Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior advisor to American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire . He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. He ran on the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election.
He co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American Cause. He has been published in Human Events, National Review, The Nation and Rolling Stone . He is currently a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network including the show Morning Joe and a regular on The McLaughlin Group .
Personal life
Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938, in Washington, D.C., a son of Catherine Elizabeth (née Crum) (Charleroi, Washington County, Pennsylvania, December 23, 1911 – Oakton, Fairfax County, Virginia, September 18, 1995), a nurse and a homemaker, and William Baldwin Buchanan (Virginia, August 15, 1905 – Washington, D.C., January 1988), a partner in an accounting firm, who married on December 28, 1936. Buchanan had six brothers (Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr.) and two sisters (Kathleen Theresa and Angela Marie, nicknamed Bay). Bay served as U.S. Treasurer under Ronald Reagan. Buchanan has English, German, Scots Irish, and Irish ancestry. He had a great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and admires Robert E. Lee.
Buchanan was baptized into the Catholic Church and attended Blessed Sacrament School, the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School, and Georgetown University.
While studying at Georgetown, Buchanan served in ROTC and received his draft notice in 1960. However, a District of Columbia draft board rejected him from military service due to reactive arthritis, declaring him 4-F. After Georgetown, Buchanan earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia in 1962. He wrote his master's project at Columbia on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba.
Buchanan married White House staffer Shelley Ann Scarney in 1971. They have no children.
Professional career
St. Louis Globe-Democrat Editorial Writer
Buchanan joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at age 23. The first year of the United States embargo against Cuba in 1961, Canada-Cuba trade tripled. The Globe-Democrat published a rewrite of Buchanan's Columbia master's project under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba - And Prospers" eight weeks after Buchanan started at the paper. According to Buchanan's memoir Right from the Beginning , this article was a career milestone. However, Buchanan later said the embargo strengthened the communist regime and he turned against it. Buchanan was promoted to assistant editorial page editor in 1964 and supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. However, the Globe-Democrat did not endorse Goldwater and Buchanan speculated there was a clandestine agreement between the paper and President Johnson. Buchanan recalled: "The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats. . . I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign." According to the foreword (written by Pat Buchanan) in the most recent edition of Conscience of a Conservative , Buchanan was a member of the Young Americans for Freedom, and wrote press releases for that organization. He served as an executive assistant in the Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell law offices in New York City in 1965.
Work for the Nixon White House
The next year, he was the first adviser hired to Nixon's presidential campaign; he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. For his speeches aimed at dedicated supporters, he was soon nicknamed "Mr. Inside."
Buchanan traveled with Nixon throughout the campaigns of 1966 and 1968. He made a tour of Western Europe, Africa, and in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, the Middle East. When Nixon took the Oval Office in 1969, Buchanan worked as a White House adviser and speechwriter for Nixon and vice president Spiro Agnew. Buchanan coined the phrase Silent Majority and helped shape the strategy that drew millions of Democrats to Nixon; in a 1972 memo he suggested the White House "should move to re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics." His daily duties included developing political strategy, publishing the President's Daily News Summary , and preparing briefing books for news conferences. He accompanied Nixon on his trip to China in 1972 and the summit in Moscow, Yalta, and Minsk in 1974. He suggested to Nixon to label Democratic opponent George McGovern as an extremist and burn the White House tapes.
Buchanan remained as a special assistant to the president through the final days of the Watergate Scandal. He was not accused of wrongdoing, though some mistakenly suspected him as Deep Throat. When the actual identity of the press leak was revealed as FBI Associate Director Mark Felt in 2005, Buchanan called him "sneaky," "dishonest," and "criminal." Due to his role in the Nixon campaign's "Attack Group," Buchanan appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee on September 26, 1973. He told the panel:
When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly stayed on as special assistant under incoming President Gerald Ford. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig approved Buchanan's appointment as ambassador to South Africa, but Ford refused it.
Buchanan remarked about Watergate:
Long after his resignation, Nixon called Buchanan a confidant and said he was neither an anti-Semite nor a "hater," but a "decent, patriotic American." Nixon said Buchanan had "some strong views," such as his, "isolationist" foreign policy, with which he disagreed. While the former president did not think Buchanan should become president, he said the commentator "should be heard."
News Commentator
Buchanan returned to his column and began regular appearances as a broadcast host and political commentator. He co-hosted a three-hour daily radio show with liberal columnist Tom Braden, called the Buchanan–Braden Program . He delivered daily commentaries on NBC radio from 1978 to 1984. Buchanan started his TV career as a regular on The McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire (inspired by Buchanan-Braden ) and The Capital Gang , making him nationally recognizable. His several stints on Crossfire occurred between 1982 and 1999; his sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley, Juan Williams, and Bill Press.
Work for the Reagan White House
Buchanan served as White House Communications Director from 1985 to 1987. To help garner opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government and support of the opposing rebels he coined the phrase I'm a contra too .
Buchanan supported President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, where among buried Wehrmacht soldiers, were 48 buried Waffen SS members. Over the vocal objections of Jewish groups, the trip went through. In an interview, author Elie Wiesel described attending a White House meeting of Jewish leaders about the trip:
Buchanan accused Wiesel of fabricating the story in an ABC interview in 1992:
In a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in 1986, Buchanan said about the "Reagan Revolution,"
A year later, he remarked "the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan." While her brother was working for Reagan, Bay Buchanan started a "Buchanan for President" movement in June 1986. She said the conservative movement needed a leader, but Buchanan was initially ambivalent. After leaving the White House, he returned to his column and Crossfire . Out of respect for Jack Kemp he sat out the 1988 race, although Kemp later became his adversary.
Political career
1992 presidential primaries
In 1990, Buchanan published a newsletter called Patrick J. Buchanan: From the Right ; it sent subscribers a bumper sticker reading: "Read Our Lips! No new taxes."
In 1992, Buchanan explained his reasons for challenging the incumbent, President George H. W. Bush:
He ran on a platform of immigration reduction, and social conservatism, including opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights. Buchanan seriously challenged Bush (whose popularity was waning) when he won 38 percent of the seminal New Hampshire primary. In the primary elections, Buchanan garnered three million total votes.
Buchanan later threw his support behind Bush, and delivered a keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which became known as the culture war speech, in which he described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America." In the speech, he said of Bill and Hillary Clinton:
The enthusiastic applause he received prompted his detractors to claim that the speech alienated moderates from the Bush/Quayle ticket.
Off the campaign trail
Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire . To promote the principles of federalism, traditional values, and anti-intervention, he founded The American Cause, a conservative educational foundation in 1993. Bay Buchanan serves as the Vienna, Virginia-based foun
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