Buchanan's Perverted Populism

by Seth Rogovoy

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.

It looks like the sun has set on Patrick Buchanan's presidential candidacy, but the mere fact that this right-wing extremist was able to command the spotlight for as brief a time as he did is alarming. While Bob Dole has seemingly sewn up the Republican nomination for president, that doesn't mean Pat Buchanan is just going to disappear. In fact, he is already making noises about the next election, the one that will take place at the millenium. Before Buchanan is consigned to the status of a mere footnote in the 1996 campaign, we take a look at the real man hiding behind the populist curtain.

The New Republic

One of Buchanan's favorite targets in his campaign speeches are foreign lobbyists, presumably types like Richard V. Allen, who heads the Buchanan campaign's ``advisory committee.'' That is, when he is not tallying up the $400,000 a year he earns buttonholing Washington legislators on behalf of the Japanese and Taiwanese corporations that employ him.

Another of Buchanan's betes-noire are American corporations that close up shop stateside and open factories abroad where labor is cheap and the sun always shines -- companies like General Electric, in which Buchanan owns stock to the tune of $15,000. Other corporations in which he is an investor include IBM, General Motors, Eastman Kodak and AT&T, which together account for the loss of nearly 200,000 jobs since 1991 due to corporate "downsizing."

While these companies have been paring down their payrolls at the expense of the workers Buchanan pretends to champion on the stump, he has been laughing all the way to bank, watching his stock portfolio soar, on his way to amassing a personal fortune of over $6 million.

Among Buchanan's nuttier ideas, proposals and beliefs are these: the establishment of national voter referendums on principles of constitutional law (a paradox by definition), that the red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy was "a patriot," that AIDS is "retribution" for a homosexual "war against nature," that "Japan's invasions of U.S. markets have been plotted at the highest levels in Tokyo with the same thoroughness that Admiral Yamamoto plotted Pearl Harbor," that Adolf Hitler was "an individual of great courage," and that "our culture is superior...because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."

All this about Buchanan and much more can be found in a series of articles in the March 18 issue of the New Republic. It's a keeper -- we're going to need it again in the year 2000.

Village Voice

In the March 5 Village Voice, James Ridgeway describes Buchanan's core supporters as "nativists -- the little gropus of strict constitutionalists, western anarchists, river rats, Klansmen, posse adherents, skins, Aryan Nations, Birchers, born-again Minutemen, revived citizen councils, and all those angry white people who have been feeding issues into the center for all these years."

The militia movement, in particular, pervades the Buchanan campaign. Best known is campaign co-chair Larry Pratt, who took a "leave of absence" from his post after it was revealed that he was a frequent attendee at militia meetings. But Pratt was just the tip of the iceberg, according to Ridgeway. The cochair of Buchanan's Arizona campaign, Sheriff Richard Mack, is "a popular figure on the militia circuit" who organized his own local militia group. Buchanan booster Evan Mecham, the former Arizona governor who was impeached for financial irregularities, has since co-founded CURE: Constitutionally Unified Republic for Everyone, "which comprises militia members, America First-ers, constitutionalists, and variously styled 'patriots.'"

In a companion piece in the same issue, Thomas Goetz analyzes Buchanan's rhetorical use of the United Nations as a rallying cry against loss of our sovereignty. "The far right," writes Goetz, "has turned an organization otherwise known for bureaucratic waste and bungling into a secret power poised to conquer the host nation." Buchanan, he continues, has parlayed these fears of the UN "into a rabid straw dog, tossing off code words like New World Order to bring those illusive pale-blue armies bivouacking in Montana to life."

Goetz quotes former under-secretary general and Tyringham resident Brian Urquhart to the effect that far from threatening U.S. sovereignty, the UN has been "an effective tool for U.S. foreign policy," given our veto power over all peacekeeping operations, which are managed by the Security Council.

As long as Buchanan is around, concludes Goetz, "there can only be more black helicopters hovering on the horizon."

Spin

In the March issue of Spin, author Jack Womack reports back from the campaign trail about Buchanan's view of an America threatened by illegal immigrants from without and inner city gangs from within, as well as various other unsavory aspects of the man's belief.

Most troublesome, perhaps, is Womack's conclusion. Writing well before the New Hampshire primary boosted Buchanan's stock in the polls, the author boldly concluded that Buchanan would not be the Republican nominee.

He did predict, however, that the eventual nominee "will be someone who can sound like him, when necessary." Indeed, we have already begun to see the Buchananization of Bob Dole. It's going to be a long stretch between now and November.

The New Yorker

Gregory Spatz, a Lanesboro native and graduate of Mt. Greylock Regional High School, has a gripping, contemporary-gothic short story about very odd twin sisters called "Wonderful Tricks" in the March 11 issue of the New Yorker, his first in that prestigious venue. Spatz, the son of well-known folk musicians Alice and Larry Spatz, lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where he attends the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He recently published his first novel, "No One But Us" (Algonquin).

Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.

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