But that’s where the similarities end-ed. Pat Buchanan was a firebrand speechwriter, supplying conservative agitprop to Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Born and educated in Washington, Buchanan loved combat in the capital, but had no interest in running for office. He was confrontational, emotional, fierce: contemptuous of congressional dealmaking and of the federal courts then issuing desegregation orders. Lamar Alexander, on the other hand, favored the politics of the clever, hushed voices. He worked in congressional liaison under Bryce Harlow, a low-key master of the inside game. Alexander was diligent, amenable, calculating. His aim was to return to his native Tennessee and climb to the top. His lineage was “Mountain Republican.” They’d supported the Union, opposed slavery. In Tennessee, you had to charm the Democrats to win.
Now these two men, who still refer to each other as “good friends,” are on a collision course. Whether or not one of them emerges as front runner, they have come to represent competing wings of the party and the GOP’s schizophrenia about what it wants to be. A long, possibly chaotic primary campaign looms. To win in November, the Republicans must capture middle-class voters anxious about their job security, worried about the decay of the family and resentful of what Buchanan calls “corporate greed” (page 44). Dole is the establishment man, but he hasn’t closed the sale, and voters are shopping around. To woo them, Buchanan has become a militant protectionist, calling for stiff trade tariffs in order to put “America First.” Alexander is peddling free trade, bragging about his record of bringing foreign investment – notably Japanese auto plants – to Tennessee. Buchanan is all foreboding and fear: the Us-versus-Them crusader who loves the “Crossfire.” Alexander is full of controlled sunshine, portraying himself as the nice guy urging everyone to “Come on Along.”
Now comes the most hectic stretch of the campaign for the GOP nomination, one in which support in the South – now a Republican bastion – will be crucial. Bob Dole was fighting for his political life last week, George Bush style. He moved around the snowy landscape in a bright orange jacket, posing for photo ops designed to make him appear upbeat and outdoorsy. After New Hampshire, derailing him may not be easy. Dole has money in the bank, the endorsements of 23 governors and a strong, nationwide organization. Last weekend former rival Sen. Phil Gramm threw Dole his support.
Meanwhile, Buchanan and Alexander fought off new attacks provoked by their strong finishes in Iowa. For Buchan-an, it was his hard-core views and ties to the right-wing netherworld; for Alexander, his history of using political ties to make himself a millionaire. Buchanan accused Dole of conducting a “smear cam-paign.” The Dole camp denied it. But charges and coun-tercharges about mudslinging and surreptitious phone banks continued.
So far, the cautious Alexander has been reluctant to join Dole in a growing stop-Buchanan movement. Others aren’t. “Pat’s way out there,” said Sen. Dick Lugar. Talk-show host Alan Keyes, who agrees with Buchanan on most issues, nevertheless said he would stay in the race because he favors a “healing tone,” not Buchanan’s in-your-face approach. After last week’s televised New Hampshire debate, Keyes confronted top Buchanan aides and angrily accused them of appealing to racist and anti-Semitic voters. Buchanan said he could see what was coming next. “If Dole doesn’t make it, the establishment will unite behind Lamar,” Buchanan told NEWSWEEK.
Buchanan and Alexander both believe their moment has arrived. Last week the thought suddenly occurred to Buchanan that he could win the race. He was in his suite in Des Moines, watching the returns from the Iowa caucuses. Numbers on the TV screen showed him closing within 3 percentage points of Dole – the final margin, as it turned out. “It’s tightening!” he exclaimed to his sister and campaign chair, Bay Buchanan. “My God, I can’t believe it, but we can go all the way!” It was clear that he would at least be a major player all the way to the GOP convention in San Diego. As he left the room to claim “victory,” Buchanan was giddy – and promptly forgot his “populist” stance. “Order a nice bottle of Chardonnay,” he commanded.
