The Crusader; The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan

8/3/2019 The Crusader; The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan

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HOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint o St. Martins Press.

HE CRUSADER.Copyright 2012 by imothy Stanley. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States o

America. For inormation, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifh Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stanley, imothy.

Te crusader : the lie and tumultuous times o Pat Buchanan / imothy Stanley.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

ISBN 978-0-312-58174-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4128-0 (e-book)

1. Buchanan, Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938 2. United StatesPolitics and government20th

century. 3. ConservatismUnited StatesHistory20th century. 4. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard

Milhouse), 19141994Friends and associates. 5. Reagan, RonaldFriends and associates.

6. Political consultantsUnited StatesBiography. 7. Presidential candidatesUnited States

Biography. 8. JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. I. itle.

E840.8.B83S73 2012

973.927092dc23

[B] 2011035926

First Edition: February 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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Politics is biography. Many conservatives became conservatives by

reading Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman at college. Not so Pat Buchanan.

He learned his philosophy at the dinner table and in the playground,

and hefeltit beore he dened it and could put a name to it.Pats conservatism is ull o the sights and sounds o Washington, D.C., in

the 1950s, where he grew up. Reading his memoir Right from the Beginning,

you can almost smell the incense and home cooking; almost hear the school

bell call the boys to prayer and the sof click-click-clicko rosary beads as they

run through ngers at nighttime prayer. His was a nonpartisan, street-corner

conservatism. A conservatism that came, wrote Buchanan:

o absorbing the attitudes and values my mother learnt in a German

Catholic amily o eight, which she lef as a girl o seventeen to be-

come a nurse in southeast Washington. It was the conservatism

that came rom being raised alongside eight brothers and sisters by

a Scotch-Irish and Irish ather, an Al Smith Democrat, whose trin-

ity o political heroes consisted o Douglas MacArthur, General

Franco, and the junior Senator rom Wisconsin they called ailGunner Joe . . . Not until my twenties did I learn to conscript the

intellectual arguments o the sages to reinorce the embattled ar-

guments o the heart. When a boy approaches manhood, he gives

ONE

The Georgetown Gang


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12 T I M O T H Y S T A N L E Y

or denies his assent to what he has learned in home and school and

church . . . o me the lessons o those years, however uncomplicat-

edly they were taught, retain the ring o truth.1

Patrick Joseph Buchanan was born into a amily o Conederates, Catho-

lics, and rascals on All Souls Day, November 2, 1938.2 His ather, William

Baldwin Buchanan, was a successul accountant and his mother, Catherine

Elizabeth Crum, was a ormer nurse. Tey lived in Georgetown, a mixed Ger-

man and Irish neighborhood, anning out east and north rom Georgetown

University and Holy rinity Catholic parish. Pat had six brothers and two

sisters: William Baldwin Buchanan Jr. (born in 1936), Henry (Hank) Martin

(1937), Jimmy (1940), Kathleen Teresa (1941), Jonathan Edward (1947), An-

gela Marie (1948), Brian Damien (1950), and Tomas Matthew (1953). Te

youngest girl, Angela Marie, was nicknamed Baythe boys gibberish ver-

sion o baby.3Pat was called Paddy Joe and was a troublemaker rom birth.

When his older brothers were toddlers, on their knees at the oot o each cot

praying the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be, baby Pat wouldshout impatiently rom his pen, Holy Mary, Mother o God, pray or us sin-

ners now and at the hour o our death, amen! One night, the brothers had

enough o being upstaged. Afer lights out, Pop heard screams coming rom

their bedroom. He ran upstairs and ound Pat covered in milk and blood.

