Pat Buchanan: Second-Term Test

American Conservative ^ | January 31, 2005 | Pat Buchanan

[RWR8189]

Undeniably, it was a good year for Time’s Man of the Year. For the second election in a row, George W. Bush increased his party’s strength in Congress as he secured the second term his father failed to win.

Not since FDR has a new president done so well by his party. But here the comparisons end. Where FDR carried every state but Maine and Vermont in his re-election campaign in 1936, and Ike carried every state but Missouri and a few Dixiecrat bastions in 1956, and Nixon and Reagan carried 49 states, George W. Bush won only 31. His margin was 3 percent.

An historic victory this was not. No wartime president had ever been turned out of office. But Bush came closest. A turnaround of 60,000 votes in Ohio, and he would have lost to a liberal from Massachusetts with a voting record indistinguishable from Teddy Kennedy’s.

I have political capital in the bank and I intend to spend it, says the president. But that capital is shrinking as fast as the dollar.

What, then, are the yardsticks of success for a second Bush term?

On the “moral values” front, there is but one test. Can he, will he, reshape the Supreme Court and ring down the curtain on the revolution it has been imposing upon this country, illegitimately, for 50 years? If he succeeds here, President Bush will have achieved what Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and his father all failed to do—together.

As for the Bush guest-worker plan for illegal aliens, it is in trouble in the House, as he is condemned in his own party for refusing to secure America’s borders. One major terror attack by an alien who sneaked across the Mexican border, and the president will lose the terrorism issue for the balance of his term.

Bush’s trade policy cost America 2.7 million manufacturing jobs in his first term. With the Multifiber Agreement expiring, the imminent loss of hundreds of thousands of textile and apparel jobs will create a crisis for free-trade Republicans. Yet to the deindustrialization of America, Bush has no answer other than “I believe free trade is good for America.” This is mindless ideology.

Arthur Laffer and Lawrence Kudlow may see a trade deficit of $600 billion and a sinking dollar as signs the world loves America as a place to invest. But the financial world dissents, as does Steve Forbes, who sees the soaring price of gold, oil, copper and other commodities, and housing, as fire bells of inflation.

After having turned a $200 billion Clinton surplus into a $400 billion deficit, the president, prodded by his own deficit hawks, is going to have to perform fiscal surgery. He is going to have to address the Social Security and Medicare deficits. Neither will be popular, and the president is already below 50 percent approval again.

Only one in nine economists predicts a recession in 2005, and two of nine by the end of 2006. This points to clear sailing for the economy, but the political question remains: will working America share equitably in Wall Street’s prosperity?

It is in foreign policy, however, that the president has been hailed as a revolutionary for his Bush Doctrine of preventive war and his Wilsonian declaration of a “world democratic revolution.” And it is here that his presidency will be made or broken.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the proving grounds of the Bush Doctrine. While Afghanistan just held its first national election, the country also appears on the way to becoming a narco-democracy, the world supplier of the raw material for heroin, as it was before the Taliban eradicated the drug trade.

North Korea appears to have successfully defied the president and crashed the club of nuclear nations. Iran has begun to take steps toward the threshold. Yet the Bush Doctrine, which calls for preventive wars and “regime change” for axis-of-evil nations that defy America’s will, has yet to be applied. To the dismay of neoconservatives, the Big Stick remains in the closet.

Ultimately, the success or failure of the Bush foreign policy, the Bush Doctrine, the “world democratic revolution,” comes down to Iraq. The price in dead and wounded, American and Iraqi, in divisions within this country and with our allies, in the anger and alienation of the Arab and Islamic street, is already high and rising.

If January’s elections produce an Iraq that looks to America as a friend and ally and offers a model democracy for the Arab world, Bush’s war will be judged a success. But if the Sunni insurgency tears Iraq apart in chaos and civil war, leading to a U.S. withdrawal, or a second Vietnam, Bush’s fate is sealed. He will have launched a war of choice, not necessity, and lost it, something no other president has ever done.

[COEXERJ145]

Go Pat, Go Away

[ken21]

ditto.

[mhx]

If hordes of illegal aliens (estimated at as much as 20 millions) are given amnesty with subsequent citizenship, this country's cultural heritage would be transformed from a Christian one to a Third World one.