ALEXANDER HAD NO SUCH moment of sudden revelation, just quiet confidence. He’s patiently built a campaign premised on the demise of rival candidates and the all-things-to-all-voters appeal of his own. In his hotel suite in Manchester last Friday, he was calm, down home, New Age. A PowerBook was open and humming on the dining table. His address book sat by the phone, ready for calls to moneymen and advisers. On an end table, there was a harmonica in a red case, a reminder of his role as the GOP’s piano-playing Music Man. As Alexander munched on raw baby carrots, he said he had not acquired a newfound sense of destiny. Things were going according to plan. “I’m not a “Road to Damascus’ kind of guy,” he said.
In New Hampshire, Buchanan and Alexander concentrated on Dole. Behind the scenes at the debate, Buchanan and Alexander aides sat in adjoining rooms at WMUR-TV in Manchester. They cheered for their own men, and were alternately scornful and pitying of Dole’s sometimes shaky performance. “There he goes again, looking at his note cards!” crowed Alexander adviser Mike Murphy. Next door, Buchanan aides exulted as their man pounded his conservative message – and even defended his ties to anti-gun-control militant Larry Pratt.
Dole, meanwhile, was forced into a complex, two-front war. “I deserve another Purple Heart,” he said. He aired an ad featuring the state’s popular governor, Steve Merrill, calling Buchanan “unelectable” and Alexander too “liberal.” In last-minute ads, Dole accused Alexander of raising taxes dozens of times when he was governor of Tennessee and of “considering” a state income tax. “He’s not what he pretends to be,” the ad said. Alexander answered with a syrupy spot lamenting that Dole had gone “negative.” Buchanan, outraged that Dole had branded him an extremist, blasted the senator’s own record of supporting tax increases.
Buchanan and Alexander have been drawing from radically different groups of voters. In Iowa, polls showed, Buchanan enjoyed overwhelming support from pro-life voters. Alexander calls himself “pro-life,” and religious conservatives prefer him to Steve Forbes, whose once surging campaign seemed to founder in Iowa and New Hampshire. But in Iowa Alexander drew heavily from voters who support abortion rights. And he got only 7 percent of the vote of those who said they considered themselves members of the religious right. Buchanan won 42 percent.
Race is another dividing line between the two. Buchanan has long believed that the key to the GOP’s success lies in winning over white middle-class voters who resent the use of tax money – and the courts – to mandate rights and benefits to minorities. As a young editorial writer in St. Louis in the ’60s, Buchanan opposed the Great Society’s civil-rights acts on states rights’ grounds. Alexander, at the same time, was clerking for a federal judge in New Orleans best known for having ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith.
Alexander isn’t eager to stress his differences with Buchanan on abortion, race or any other social issue. Like Buchanan, he spoke to the Christian Coalition on a snowy evening in Manchester. He showed off his wife and sons, but never mentioned the word abortion, or the fact that his wife had once served on an advisory board of Planned Parenthood. In his hotel suite, he refused to be drawn into conflict with his old friend. “Let’s just say that I have rather different views than Pat on some important social questions,” Alexander told NEWSWEEK.
THE CALCULATION IS TYPICAL. Warm and homey in public, in private Alexander is wary. Buchanan is the opposite. Blustery in public, he’s full of laughter in private, telling jokes on himself. Alexander’s campaign was based on making him the one man, other than Dole, who would be acceptable to all branches of the GOP. “I thought from the start that there were only two men in this race capable of winning and beating Bill Clinton,” he said. “Bob Dole and me.” Buchanan’s strategy was to plunge in as if he had nothing to lose.
Their differences can be summarized by their campaign styles. Buchanan, a commentator, relies on the written and the spoken word to make his case. Preparing his “victory” speech in Iowa, he sat alone on his hotel bed scribbling his lines, mumbling them aloud to himself. Alexander, who says he reveres the writing of advertising guru David Ogilvy, stresses the visual. His campaign is a well-run marketing scheme. His is the first presidential campaign – but undoubtedly not the last – with a unifying visual theme: an official costume (checked shirt and khaki pants) and color scheme (red and black).