Afer he had interrupted his brothers prayers yet again, Hank had stolen Pats

glass milk bottle and smashed it over his head.4

Children in the 1940s and 1950s were expected to sustain a ew cuts andbruises. Te Buchanan boys played at war in the streets and Pop put up a

punching bag in the basement. Te boys hit the bag or our sessions each

week, 100 times with the lef, 100 times with the right, and 200 times with the

old one-two. Pop also set up a boxing ring in the hope that one o the boys

would get into a ght with a neighbor and he could reeree it. It was Hank, a

natural athlete, who delivered. One summers day, Pop Buchanan looked out

o the window and saw Hank being chased up the road by a bigger boy. Notve minutes had passed beore he had them both in the ring, the amily gath-

ered around, as he shouted Keep your right up! to his golden son. Hank was

doing badly until he delivered a hard right; his opponent cracked his head


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T H E C R U S A D E R 13

against an exposed iron girder and his knees bent. Hank saw the opening and

thumped him to the oor. Satised, ather declared a knockout. He proudly

christened his son Hammering Hank.5

Gangs o boys divided Georgetown into different neighborhoods. Tey

conducted wars or land and cigarette cards, wars ought with bows and ar-

rows and imitation guns wielded like sticks. In this urban jungle, inant Pat

was at a disadvantage. He was an odd-looking kidtall, gangly, and wall-

eyed (both his eyes stared away rom the nose at strange angles). Pat longed

to become a pilot, but was told early on that he would never make it because he

had trouble judging distances. Te doctors operated on his eyes and orced

him to wear enormous glasses.6He was a magnet or bullies. One day he was

assaulted by a boy three years older than he. Poor walleyed Pat ran screaming

to a kid called Jimmy Fegan. He told him what had happened and asked or

protection. Fegan went to see the culprit and messed him up with his belt. Te

kid got the message and backed off. Pat offered Fegan his loyalty in the never-

ending war or the streets. He later reected: I learned the importance o good

riends and the difference between being tough and being mean. Tat [bully]was mean, and Jimmy Fegan was truly tough. In politics, the same distinctions

exist.7

Like all good Catholics, Pat went to a parochial elementary school. In rstgrade, over a hundred children squeezed into two small rooms. All at-tended a daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.; rst conession came upon reaching the ageo reason in the second grade. When the boys entered the sixth grade, they

had the opportunity to be altar boys. Tis meant serving at three separate

weekday Masses, usually at 6:30 in the morning. On Sunday there were six

Masses to choose rom (6, 7, 8, 10, 11 a.m., and noon). Senior servers assisted

at Benediction on Monday night, when ve altar boys helped adore the Host.8

Little Pats world was ull o mystery and devotion.9One night, he was woken

by his ather and taken to the Sacred Heart Church on 16th Street. Tere theNocturnal Adoration Society met to pray beore the exposed Blessed Sacra-

ment in the early morning hours (because, according to the parish magazine,

so many o the worst sins are committed at night). Te protection that God


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offers is similar to that which I give you, Pop Buchanan whispered to his son.

Lie is ull o suffering and pain; that is as it should be. But with moral and

spiritual training every bit as rigorous as hitting the bag in the Buchanan

basement, walleyed Pat might just make it through.10

By the age o thirteen, most o the Buchanan boys were smoking in alleys

and ghting in the schoolyard. Tats when the nuns handed them over to the

Jesuits, lest their souls be lost orever. Te Jesuit-run high school, Gonzaga, was

housed in a squalid neighborhood. Tere was a whorehouse on the other side

o the street. During the Latin class, the boys translated Virgil while watching

the ladies across the road come out and take a cigarette between clients. Gon-

zaga was a good school but many o its pupils harbored a sense o exclusion, as

iin the words o one studentthey were being educated downstairs.11

Tat made the boys competitive and touchy. Pat was taught (to a very high

standard) logic and reason, but with the sole aim o deending the aith in ar-

gument with snobby Protestants.12

Te Gonzaga boys learned a strict interpretation o the Catholic dogma

that Outside the Church there is no salvation. Beyond the one Holy Catho-lic and Apostolic Church there was only Hell and death. Teir singular salva-

tion gave American Catholics a big stake in the Cold War.13Pat was taught

about the 1917 visions at Fatima, where the Virgin Mary appeared to three

Portuguese children and delivered three prophetic secrets. Te second secret

warned that Armageddon was inevitable unless Russia converted to Catholi-

cism. Entrusted with this insight into the will o God, American Catholics elt

a personal calling to ght Russian Bolshevism. Te persecution o the Churchin Eastern Europe and the end o missionary activity in Red China conrmed

the atheistic evil o communism. Many anticommunists were driven by real

politick, or a ear that the Soviets would crush temporal reedoms.14Te boys

at Gonzaga thought the Soviets were literally Satanic.

