Democrats Set the Stage for Buchanan’s Bile

Pat Buchanan is not a fascist, as New York Times columnist Abe Rosenthal once charged. He’s not that sincere.

This is no true believer, but rather a professional roiler of base passions driven by the confidence that even defeat, if loudly trumpeted, will boost his career. His is a corruption of purpose so predictably combustible that it has secured him star status on the Washington shouter shows. Although he once called Hitler “an individual of great courage [and] extraordinary gifts,” some of his media colleagues insist that Pat is a fun guy in a beer hall. But that doesn’t make him benign in an election year when a wounded public searches desperately for culprits and Buchanan is out there rounding up the lynch mob.

This is one dangerous demagogue with a long history of hostility toward gays (“the pederast proletariat”), feminists (“the butch brigade”), women (“less equipped psychologically to ‘stay the course,”’) and American Jews (Israel’s “amen corner”). William F. Buckley Jr. concluded that Buchanan’s persistent slanders against American Jews “could not reasonably be interpreted as other than anti-Semitic in tone and in substance.” His immigrant bashing has long had a racist undertone. In 1984, he argued that Americans would have to decide “whether the United States of the 21st Century will remain a white nation” and later warned about an invasion of “Zulus.”

It was therefore no surprise to learn that his campaign cochairman, Larry Pratt, attended meetings with members of the Aryan Nation and other neofascist groups at which they shared a common interest in armed militias. Or that Buchanan would rush to his defense. Why not? Pratt, the president of Gun Owners of America, could deliver an important constituency in New Hampshire.

What is alarming is Buchanan’s ability to tap into a broader base of resentment in this country and emerge suddenly as the champion of that growing group of Americans who are legitimately panicked over their economic future. Buchanan’s success is a measure of the political center’s failure to deliver. Its collapse leaves a vacuum of concern, and into that space some ugly creatures will crawl.

When moderate Republicans like Bob Dole caved into the right-wing budget slasher crowd, they betrayed their party’s noblesse oblige commitment to give something back to working people. Layoffs destroy more families than does welfare dependency, and in asserting that unbridled capitalism is at war with traditional values, Buchanan has stuck a sharp knife in the smug soft underbelly of the Republican alliance.

But the appeal of Buchanan also marks the Democratic Party’s failure to champion working people. Ever since Jimmy Carter beat out Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries, Democratic leaders have distanced themselves from organized labor and their constituency, those who need government to fight for their economic interests.

Buchanan is right to brand NAFTA a lousy deal, because not enough was done by Republican and Democratic presidents to protect U.S. and Mexican workers. When this concern was expressed by labor leaders, the Clintonites treated them with contempt. The Democratic Party must stand for the little people tossed about by market forces. These days, that includes thousands of laid-off middle managers.

Buchanan’s “new conservatism with a heart” ups the ante for both parties. He has challenged the creed dominant in bipartisan politics that free market mechanisms can be entrusted to solve our basic problems. Instead, Buchanan is all for big government: Station the Army permanently on the southern border; erect huge tariffs; jail the urban poor, illegal immigrants and doctors who perform abortions. And in case that doesn’t work, President Buchanan can call on all those crazy militiamen running around with their unregistered guns to restore order.

Buchanan’s Fortress America will not solve this country’s problems. But there’s a seething discontent that could get very nasty, and the alternative had better be more constructive than to just let the free market dice roll.

This is Clinton’s opportunity. The Republicans clearly are in disarray if Buchanan is the most innovative thing they have to offer. Now is the time for Clinton’s message about investing in education, job training and those other programs needed to help this economy grow. Clinton was on his way until the Gingrich Congress derailed him. It is imperative that he reassert a progressive vision of can-do government before too many more decent but frightened Americans crawl for economic protection under some nativist neofascist rock.