Now the two men, jousting with Dole, must move beyond the personal politics of Iowa and New Hampshire. The next key tests are in Arizona, where Forbes has some strength, and South Carolina. Beyond that are Fat Tuesdays in the Northeast, the Midwest and the all-important South – including megastates such as Texas. There, Gov. George W. Bush suddenly becomes a pivotal player now that favorite son Gramm has withdrawn. Personalities will count. Governor Bush remembers all too well that Buchanan helped unseat his father by embarrassing him in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. Alexander, by contrast, was a loyal Bush team player as secretary of education. “I don’t think George W. will want to pick a fight with our supporters,” Buchanan warned. Alexander said nothing, but his allies were already on the phone to Austin.
PHOTOS (BLACK & WHITE): Facing off: Buchanan and Alexander both think their moment is at hand.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Targeting Dole: Circling the front runner in New Hampshire.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Checked mates: Alexander’s fans, in official campaign costume.
WESTON KOSOVA AND MICHAEL ISIKOFF WITH MARTHA BRANT IN NASHUA
WHAT CAN YOU TELL ABOUT A MAN BY THE FRIENDS HE KEEPS? LAST WEEK Pat Buchanan’s campaign was jolted when it emerged that Larry Pratt, his friend and campaign cochairman, had attended rallies featuring neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In 1992 Pratt, head of the influential Gun Owners of America, spoke at a militia strategy session in Colorado convened by the leader of the racist Christian Identity Movement. Pratt also shared a podium in Dallas with former David Duke running mate Bo Gritz, who gave a speech listing high-ranking Jews in the Clinton administration.
Pratt denied he was a racist, but took a leave from the campaign. He is only one of several Buchanan intimates who inhabit the far right; the conservative commentator’s raw politics attract rough company. “Their views aren’t my views,” Buchanan told NEWSWEEK. “But they are my friends, and I’m not going to abandon them.”
Take Buchanan pal Samuel Francis. When Buchanan gave up his column in 1991 to run for president the first time, he recommended that Francis, a rumpled Washington Times editorial writer, take it over. The two have long swapped ideas over monthly dinners at the Hunan Lion, a restaurant near Buchanan’s house in McLean, Va. In speeches and in far-right journals, Francis advocates a “white pride” philosophy. At a 1994 conference in Atlanta, Francis denounced racial intermarriage and warned of a liberal “war against the white race.” When Francis’s racial views were publicized last fall, the Times fired him. “As far as I know, we’re as friendly as we’ve ever been,” Francis told NEWSWEEK. He’s right. Buchanan declined to repudiate Francis.
Another Buchanan friend, John Lofton, was also too far out for the arch-conservative Washington Times. Lofton was fired because, as he puts it, his editors “got sick of my Christian witness and my incessant Bible quoting.” After he left, he charged that the Times was staffed by “homosexuals, adulterers and fornicators.” Last year the Buchanan campaign briefly retained Lofton as a $1,500-a-month consultant to direct a letter-writing campaign to plant pro-Buchanan, anti-Dole letters in local newspapers.
Buchanan is also allied with the Rev. Donald Wildmon, a campaign cochairman and founder of the American Family Association (the group that calls for boycotts against shows like “NYPD Blue”). In a 1985 speech, Wildmon attacked the TV industry as “anti-Christian,” claiming that “59 percent of the people who are responsible for network programs were raised in Jewish homes.” Buchanan declined to address Wildmon’s view of the media but said he was “a good person, a good Christian and a patriot.”
Buchanan himself is no stranger to corrosive rhetoric. In 1977 Buchanan, who says that his childhood heroes were Joseph McCarthy and Generalissimo Francisco Franco, wrote that “though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core . . . he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank . . .” He notes that this quote is from a long review of a mainstream biography that credits Hitler for political and strategic skill. Though such nuances can get lost in a campaign – especially in attack ads – Buchanan sounds unworried. “I’ve got better golden oldies in my own files that you guys haven’t found,” he said. For his primary rivals, that’s tantalizing news.
