BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Promising a "new patriotism in America that puts country
first [and] a new conservatism of the heart that puts people
first," ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan declared
his third campaign for U.S. president March 2.
During his Courtyard, New Hampshire, speech, Buchanan outlined themes of economic nationalism, asserting Washington's military supremacy, preparing for war against China, advocating assaults on immigrant rights and attacks on women's right to choose abortion.
Buchanan formally launched his bid in the state where he won the Republican primary in 1996. The New Hampshire victory gave his campaign momentum three years ago, and Buchanan sharpened his populist demagogy. He spoke of leading peasants with pitchforks "coming over the hills" to overthrow the establishment.
Echoing his 1996 presidential campaign Buchanan called on his supporters once again to "mount up and ride to the sound of the guns." At the website for his presidential campaign the ultrarightist declared the "Buchanan Brigades are gathering across the nation."
The New York Times report on Buchanan's campaign announcement said his candidacy is "widely perceived as more of a vanity run or even a mischief run than a serious campaign." But it is deadly serious and dangerous for working people.
As in his previous campaigns, Buchanan is not running primarily to garner votes, but to recruit cadres to his "America First" demagogy as an organizing center for an incipient fascist movement. While keeping one foot firmly planted in "normal" bourgeois politics, he at the same time appeals to the middle class and sections of the working class to draw them into the politics of resentment, of imposing radical solutions to stop the "degeneracy" and "moral decay" of the "elite."
While most Republican politicians try to change the subject following President William Clinton's impeachment acquittal, Buchanan has been bolstered. Less than two weeks before announcing his candidacy, Buchanan pledged to continue the battle staked out in the impeachment drive against Clinton that was led primarily by ultrarightists. Vowing not to abandon the trenches in this ideological offensive, Buchanan said in a February 20 column, "Politics is the last contested battlefield of our culture war."
The impeachment campaign was an attempt by a section of the U.S. rulers to take away through a "culture war" - the term Buchanan popularized in the early 1990s -what the capitalist class has been unable to wrest in the field of direct class conflict like affirmative action or a woman's right to choose abortion.
Pointing to the Clinton scandal in his campaign speech, Buchanan pledged to "clean up all that pollutes our culture."
He called for ending a woman's right to control her body, describing the right to choose abortion as a "culture of death." Buchanan also pressed for a "moratorium on immigration" and a "national campaign of assimilation" of immigrant workers.
Buchanan and Co. pushed the impeachment drive despite the fact that it weakened the U.S. presidency. This course has highlighted the deep divisions among the U.S. rulers on how to confront what they anticipate will be an explosive social crisis that may get out of their control.
"Now it's official," Buchanan said in a February 24 syndicated column. "The United States is the last great economy firing on all eight cylinders in a global collapse. America is the last domino.
"In 1997, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had to be bailed out with $115 billion in International Monetary Fund loans. Last year, Russia, beneficiary of $22 billion bailout, devalued its currency and defaulted. In January, Brazil defaulted. Comes now more disquieting news. The European Union is flagging."
Even though the U.S. business cycle has not entered a downturn, this can't last, Buchanan said, unfurling his American nationalism. "Even if the economic answer is yes, a political question arises: Can the United States remain an importer of only resort for a world in depression in the face of our awesome and exploding trade deficit?" he asked.
"Do we allow imports to destroy our industries and kill American jobs...? Eventually, it comes down to this: Do we give up our independence - in the name of interdependence? Do we sacrifice the U.S. economy to the Global Economy? On this, Davos Republicans and Clintonites concur, but populists, patriots and true conservatives will put America first.
"Those who should pay the price of the foolish investments in Asia, Russia, and Latin America are the foolish investors themselves," he concluded. With his not-too-disguised anti- Semitism, Buchanan often picks obviously Jewish names as examples of these "investors."
Buchanan is often portrayed in the big-business press as an "isolationist" who has opposed some of the military policies of the current administration. His actual perspective is to mobilize the ultrarightist movement he is building to demand that Washington use all of its enormous firepower to back "our boys" - after first winning the war against "traitors" at home.
"It's time for the United States to reduce its commitments and rebuild its power," he declared in New Hampshire. "We alone, not UN councils or European bureaucrats decide when and where Americans go into battle. And when they do, they will fight only under American command."
In a thinly veiled threat against Beijing, Buchanan railed against "missiles now targeted at U.S. troops in South Korea and Okinawa." At his campaign website he admonished the Clinton administration "policy that wastes $10 billion policing the Balkans, but cannot spare a dime to keep Communist China from encroaching on the Panama Canal."
