{"id":127174,"date":"2017-06-13T03:40:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T07:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=127174"},"modified":"2019-02-10T02:55:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T07:55:28","slug":"father-trumpism-looks-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/father-trumpism-looks-back-127174","title":{"rendered":"The Father of Trumpism Looks Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Scully – National Review<\/a><\/p>\n

In a new memoir, Pat Buchanan tells the story of the Nixon White House as only he could.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading the various accolades directed lately at Pat Buchanan, including a New York Times <\/em>column declaring the author of A Republic, Not an Empire<\/strong><\/a><\/em> nothing less than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the most influential public intellectual in America,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who will deny him a claim of vindication? Long ago, elite opinion had written him off as irrelevant, never mind that here was the only Washington pundit ever to set his name on a ballot and earn a single vote in national politics. In his best run he earned 3 million, and we now know he was on to something with far greater possibilities than one big night in New Hampshire. Sam Tanenhaus, the biographer of National Review\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founder, writing recently in Esquire<\/em>, gives the man his due:<\/strong><\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Buchanan begat Trumpism as his former ally William F. Buckley Jr. begat Reaganism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

For his own part, since declaring in a November column that the old Republican order is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a dynasty as dead as the Romanovs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan has left it for others to collect laurels. Perhaps a scribe who has been around long enough to recall working for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew when they were riding high knows better than to revel too much in the victories of the moment. \"Nixon's<\/a>Every majority \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the great Silent Majority,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a phrase we owe to Buchanan \u00e2\u20ac\u201d can be undone. Stunning reversals have been known to follow stunning political triumphs. An illustration for the ages unfolded in the early 1970s, when the mandate of a 49-state reelection triumph vanished into nothing. Buchanan was right in the middle of all that, too, and shares the story in his new,\u00c2\u00a0late-arriving memoir, Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever<\/strong><\/em><\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the fifth White House remembrance by a Nixon speechwriter, and a rival to the first one, William Safire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classic Before the Fall<\/em> (1975), as the best.<\/p>\n

Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House Wars <\/em>picks up where Buchanan left off three years ago in The Greatest Comeback<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, his engrossing account of signing up with Nixon in early 1966, when Ike\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s VP looked like yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s man, and serving on his staff in Manhattan until the day he became president-elect. Older readers will enjoy the retreat back into an era of simpler dividing lines in Republican affairs: Though a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153two-time loser\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after the 1962 California governor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s race, Nixon in 1964 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153had been a portrait in loyalty when others abandoned Goldwater.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Having campaigned for the nominee in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that Pickett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Charge of the American Right,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while rivals Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney kept their distance, he had earned support from conservatives, including Barry Goldwater himself, that would make a crucial difference in 1968. Plus, as only Buchanan would put it, those establishment guys didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the stuff to survive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Iroquois gauntlet that is a presidential campaign.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Though not yet 30 during the \u00e2\u20ac\u212268 campaign, the speechwriter had a friendship with Nixon that permitted frank advice, appealing usually to the candidate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s less calculating side. They had first met one day in the mid 1950s, when the future foe of Country Club Republicanism caddied for the vice president at a course near Washington, a story hilariously told in Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1988 autobiography, Right from the Beginning<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. A decade later, finding Pat as an editorial writer at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat<\/em>, Nixon was no doubt taken by the combination of sharp, well-stocked mind and unprivileged background, and clearly liked his company. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Buchanan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he would later say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the only extremist I know with a sense of humor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) With memos all through the general-election campaign, and rhetoric for both Nixon and Governor Agnew bearing his distinctive mark, Buchanan made sure the ticket kept its populist edge. Examining a race won by a margin of 0.7 percent of the popular vote against Hubert Humphrey, and with a few southern states that George Wallace nearly got or else might easily have handed to Humphrey, you could make the case that, without young Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence, Nixon would have gone down again.<\/p>\n

And yet, he tells us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the ten weeks from election to inauguration were the most dispiriting of my years with Nixon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Given what the final weeks were like, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s saying something, but veterans of victorious presidential campaigns will appreciate the particular torments of transition intrigue and of awaiting word, as Buchanan did, on one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fate in a new administration. He was asked at one point to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hold off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on joining the White House staff and instead write a book about the campaign, probably someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempt to get rid of him.<\/p>\n

It was also the familiar story of an incoming Republican administration too anxious about offending liberal sensitivities: The assistant for domestic policy was Pat Moynihan, the Democrat who would go on to unseat Senator Jim Buckley, and on January 20, 1969, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there was not an ideological conservative among Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s West Wing assistants or cabinet officers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan received the lesser title of special assistant and an office in the speechwriting shop at the far end of the Old Executive Office Building, manning what NR publisher William Rusher called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the conservative desk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the Nixon White House. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153By the time the Nixon administration had set sail, the Right had been routed in the struggle for position and power and relegated to the galleys.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Among the lasting consequences of that loss, Buchanan reminds us: Of the seven Court votes that gave America Roe v. Wade<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Blackmun, Burger, and Lewis Powell \u00e2\u20ac\u201d were Nixon justices.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n

What saved him then, not for the last time, was sheer talent and force of mind. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crucially, I had been given by the good Lord a gift, developed in three years of editorial writing and three years of working intimately with Nixon. I could write swiftly, tersely, wittily, and well memos that Nixon loved to read, on matters he cared about most: politics, policy, and personalities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d At the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s direction, and despite a senior-staff mania for control and access, these memos would go unfiltered to the Oval Office, often returning with enthusiastic notes from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153RN\u00e2\u20ac\u009d jotted in the margins. They became \u00e2\u20ac\u0153our primary means of conversation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and by August 1974 there were a thousand memos, none of which we could mistake for the work of anyone other than Buchanan.<\/p>\n

Composed in a time of war, riots, and such general uneasiness that at one point soldiers from the 82nd Airborne were brought in to defend the White House complex if need be, the memos return again and again to one theme: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Build the majority we failed to win.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nixon and Wallace together had received 57 percent of the vote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a rejection of LBJ and Great Society liberalism,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and soon Democrats would nominate George McGovern, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the pet of the national liberal establishment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Therefore, Buchanan counseled Nixon in 1970, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it should be our focus to constantly speak to, to assure, to win, to aid, to promote the President\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s natural constituency\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0the working men and women of this country, the common man.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0When in trouble, that is where we should turn, not try to find common ground with our adversaries.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As for outreach to minority constituencies and other likely Democratic voters in the reelection effort, he advised in 1972, it was a nice thought, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the name of the game is the white working class.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In the news one day in 1970 was a rough encounter by college-age anti-war demonstrations, who had desecrated the flag, with some New York City construction workers. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The most insane suggestion I have heard about here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d advised Buchanan, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0was to the effect that we should somehow go prosecute the hard hats to win favor with the kiddies.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why not send in Vice President Agnew with a straight-on defense of policies trying to end the war Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s predecessors had left him? Such a message \u00e2\u20ac\u0153would have hit every blue-collar worker in the country and these are our people now \u00e2\u20ac\u201d if we want them \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and frankly they are better patriots and more pro-Nixon than the little knot of Riponers we have sought to cultivate since we came into office.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In all of the memos, quoted extensively throughout the book, what comes across is an extremely industrious presidential aide entirely free of any angles or personal agendas of his own; no posturing for the record, only heartfelt, invariably sound, and occasionally brilliant political advice. My personal favorite is a memo complaining to Nixon about a list of prospective candidates for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, drawn up mostly by counselor Leonard Garment, a New York liberal partial to jazz music. The medal is intended for distinguished Americans in recognition of contributions to national life and culture, and, surveying Garment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recommendations, Buchanan detected too many \u00e2\u20ac\u0153jazz musicians, artists, writers, dancers, academics, labor leaders, and progressive businessmen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why not instead, he urged the president, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pass over the Margot Fonteyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Rudolf Nureyev\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0and lay one on Roy Acuff, founding father of country and western music, a Nixon supporter with a special niche in the hall of heroes at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Then there is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Agnew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Hour,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a chapter recalling those glorious few weeks in the fall of 1969 when Ted Agnew was the biggest draw in American politics, turning what Buchanan calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the siege gun\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the arrogance and elitism of the print media and network news, in a plan Buchanan had conceived. After a New Orleans address in which Agnew described the liberal press as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153effete corps of impudent snobs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan, author of that phrase, reported to the president that it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153had roughly the effect of dynamiting an outhouse next to a Sunday school picnic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d More was in order, Nixon agreed. What followed were two speeches in Iowa<\/strong><\/a> and Alabama<\/strong><\/a>, drafted by Buchanan (with light edits from Agnew and refinements from the president, silently touching up drafts \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like a rim man on a copy desk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and unequaled to this day, by any national office holder, in their mix of wit, perfect tone, unanswerable argument, and commanding delivery. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153these were the best of times,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and those speeches \u00e2\u20ac\u0153among the best I wrote,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with lasting impact \u00e2\u20ac\u201d though a still more impressive achievement was to keep Garment, Moynihan, and others from ruining the Des Moines and Montgomery drafts or killing them altogether.<\/p>\n

It was a time when the second highest officer in the land \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in subsequent remarks, after two Senate Democrats had lamented that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the best of our young people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were fleeing the draft to Canada \u00e2\u20ac\u201d could actually say:<\/p>\n

Let Senator Fulbright and Senator Harris go prospecting for their future party leaders in the deserters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dens of Canada and Sweden; we Republicans shall look elsewhere. Indeed, as for those deserters, malcontents, radicals,\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0SDS, PLP, Weatherman I and Weatherman II,\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0yippies, hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of Americans I saw in Vietnam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agnew was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a man with guts and humor,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an opinion shared by all who knew him well. Facing his doom in the fall of 1973, he would learn the truth of a Nixon saying: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Count your friends when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re down.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That story and the Watergate stretches of the book, including the few months of Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s service under President Gerald Ford, are still depressing and galling to read all these years later. How much happier the outcome had Nixon disregarded Garment (who later regretted his own counsel) and instead followed advice from both Buchanan and John Connally to burn every tape not yet subpoenaed, brave the firestorm, and be done with it. That sounds rash, until we recall a tragedy that hardly even comes up in Watergate histories, the catastrophe abroad that Nixon and Henry Kissinger, as the mob closed in, sought to prevent for as long as they could. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enemies,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153who would vote to strip him of the authority and power to come to the aid of Saigon, and Hanoi and its allies, would see to it that the peace he and [President] Johnson had so long sought would last but two years.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A few million people in South Vietnam and Cambodia were left to a horrific fate, the truly monumental scandal of that era. Yet we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still supposed to tremble at the mention of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saturday Night Massacre\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and toast the names of martyrs who dined out on their Watergate fame for decades afterward.<\/p>\n

In Washington, as Buchanan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speechwriting colleague Ray Price observed, the Nixon enemies lists \u00e2\u20ac\u0153were called the new Social Register<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Buchanan wrote to Nixon at the time, in a reference to the Washington Post <\/em>publisher and the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One of the great tragedies of Watergate is that it has enabled the likes of [Katharine] Graham and Daniel Ellsberg to pose as victimized moral heroes of the age. This indeed is a painful purgatory for our sins.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d When special prosecutor Archibald Cox was relieved of his duties and the preening attorney general, Elliot Richardson, resigned, Buchanan recalls, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s John Chancellor said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIt may be the most serious constitutional crisis in [U.S.] history,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 passing over the secession of eleven states and the Civil War.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cox, Richardson, Ellsberg, Graham, Ben Bradlee, Bernstein and Woodward, Mark Felt, Sam Dash, Lowell Weicker \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the whole cast of insufferable and self-satisfied people comes back to mind. The book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s epigraph, a line from The Great Gatsby<\/em>, offers fitting judgment on Nixon and on them: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a rotten crowd,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I shouted across the lawn. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re worth more than the whole damn bunch put together.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Memo to President Donald Trump and his team: Remember, when it comes time to bestow those Medals of Freedom, to lay one on Patrick J. Buchanan, with distinction. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was the author of Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House Wars<\/em> who, for one day at least, put the sorry lot of them to rout in a storied appearance before the Senate Watergate committee, inspiring Bill Buckley to praise his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153singular poise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153enormous forensic ingenuity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We have seen those and other fine qualities many times since, in a venturous career that includes service to President Reagan as well, in a half century of speeches, columns, and books by a master wordsmith, and in cheerful and great-hearted devotion to his country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cause. Memo to President Donald Trump and his team: Remember, when it comes time to bestow those Medals of Freedom, to lay one on Patrick J. Buchanan, with distinction. No one except Trump himself did more to give us the Trump years. And if the aim is to fill those years with achievement and steer clear of trouble, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a man in America with more wisdom to offer.<\/p>\n

Editor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Note: This piece originally appeared in the June 12, 2017 issue of <\/em>National Review. It is reprinted in emended form here.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0Matthew Scully is\u00c2\u00a0a former literary editor of National Review. He\u00c2\u00a0served as a special assistant and senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at the National Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Matthew Scully – National Review In a new memoir, Pat Buchanan tells the story of the Nixon White House as only he could. Reading the various accolades directed lately at Pat Buchanan, including a New York Times column declaring the author of A Republic, Not an Empire nothing less … <\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n

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