Tere was no legitimate alternative to the Gospel truth, only lies. While

the rest o American society struggled to deal with the tough questions posed

by sex, Beat poetry, rock and roll, sociology, psychiatry, James Dean, and theCivil Rights Movement, the Gonzaga boys had a magnetic sel-condence.

o emphasize the clarity o choice between Catholicism and everything else,

Pop Buchanan would grab one o his boys hands and hold a lighted match


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against the palm. He would say: See how that eels; now imagine that or all

eternity.15

In Pats world, pain was a given, maybe even a blessing. He learned to revere

St. Lawrence, who was roasted on a spit when he tried to bring the Good News

to the Romans. urn me over, he said to his executioners with a beatic smile.

Im done on this side.16

A

s Pat entered his adolescence in the 1950s, America was a land o plenty.

Te Greatest Generationthe men and women who lived through the

Depression and the Second World Warhad built their country into a super-

power. As the empires o Europe crumbled, only the Soviet Union could rival

its military and political clout. American products were in demand across the

world, and U.S. dollars ooded into Europe by way o Marshall Aid. Industry

boomed, churning out Chevys and Fords that ended up on the streets o Paris,

Havana, and okyo. Average wages were high and the economy could sustain

near-ull employment.17

Te cost o living was low enough that a single work-ing man, like Pop Buchanan, could keep a housewie and a amily o nine, his

grandmother, and an Arican American servant under one roo. In 1951, he

moved his clan to a huge house on Utah Avenue, where the boys had a whole

acre o garden to play in. Te Buchanan amilys rise rom the working class to

the middle class in one generation was emblematic o Americas leap to great-

ness.18

Te mansion on Utah Avenue wasnt big enough to contain the Buchananboys, though. As they grew bigger and tougher, they became a menace on the

streets. Maureen Dowd, who later worked as a journalist or Te New York

imes,lived in the neighborhood. Her brother, Michael, ed the night that he

was asked by the Buchanans to help throw a motorbike over a wall. Michael

recalled that We regarded the Buchanan boys with the same awe and ear

that Romanian peasants spoke o vampires. Maureen claimed that Pat and

his brawling brothers were the scourge o Washingtons Catholic community.Boys at parochial schools all over the city would huddle on Monday mornings

to whisper about the latest Buchanan hooliganism. Did you hear how they

crashed a party and beat everyone up? Did you hear how they stuffed a hapless


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drunk in Ocean City into a garbage can and rolled him into the sea? Te Fifies

were great or men like Buchanan, Dowd argued, because white boys were

gods. But or Arican Americans, girls, and weaklings, it was terriying. Te

Buchanans were titans. Some bullies are cowards, said Michael Dowd. But

the Buchanans were not. Tey were extremely intelligent and a little crazy.

You knew i you got in a ght with them, youd better be ready to ght.19

Te ghts were usually over one o two things: beer and girls. Steal a beer

and you were guaranteed a sucker punch. Steal a girl and you might never walk

again. By the time he was feen, Pat drank every Friday and Saturday night.

A six-pack would usually suffi ce; you could get hal a dozen Gunthers or a dollar.

Te bigger the boy, the bigger the intake. Te Kadow twins were notorious or

starting every evening with at least twelve cans inside each o them. At parties,

the Kadows and the Buchanans had chugging matches to see who could put

away the most. Keg parties were held most weeks. A keg could be purchased

or $14 and during the summer the Buchanans and Kadows would take over

Aerlie Playground and sit around in their underpants getting drunk. When

the police showed up they split into the trees.20

Drink, girls, and gangs all led to a nightly routine o stghts and bloody

noses.21A avorite pastime o the Buchanans and the Kadows was crashing

private parties. A network o inormants let them know when and where one

was taking place. Pat turned up on the doorstep at 8 p.m., dressed in a suit and

tie. Te ather o the house opened the door and Pat pretended to be a riend o

his son. In a Brahmin accent he implied that he attended one o the local pri-

vate schools (Landon or St. Albans) or was doing premed at Princeton. Bowledover, the ather welcomed him in. By the time Pat made it downstairs his cover