Over the past two months Buchanan has waged a campaign to prepare for military action against China in his weekly syndicated columns. "Critical U.S. weapons technology go into machines of war that Beijing prepares for use on Americans," he wrote in a January 30 article.
"Is China preparing for a clash with United States over Taiwan?" Buchanan asked two weeks later. He suggested Washington launch air and cruise missiles on the Chinese workers state in the event Beijing moves to retake territory it considers a province of China.
In a dress rehearsal the day before announcing his 2000 presidential campaign, Buchanan toured the Weirton Steel Corp. plant in West Virginia. "To those who call me a protectionist," he declared in his New Hampshire speech, "I will use the trade laws of this country and my authority as president to protect the jobs of our workers...and no global trade authority will keep me from doing my job."
WEIRTON, West Virginia - Patrick Buchanan spent March 1 campaigning in this Ohio Valley steel town with an escort of national and international media. Buchanan began with a tour of Weirton Steel, the local steelmaker that dominates the town. Eight hundred of its over 4,000 employees have been laid off since November.
Buchanan then spoke to a packed audience of more than 600 in the community center in town. The crowd included many steelworkers from Weirton and also students from local schools.
Signs in the area announce the "Stand Up for Steel" campaign, promoted locally by steelmakers Weirton Steel and Wheeling Pitt and the leadership of the two unions - the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and Independent Steelworkers Union (ISU). The ISU is the union at Weirton Steel, a company that was bought out through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Activities in the area as part of the Stand Up for Steel campaign have included petitions and anti- import protests by steelworkers in Washington, D.C.
Leaders of the ISU accompanied Buchanan on his tour of the plant. The ultrarightist politician spoke in front of a banner reading: "The I.S.U. welcomes Pat Buchanan." Around the hall signs declared "Free traders are traitors," "Pat Buchanan Stands up for Steel," and "Don't Let Clinton `Steel' Our Jobs." Many in attendance wore caps and T-shirts that said "Stand up for Steel - Stand up for America."
In his presentation, Buchanan railed imports from Brazil, Russia, and Japan and targeted so-called bailouts by the International Monetary Fund to "pay back Wall Street." Buchanan said his message to Clinton was "Keep your word and do your duty. Put quotas across-the-board on foreign steel and steel products."
He continued on the theme of defending the "people" against the "elite." To a steelworker who asked, "Why does the Wall Street Journal say that the steel industry is obsolete?" Buchanan replied, "What street's interest do you think the Wall Street Journal has?"
Buchanan's anti-Semitism was quite thinly veiled. He singled out for praise a hand-lettered sign that read, "Rubin and Judas, Two of a kind," referring to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Buchanan spoke of "work, family, faith, community, and country" as the values of former Republican president Ronald Reagan. "Isn't that what Weirton is all about?" he asked.
At a recent Senate steel caucus hearing in Pittsburgh, Independent Steelworkers president Mark Glyptis said that if Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore "came to Weirton, I would personally throw him out of town." Weirton is heavily Democratic.
One person in praising Buchanan said, "I read all you columns." As The Intelligencer of Wheeling, West Virginia, reported, "Buchanan captured the attention of Ohio Valley steelworkers in November when he wrote a column describing the plight of the industry."
Buchanan also spoke of the importance of steel to the war industry asking, "Could we have won World War II if we hadn't had steel?" and pointing to the large percentage of world production of steel that the U.S. was responsible for.
During questions, Buchanan launched an attack on "Chinese communists" who he said have a $60 billion trade surplus with the U.S. and "target American marines in Okinawa." This surplus was being used to develop missiles, he stated. To applause, Buchanan said the actions by the administration in relation to trade with China were "close to treason."
One questioner who didn't get a full answer was a steelworker who identified himself as being from the Wheeling Pitt plant in Steubenville, Ohio, who spoke of their ten-and- a-half month strike and asked Buchanan whether he supported legislation against replacement workers. Buchanan's response was that "if it's a legitimate strike for legitimate reasons, they deserve their jobs back."
A girl and her father also spoke to Buchanan, the father identifying himself as a professor at the Franciscan University in Steubenville. Large numbers of students from that campus participate in a mass antichoice picket on a regular basis at abortion clinics in downtown Pittsburgh. He presented Buchanan a book on defending "family values" and commented on the importance of discussing the economy and the family. Buchanan invited them up to the stage.
Tony Lane is a member of USWA.