I presume you're not talking about Mexicans.

[alienken]

I want to support Buchanan but I just don't think he is up to the war on terror, he's to much of an isolationist

[rdb3]

After having turned a $200 billion Clinton surplus into a $400 billion deficit...

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Leave your talking-points at home, Pat. There was never a surplus. It was a projection.

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This points to clear sailing for the economy, but the political question remains: will working America share equitably in Wall Street’s prosperity?

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From each according to his means to each according to his needs, eh Pat?

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The price in dead and wounded, American and Iraqi, in divisions within this country and with our allies, in the anger and alienation of the Arab and Islamic street, is already high and rising.

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I take what he means about "our allies" includes the French and the Germans. Sorry, but they're no longer our allies. "Aleination of the Arab and Islamc street?" Uh, last time I looked, the "Arab street" was alienated from us by their own choice, and was extremely hostile to the U.S. long before the current war in Iraq. Their aleination and anger means nothing to us. They'll remain angry with us no matter what we do.

Screw them. That includes the Frogs and the Germans as well.

Real men don't whine.

[hinckley buzzard]

"After having turned a $200 billion Clinton surplus into a $400 billion deficit, the president, prodded by his own deficit hawks, is going to have to perform fiscal surgery. He is going to have to address the Social Security and Medicare deficits. Neither will be popular, and the president is already below 50 percent approval again."

Buchanan has gone from peevish carping and ankle-biting to downright lying. He is a sick man.

[Theresawithanh]

He's the one that got all the votes from Jewish voters in Florida in election 2000! (That still cracks me up!)

[Dog Gone]

I never could figure him out. All I know is that he is often out there. Somtimes he's all over the outfield.

In this one, for example, he's complaining both about the war in Iraq, but no action in Iran and North Korea.

I'm thinking that Buchanan's still a little bitter that Bush got 47.87% of the nation's vote four years ago, while he received. 0.42%.

[elhombrelibre]

Sadly, when it comes to Pat today "there's no there there" in his thoughts.

[elhombrelibre]

Do you mean Lationos are not Christians generally, or do you mean other aliens?

[bayourod]

Buchanan couldn't hold it any longer. He finally burst open with all his pent-up jealousy of President Bush.

Buchanan is a tragic character, a court jester who thought he was better than the king and couldn't understand why everyone thought him a fool.

He just knew that 2000 was his turn to get the nomination. He was so certain that the voters would see his superiority that he didn't even bother hiring a real campaign manager, he just named his little sister.

Instead of doing the hard fundamental work of a candidate he thought all he had to do was go on TV shows and deride President Bush as "that Bush boy"

I'm convinced that Buchanan was Deep Throat.

[TheBrotherhood]

"I presume you're not talking about Mexicans."

Maybe you didn't know, but most illegal third world aliens are Mexicans.

Also, in my post above, "Third World" controls over Christians.

[Poohbah]

Do you mean Lationos are not Christians generally, or do you mean other aliens?

I am a Catholic; many do not consider me to be Christian.

[EagleUSA]

In effect what you're saying is that we should not trust Bush in what he says.
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No, that is not what I said. That is what YOU are suggesting. What I pointed out, is what is important, and that is what actually gets done for the people of this country. That is the measure of ANY President, and a solid measure for people in general, not just Washington politicians.

[Poohbah]

When did Pat Buchanan ever give an airborne fornication about what the French or the Germans thought?

[TheBrotherhood]

Ola que tal?

Vea post #32 abajo.

[rdb3]

When did Pat Buchanan ever give an airborne fornication about what the French or the Germans thought?

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For such a stalwart isolationist, this is strange. You'd think he could care less about what another country would think about us.

Real men don't whine.

[TheBrotherhood]

I meant last sentence of post #32.

That ought to answer your question, I hope.

[elhombrelibre]

True, there are philistines that are so confused on who is and who is not a Christian. But I was asking another poster if he was implying Latinos are not generally Christians. Frankly, I think Pat, who also is a Catholic doesn't think his co-religionists and Latinos are Christian or civilized.

[TheBrotherhood]

"What I pointed out, is what is important, and that is what actually gets done for the people of this country."

I agree.