was blownbut it was too late. He opened up the basement doors and in

walked the Kadow brothers with a keg o beer over their shoulders, ollowed

by the entire pack o Buchanans. Te atmosphere grew tense; one by one the girls

lef. By midnight all that was lef was the cobelligerents. And then, recalled

Pat, the action would begin. By the time the police were called, the basement

was awash with booze and blood.22

It was impossible to run away rom a ght. I one boy was scrapping, then

everyone else had to get involvedwhether he was innocent or not. Buchanan

wrote: Tat somebody stood by riends in trouble . . . was, in those days,


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about the highest compliment you could pay; and virtually the worst term that

could be used about anyone was that he was chicken, someone who, when

ghting started, ran out on riends.23Loyalty was repaid with a night in a cell

or a heavy ne. But that was all right. Te keg parties and the policemans ba-

ton were all part o the chaotic cycle o sin and redemption. Te Buchanan

boys respected the cops who busted up their parties and chased them into the

trees, and the next morning the gang lined up outside the conessional to lay it

all beore God. Pat Buchanan was mischievous, but he was no anarchist.24

Adolescent Pats loyalty to the aith, amily, and the system that raised himmade him strong and sel-condent. But it sometimes lef him insensi-tive to the perspectives and eelings o others. Te act that Washington, D.C.,

was segregated passed him by. Pat wrote in his memoir: In the late 1940s, and

early 50s . . . race was never a preoccupation with us; we rarely thought about

it . . . Te Negroes o Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars,

movie houses, playgrounds, and churches; and we had ours. Neither commu-nity could have been called rich.25

Tere is anecdotal evidence that, like most kids o their generation, the

Buchanan boys were ethnic chauvinists.26Teir next-door neighbors on Utah

Avenue were a Jewish amily called the Bernsteins. One night in 1958, Bill and

Hank invited a crowd o local hoods to the Buchanan place to watch a ootball

game and get drunk. When it nished, they went out onto the ront lawn at

midnight and improvised their own game. Tey woke the Bernsteins up withtheir noise, so Harry Bernstein got into his car and drove up to the Buchanans

ront door to complain. Te boys swarmed around his vehicle and tried to tip

it over. Bernstein swore he heard cries o Get the Jews! He reversed home and

called the cops. When they showed up, Hank told them to get lost and slammed

the door in their ace. Later that night, beer bottles rained down on the Bern-

stein roofop.

Harrys daughter, Karen, couldnt conrm i her ather had correctly heardthe Buchanan boys say, Get the Jews!, but she was sure o one thing: Tey

didnt like the Jews. Teres no question about it. I dont think they woke up every

morning with a prayer, saying Tank you God or not making me a woman


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and a Jew, but they didnt like em. Tey would call us dirty Jew. I dont neces-

sarily know that Pat Buchanan himsel said those words . . . He was thirteen

years older than me. It was just understood how the Buchanans elt about us.

Years later, Pat said this was nonsense. He pointed out that his ather had

two Jewish clients who were treated like amily; one attended Pats wedding.

And when Bay became U.S. reasurer, she mailed the Bernsteins a commemo-

rative dollar. Karen conceded that the Bernstein boys gave as good as they got

with ethnic jibes and ghts: in one spat the Buchanans threw watermelon

rinds over the garden wall, and the Bernsteins sprayed seltzer water back. 27

Whatever the truth about his racial views, throughout his career Pat re-

used to express guilt or any offense he mayhave caused minorities. Racism

is the obsessive preoccupation with the subject o race, he wrote in his mem-

oir. Te racist sees everything in lie, education and politics, rom the stand-

point o race. Pat was satised that this denition didnt describe him. Te

Buchanan amily didnt wear white robes and burn crosses, so what was there

to apologize or? Lie in segregated Washington bred in Pat Buchanan a atal

blind spot on race.28

Pats earliest political inuence was his ather. Pop Buchanan told his sonthat he used to be a Democrat, but that the Democrats had let him downon the biggest issue o the day: communism.29One o Pops heroes was Gen.

Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator. Pop was urious with how American

liberals had joined orces with Marxists to try to overthrow him. Te generalhad kicked the Reds out o Spain and, despite whatever his secret police may

have done, he was still a riend to the Catholic Church. Only a chicken

wouldnt support a riend in a ght, said Pop.

