TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/031692/0316102.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 7.7 KB | 160 lines

                {r                                                          ╚NATION, Page 23

THE CHALLENGER

What Does Pat Want?


Buchanan has already drawn blood and divided the G.O.P., but he
won't be satisfied until the party embraces his arch-conservative
agenda

By MICHAEL RILEY/SAN ANTONIO -- With reporting by Nancy Traver/
Shreveport


    A Confederate sword in his hand and a white Stetson hat
on his head, Pat Buchanan stands in front of the Alamo. "Take
a look behind me," the Republican challenger tells the friendly
crowd. "Those fellows put Texas first. They put their own
freedom first. They put their own families first, and they were
willing to stand up and fight and die for it." Buchanan's own
candidacy may face a similar fate, but he hopes his quixotic
battle against George Bush will help win the war for the soul
of the Republican Party.

    Buchanan has already bloodied Bush in a political cross
fire that has preoccupied the Republican Party and may help
topple the President in November. Just three months ago,
Buchanan was an acerbic television commentator; now, thanks to
tough economic times and Bush's bumbling ways, Buchanan holds
hostage many of the angry "swing" voters who are likely to pick
the next President. He has also ignited a crusade that could
make him the country's most influential right-wing Republican.
Still, when all the votes are tallied, Buchanan will not come
close to winning the G.O.P. nomination this year, and that
raises two questions: What is he really after, and What is he
likely to get?

    Most of all, Buchanan, who accuses Bush of hijacking the
Reagan Revolution, is determined to return the G.O.P. to its
conservative roots. While his rhetoric drips with the dark
resentments of nativism, isolationism and protectionism,
Buchanan is winning broad support with his denunciations of Bush
as an unprincipled pragmatist who would rather win re-election
than lead the nation. His battle cry of "America First" appeals
to those who think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
"It is time," says Buchanan, "to start looking out for the
forgotten Americans right here in the United States."

    Like Richard Nixon's Silent Majority, Buchanan's
supporters -- overwhelmingly white, male and angry -- revel in
his harangues as he attacks gays, environmentalists and
foreigners. Though he denies charges of anti-Semitism, he last
week put down a band of Jewish hecklers by telling them, "This
rally is of Americans, and by Americans, and for the good old
U.S.A., my friends." Says Marcel Bourgoin, 19, who turned out
wearing an American-flag tie at a Charleston, S.C., harbor
cruise: "He's not afraid to step on people's toes." As Buchanan
puts it, "Real men gotta say what they mean and mean what they
say."

    That is the impetus behind Buchanan's two-pronged attack.
On the home front, he slams Bush for breaking his no new taxes
pledge and for signing last year's Civil Rights Act, which
Buchanan calls an unjust quota bill. Buchanan rails against
illegal immigrants, who he claims are draining taxpayer dollars.
He wants to slash the size of the Federal Government, freeze
government regulations for two years and roll back half of
Congress's recent pay hike. He also wants to clamp term limits
on "those check-kiting, boodling Congressmen on Capitol Hill."
In one of his nastier pitches, he attacks the National Endowment
for the Arts as "that upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts
auxiliary of the Eastern liberal Establishment."

    This poisonous populism also infects Buchanan's foreign
policy. He mocks the "globaloney" of Bush's new world order,
which he claims threatens American sovereignty and smacks of a
move toward world government. He attacks international
organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations. He
demands a cutoff of foreign aid and wants to bring U.S. troops
home from Europe, while making Japan and Germany pay their share
of the defense burden. On trade, Buchanan promises retaliation
if other countries refuse to open their markets.

    A former Nixon speech writer, Buchanan uses his venomous
tongue to insult almost everyone. He mocks top Bush advisers as
the "geisha girls of the new world order." He has called
Congress "Israeli-occupied territory," and considers AIDS
"nature's retribution."

    Journalists have been relatively easy on Buchanan for
several reasons: he's not winning so far, he's charming and
funny -- and he's a great story. Thanks to his TV experience,
the former CNN Crossfire co-host can deliver crisp sound bites
by the mouthful and play the camera angles like the professional
performer he is. Up close, his genial manner trumps the tough
public persona. But his deep-rooted conservatism is evident even
in his dark blue suits and Brylcreemed hair.

    Buchanan remains a long shot to win a single primary, and
he knows it. So he is declaring victory by default. Pointing to
Bush's sacking of NEA chairman John Frohnmayer and his
admission that he should not have broken his no-new-taxes pledge
in 1990, Buchanan claims that he has already shoved the
President to the right. But Buchanan is hungry for more. "This
is a crusade for a Middle American revolution," he says. He is
searching for that elusive breakthrough state -- perhaps
Michigan -- and he will keep giving Bush hell as long as the
money keeps flowing in.

    But the truth is that Buchanan may rapidly become the
G.O.P.'s Jesse Jackson, a charismatic candidate who would rather
lose and be right, as he sees it, than win and be wrong. And
that raises the question, asked often about Jackson four years
ago, of what Buchanan really wants. "There's a hierarchy of
goals," says Buchanan during an interview on his crowded jet.
"You'd like the whole pot at the end of the rainbow -- the
nomination, a great campaign, the presidency -- all the gold.
But short of that there are smaller pots of gold, and we've
already got them. We're in the history books." What Buchanan
wants is for Bush to run a Buchananesque campaign in the fall.
Before that happens, though, the feuding parties must
choreograph the delicate end game, which may be months away.

    Will the White House make the first move? Not likely. "If
we reached out now," says Bush campaign manager Fred Malek, who
worked with Buchanan in the Nixon White House, "he'd slap our
hand and go on national TV and make fun of us. We're just going
to leave him alone." But unless Bush engages him, Buchanan may
stubbornly balk at laying down his arms. Such a standoff might
open the door to some back-door negotiations by an old friend of
both men's: Richard Nixon. Buchanan, who says he plans no
third-party run for the White House, is certain to support Bush
against the Democrats in November. So what will he trade for his
primary poker chips? Party-rules changes? A prime-time
convention speech? Buchanan scoffs at such speculation. "Is that
what they believe I care about, whether I get 12 minutes at the
convention?" he asks. "I mean, what the hell do they think
politics is all about?" Explains Buchanan: "What is the primary
about if not for the heart, the soul, the direction of the
party?"

    That is the metaphysical quest that guides this right-wing
crusader. Though he claims he has not yet thought about seeking
the presidency in 1996, this year's campaign has thrust him into
the top tier of contenders, along with Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp and
Texas Senator Phil Gramm. It has also exposed the historic rift
between Republican moderates and conservatives, long bound
together by the fight against communism. With the cold war over,
the G.O.P. is awakening to the fact that the new world order may
threaten the quarter-century Republican domination of the White
House.