The People's Pit Bull

Pat Buchanan is moving into the void left by liberals' failure to address the issue of economic injustice 
















By ALEXANDER COCKBURN


All of a sudden the mainstream press has developed teeth and is busy sinking them into the leg of Patrick Buchanan. In the wake of the new Hampshire primary you can catch the unmistakable tang of panic among the pundits at the sight of a wild man at the gates. So now Buchanan is being depicted as the patron saint of racists, and himself a closet Nazi.

Buchanan is hard-edged in his rhetoric against abortion, same-sex marriages and kindred social 
issues. But the panic of the elite derives more from his economic views. Hitherto, a consensus lay over the presidential race like a moist blanket. Between Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes there was an amiable agreement on the central political-economic issue -- free trade. Like most mainstream pundits, they regard it as an absolute virtue.

Buchanan does not. And for that reason -- far more than his snarls about gays -- he is regarded as dangerous. "Economists tend to hold Pat Buchanan's anti-NAFTA views with the sort of scorn biologists 

[In his own words: Pat Buchanan's economic manifesto] 

have for creationism, or the contempt doctors have for the theory that HIV is unrelated to AIDS," sneered reporter Paul Blustein in the Washington Post. 

But many people in New Hampshire clearly didn't feel that way. He got the bulk of his votes from those making less than $50,000 a year; 50 percent who went for Buchanan said trade was the most important issue. They are living on the economic downside of the high-tech global economy, and they don't think NAFTA or GATT has done them any good at all. NAFTA, in fact, has been a time bomb in American politics, as Buchanan realized. His bigotry on certain social issues is distressing, but his popularity is based on more than declamations against gays, immigrants and pro-choice activists. He is the populist standard-bearer in 1996; his political advance is entirely understandable and to a considerable extent deserved. 






Next page: Why is Buchanan the only economic justice candidate?