present at the shindig, too. Choate, a pro-labor, anti-corporatist policy wonk who ran for vice president with Ross Perot in 1996, has been Buchanan's leading advocate within the Reform Party. The two are in synch in opposing corporate-friendly trade pacts like NAFTA. But old friends of Choate who are liberal-minded have confided to me that they do not understand his bonding with Buchanan. And I asked him how he could have saddled up with a fellow who has uttered hateful and denigrating remarks about minorities, AIDS sufferers, and women. Choate tried to make sense of it for me. He said he is pro-choice and a supporter of gay rights--two issues where Buchanan would deem him a heathen--but that he was happy to work with both Buchanan and Fulani. Why? Because they each agree on the pressing need for "political reform." Only if various ideologues join together, Choate asserts, will there be a chance to threaten corporate-dominated politics-as-usual. Given that the Republican-controlled Senate that day was once again torpedoing the most modest of campaign finance reform measures, it was hard to argue with Choate. But, I told Choate, putting Buchanan in charge was too high a price to pay for discomforting the Washington establishment. "We'll have to keep talking," Choate said with the smile of one who believes he has found the answer.

Morbid curiosity had brought me to the Buchanan event. After the shitstorm provoked by his book, I had wondered if there might be a funereal atmosphere at the party? No way--not when the book is a bestseller. (Notoriety über Alles, I suppose.) The reception turned out to be an upbeat mix of right-wing kooks ripe for the Buchanan Brigade; sane and thoughtful conservatives who believe politics should be fueled by ideas, not politics; a small number of Buchanan's most loyal media pals; and one well-intentioned policy populist yearning for a way to sock official Washington in the eye. All in all, probably an accurate reflection of Buchanan's world. He is a fierce jingoist who knows how to speak to anti-one-worlders who despise the UN and keep a paranoid watch for the black helicopters. He is a talented and good-humored pundit who can hobnob smoothly with fellow media citizens at a fancy steakhouse. He is a divisive, wrathful fundamentalist embraced by zealots of the antiabortion crusade. He is an opportunistic provider of hope to the economic nationalists of the Reform Party who are looking to make the party a player.

That's a lot to cram into one third-party presidential candidate.

Loyal Opposition appears weekly in The New York Press.

Click here to read more of David Corn's articles in American Politics Journal.