Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 13, 1992 TAG: 9203130519
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Super Tuesday, which was widely believed to spell Buchanan's downfall, ended with a clean sweep by George Bush, the incumbent president whose policies and failures Buchanan has consistently and loudly reviled. But Buchanan fights on.
He fights on despite his failure to capture either primaries or enough delegates to fill an eyecup; and as the primary season wears on he appears unable to elevate his share of the Republican vote above the 30-or-so percent he amassed in New Hampshire.
The 30-or-so percent is a remarkable wound to inflict on an incumbent president from within his own party, and Buchanan's vigorous, often harsh, attack on Bush has had visible effect, exposing Bush's innumerable inconsistencies, forcing him to reactions he surely would not otherwise have made so cravenly.
But Buchanan's following, though fervent, seemed to top out at once in New Hampshire, to remain at the same level in the Georgia primary last week, and even to slip a few percentage points this week, on Super Tuesday. Arithmetically, at least, his candidacy appears to have passed its prime and to be, therefore, doomed.
Buchanan refuses to admit its doom, however, vowing to fight on until the GOP convention this summer, and an observer may well ask why. The answer is, I believe, less ideological than psychological.
The conventional wisdom, encouraged by Buchanan himself, is that he has assumed the leadership of Republican "conservatism" and that he means to restore its reputation and fortunes from the neglect in which George Bush has left it. According to this logic, Bush, never a "true" conservative, turned his back on the central tenets of the Reagan movement and in doing so betrayed the Republican right - by signing a budget compromise containing tax increases, by signing a civil-rights bill containing "quotas," by permitting the National Endowment for the Arts to finance "pornography," etc. Bush, in short, has betrayed most of the conservative agenda.
Buchanan gets hearty cheers when he enumerates Bush's perfidies, to be sure, and he does it with consummate rhetorical clarity and force. But I wonder if the real reason for his astonishing success may not lie - as Jerry Brown's lies on the Democratic side - in something simpler.
The disgust an immense body of American voters now express about the current political system is no secret. It surfaces in a variety of ways: in low voter turnout, in survey after survey expressing widespread belief that the nation is headed "the wrong way," in polls revealing widespread dissatisfaction with government at all levels, in polls revealing the widespread wish that both parties were offering voters a better choice among better candidates.
Disgust is, however, a difficult emotion, once expressed, to make specific. One can point to this disaster or that - Pentagon overruns, House members who write bad checks on the House bank, sexual and other scandals, pork-barreling. But once they have been enumerated, the next step is harder to take.
For the feeling that American government is failing in all directions and at every level, that men and women of mediocre ability and moral imbecility are gaining and retaining office, that we are, in short, at the mercy of idiots and thieves, is bitter to swallow and painful to absorb.
That is the feeling that Pat Buchanan has tapped and is exploiting, I believe. I do not accuse him of cynicism; he obviously believes the nonsensical blend of nationalism, racism and totalitarianism with which he brings crowds to their feet. Few take it any more seriously than they do Jerry Brown's case for a flat tax. But they are mad out there, and aggrieved, and hurt; and they would vote for Satan if it relieved their sense that their country is collapsing.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
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POLITICS
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