Patrick Joseph Buchanan ( ; born November 2, 1938) is an American author, political commentator, and politician. He was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He is an influential figure in the modern paleoconservative movement in the United States.
Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C. in 1938. In 1992 and 1996, Buchanan sought the Republican presidential nomination. In 1992, he ran against incumbent president George H. W. Bush, campaigning against Bush's breaking of his "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge, as well as his foreign policy, his trade and immigration policy, and his positions on social issues. At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan delivered his "culture war" speech in support of the nominated President Bush. In 1996, he ran against eventual Republican nominee Bob Dole, but withdrew after getting only 21 percent of Republican primary votes. In 2000, he was the Reform Party's presidential nominee. His campaign centered on non-interventionism in foreign affairs, opposition to illegal immigration, and opposition to the outsourcing of manufacturing from free trade. He selected educator and conservative activist Ezola Foster as his running-mate. Despite his own terminology of self-identification, expressed in the desire to be called a "supporter of the doctrine of disengagement", his foreign policy views have been categorized as isolationist.
In 2002, Buchanan co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American Cause. He has been published in The Occidental Observer, Human Events, National Review, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. The original host on CNN's Crossfire, he was a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network, including the show Morning Joe until February 2012, later appearing on Fox News. Buchanan was also a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. Many of his views, particularly his opposition to American imperialism and the managerial state, echo those of the Old Right Republicans of the first half of the 20th century. Starting in 2006, Buchanan had been a frequent contributor to VDARE until his retirement in 2023.
Buchanan had six brothers, Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr., and two sisters, Kathleen and Angela, who served as U.S. Treasurer during the Reagan administration. Buchanan's father was of Irish, English, and Scottish ancestry, and his mother was of German descent. He had a great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War in the Confederate States Army, which earned Buchanan membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He admires Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, and Joseph McCarthy.
Buchanan described his Southern ancestry, writing:
Buchanan was born into a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools, including the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. He then attended Georgetown University, where he participated in, but did not complete, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program. In 1960, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English. He subsequently received his draft notice, but the District of Columbia Draft Board exempted Buchanan from military service because of reactive arthritis, classifying him as 4-F. He then attended the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where he wrote his thesis on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba and was awarded a master's degree in journalism in 1962.
Career
St. Louis Globe-Democrat editorial writer
After receiving his master's degree, at age 23, Buchanan joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1961, during the first year of the U.S. embargo against Cuba following the Cuban Revolution, trade between Canada and Cuba 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. In his memoir, Right from the Beginning, he considered the column a career milestone, though he later said the embargo against Cuba strengthened the communist regime and opposed it. In 1964, Buchanan was promoted to assistant editorial page editor, and he supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign that year, though the Globe-Democrat did not endorse Goldwater. Buchanan speculated there was a clandestine agreement between the newspaper and incumbent U.S. president Lyndon B. 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." he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. The highly partisan speeches Buchanan wrote were consciously aimed at Richard Nixon's dedicated supporters, for which his colleagues soon nicknamed him Mr. Inside. Buchanan traveled with Nixon throughout the campaigns of 1966 and 1968. He made tours around Western Europe, Africa, and following the Six-Day War, the Middle East.
During the course of Nixon's presidency, Buchanan became entrusted on press relations, policy positions, and political strategy. Early on during Nixon's presidency, Buchanan worked as a White House assistant and speechwriter for Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. He 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 assignments 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 that Nixon label Democratic opponent George McGovern an extremist and burn the White House tapes. Buchanan later argued that Nixon would have survived the Watergate scandal with his reputation intact if he had burnt the tapes.
Buchanan remained as a special assistant to Nixon through the final days of the Watergate scandal. He was not accused of wrongdoing, though some mistakenly suspected him of being Deep Throat. In 2005 when the actual identity of the press leak was revealed as Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director Mark Felt, Buchanan called him "sneaky," "dishonest" and "criminal." Because of his role in the Nixon campaign's "attack group," Buchanan appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee on September 26, 1973. He told the panel: "The mandate that the American people gave to this president and his administration cannot, and will not, be frustrated or repealed or overthrown as a consequence of the incumbent tragedy".
Buchanan remarked about Watergate: "The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital— ... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office". However, according to a memo President Nixon sent to John Ehrlichman in 1970, Nixon characterized Buchanan's attitude towards integration as "segregation forever." Following Nixon's re-election in 1972, Buchanan himself had written in a memo to Nixon suggesting he should not "fritter away his present high support in the nation for an ill-advised governmental effort to forcibly integrate races."
News commentator
thumb|Buchanan greeting President [[George H. W. Bush in 1989]]
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 Capital Gang, making him nationally recognizable. His several stints on Crossfire occurred between 1982 and 1999; his sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley, Geraldine Ferraro, and Bill Press.
Buchanan was a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. He appeared most Sundays alongside John McLaughlin and the more liberal Newsweek journalist Eleanor Clift. His columns are syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate.
Reagan White House
thumb|upright=0.8|Buchanan in 1985
Buchanan served as White House Communications Director from February 1985 to March 1987. In a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in 1986, Buchanan said of the Reagan administration: "Whether President Reagan has charted a new course that will set our compass for decadesor whether history will see him as the conservative interruption in a process of inexorable national declineis yet to be determined". 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 the 1992 Republican Party presidential primaries, Buchanan challenged Bush in his bid for re-nomination by the Republican Party, launching his campaign in December 1991 chaired by William von Raab. He ran on a platform of paleoconservatism that emphasized national sovereignty, limited spending and bringing troops home from abroad. He failed to win any primaries, but finished a strong second in the New Hampshire primary and was regarded as forcing Bush to walk back his economic policies. The Buchanan campaign ran a number of radio and TV spots criticizing Bush's policies; in one, Buchanan accused Bush of being a "trade wimp", while another attacked him for presiding over the National Endowment of the Arts, which he said "invested our tax dollars in pornographic and blasphemous art too shocking to show."
In 1992, Buchanan explained his reasons for challenging the incumbent, President George H. W. Bush: