Issue 1 is Pat Buchanan’s book and his relationship with the GOP. Issue 2 is Edmund Morris’ strange biography of Ronald Reagan. Issue 3 is the Gore-Bradley race.
If the chat shows are any indication, the Republican establishment is turning against Pat Buchanan. Buchanan is called anti-Semitic by two conservative commentators–William Safire (NBC’s Meet the Press) and George F. Will (ABC’s This Week)–as well as by Buchanan’s former Crossfire co-host, Slate editor Michael Kinsley (Meet the Press). Will calls Buchanan a fascist and compares him to Franco. Other conservative panelists–such as Paul Gigot (Meet the Press and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer), William Kristol (This Week), and Tucker Carlson (CNN’s Late Edition) say Buchanan should leave the GOP and good riddance. On Fox News Sunday, Buchanan says, “Clearly, we’re leaning toward [bolting the GOP], but I don’t want to make an irrevocable decision.” But according to some he already has: “His career as a significant Republican is over,” says Gigot (Meet the Press). And Buchanan is “on the cusp of becoming radioactive politically,” says Mark Shields (NewsHour). Kristol and Gigot criticize George W. Bush for refusing to tell Buchanan off. (For Slate’s take on Buchanan’s ostracism from the GOP, see Jacob Weisberg’s “Go, Pat, Go.”)
One conditional defender of Buchanan is Al Hunt (CNN’s Captial Gang), who says that although Buchanan is wrong, he “makes a considered argument that is not anti-Semitic” in his new book, A Republic Not An Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny (buy it here). An unconditional defender is Capital Gang’s Robert Novak, who thinks “it is a brilliant book in many ways. It’s not a presidential candidate’s book. … I would say right now the assault on him by the media … makes me a little ill.”
Grilled on Fox by a hostile Brit Hume and Tony Snow, Buchanan calls George W. Bush’s appeal to him to remain in the GOP “gracious” and “smart.” (On Late Edition, Buchanan says that John McCain’s criticism of his views on World War II shows that McCain hasn’t read his book.) Snow notes that in his book, Buchanan argues that America was right not to go to war with the Soviet Union in the 1930s over Joseph Stalin’s quasi-genocidal farm collectivization program. Snow then asks Buchanan: Does this imply we should not have gone to war with Germany over the Holocaust? Buchanan replies that the point is moot, since we were already at war with Germany by the time the Holocaust began. Buchanan then turns the tables, asking Snow, “Should we have gone to war with Russia [over farm collectivization] and when?” But Hume cuts in with, “Pat, Pat, Pat [chuckles], we’re asking the questions here.” Buchanan tells Snow that we should arm Taiwan but not necessarily declare war on China if it invades the island. “Listen, I will not take my country into war with a nuclear power,” Buchanan says, citing President Eisenhower’s decision not to intervene in the Soviets’$2 1956 crackdown in Hungary.
The pundits chew over the Newsweek excerpts of Edmund Morris’ controversial biography, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (buy it here). As the only opinion maker who has read the entire book, Evan Thomas pronounces Morris’ use of a fictional narrator a noble risk but ultimately a failure. Bill Kristol (This Week) and several Reagan aides interviewed on Meet the Press (Michael Deaver, Edwin Meese, Lyn Nofziger, and Marlin Fitzwater)–who have not read the whole thing–say Morris’ book is a fiction. Several Reagan confidants say that Morris’ bafflement with his subject is absurd. “Ronald Reagan was an open book who read himself to the country for 20 years,” says George F. Will (This Week).
Among the apparent revelations in the Newsweek excerpt: (1) Reagan came much closer to death after his assassination attempt than previously disclosed. He insisted on walking into the hospital under his own power, but then collapsed; he had lost nearly half his blood. After catching an infection he coughed up blood. (2) The Bushes bitterly resented the way the Reagans treated them as second-class citizens, rarely inviting them to the second-floor family quarters. (On Fox, Pat Buchanan–a former Reagan aide–notes that he too was never invited upstairs but is not bitter; Brit Hume notes that the Reagans were private people to begin with.)
Pundits concede that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s endorsement of Bill Bradley gives his campaign another boost, and Gore spokesman Bill Richardson admits on Meet the Press that “this is going to be a very contested campaign.” Both Meet the Press and This Week flash a recent Time/CNN poll of New Hampshire primary voters: Bradley edges Gore 44 percent to 41 percent. (Is this within the margin of error? Neither show says.) Several pundits note that Bradley may be peaking early and that Moynihan also endorsed Bob Kerry in 1992 and Ted Kennedy in 1980 (Mara Liasson, Fox; Margaret Carlson, Capital Gang).
A Short History of Washington Week: Paul Duke reminisces with his panelists and welcomes new host Gwen Ifill. Duke chronicles the program’s history: “It all began in February 1967 in a ramshackle studio …” There was the time Nixon tried to de-fund PBS because of Washington Week’s Watergate coverage. There was that unfortunate episode where the studio lights went out, and the one where the fly kept landing on a panelist’s nose. Several commentators generously warn Ifill (who does not appear on the program) of one of the perils of being on television frequently: the “recognition factor.” To illustrate, Steven Roberts tells of all the mail he has received advising him to change his hairdo, and Thomas Friedman shares the time he was recognized by a stranger on a train to Hong Kong. Stay tuned to “Pundit Central” to find out how Ifill handles the privileges and responsibilities of pundit fame.
Last Word:
“We had every right, and we were more than right–right, just, and moral–to smash both of those evil empires [Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan].”
–Pat Buchanan (Late Edition)
“Here [in 1999] is a defeated, divided, demoralized Weimar Russia sitting there, and we are pushing it, with our NATO expansion, right into the arms of China, which bears tremendous resentment toward the West–and the United States in particular. We are repeating the errors that led to World War II, and for heaven’s sake let’s stop it before [we get] World War III.”
–Pat Buchanan (Fox News Sunday)