Many parts o the Democratic Party and the American lef supported the

Spanish republican opposition to Francothe popular ront alliance o liber-

als, anarchists, and communists. American sympathizers ignored reports o

republican atrocities against the Church that occurred during the SpanishCivil War. But Gonzaga was awash with stories o relics, churches, and mon-

asteries being looted and deled. Tousands o clergy were murdered. Nuns

were raped. In Ciudad Real, a priest was castrated and suffocated with his own


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sexual organs. Te parish priest o Navalmoral was put through a parody o the

Crucixionwhipped and crowned with thornsand then shot. Synagogues

were burned down as well. o the Buchanans, the Spanish republicans were

devils and Franco a veritable St. Michael. Tey struggled to understand why

Roosevelt gave away so much land to the communist monsters at Yalta, and

why ruman ailed to stop China going Red in 1949. Either these men were

ools or complicit.30

Pop Buchanan said that the one man in politics who understood the prob-

lem was Republican senator Joe McCarthy. On February 9, 1950, McCarthy

gave a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, that claimed to expose the extent o

the Marxist inltration o American society. Holding a piece o paper alof, he

said: Te State Department is inested with communists. I have here in my

hand a list o 205 . . . names that were made known to the Secretary o State as

being members o the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working

and shaping policy in the State Department. Te accusation rang true with a

public that was terried by Soviet expansion overseas. Committees to investigate

un-American activities sprang up across the country. In the Senate, McCarthyand his allies tore into those accused o aiding and abetting the enemy. Some

accusations were hysterical, some unveiled genuine security threats.31

eenage Pat Buchanan saw spies everywhere. He decided that the Democratic

administration o Harry ruman was sof and inltrated by traitors. News

o atrocities in Korea, where Americans were ghting the communists or

control o the country, upset him. I was reading horrible reports o American

trucks driving over the bodies o wounded American troops . . . Why doesntruman drop the atomic bomb on the attacking Chinese armies who are

killing thousands o Americans? I recall asking mysel. Five years beore, he

had dropped it on two deenseless Japanese cities . . . Maybe Pop is right about

ruman, I concluded.32American voters agreed. Korea and McCarthy helped

elect the Republican ticket o Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon in

1952.33

McCarthys reputation today is poor. He picked a ght with the army andwas censured in the Senate. His career aded and he died o an alcohol-related

illness in 1957.34But the Buchanans adored Joe McCarthy. What mattered to

them, said Pat, was not precisely what he said, but what they understood


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him to be saying. Tey understood him to be saying that the American

establishmentboth Democrat and Republicanhad betrayed the men who

ought at Normandy and Iwo Jima. Te establishment seemed to have handed

a third o the world over to communism and created cozy jobs or themselves

in a massive bureaucracy that was out o touch with the concerns o ordinary

Americans. McCarthy was a populist. His ans raged against the domination

o society by privileged elites. Like all populists, he proposed simple solutions

to complex problemssolutions that typically involved toppling the power-

ul. Every question could be answered by trusting the people. As Tomas Je-

erson wrote: A little rebellion now and again is a good thing.35

Te Buchanans held strong opinions on most subjects but they couldnt

vote. Washington, D.C., only permitted voting in presidential elections in

1961 and the mayor was appointed. Tere was no local politics. Bay recalled:

Our local newspaper was Te Washington Post and the headlines were all

national. So we didnt talk about stuff like the little leagues. Foreign policy and

communism were local politics to us . . . I guess thats why it mattered so

much. National politics was debated at the dinner table. Bays place was be-side her mother and she watched in awe as her brothers shouted each other

down, her ather reereeing rom the sidelines.36

Pat recalled: Every one o us was opinionated and we were all taught not

to back down. Whatever our positions lost in logic might be recovered in invec-

tive. I you never quit an argument, presumably you never lost. o make onesel

heard as the argument got intense, we got louder and louder. Te only one who

could halt the uproar was my ather.37

It was Crossre in training, observed Bay, although she elt it did have

some intellectual value. Everything you said was torn apart, so you had to

be careul about what you said. You needed to have acts to back up a point.

No one would let you get away with saying something stupid that couldnt be

supported . . . I went to college and was surprised to meet liberals who couldnt

sustain an argument. Everything we believed had run the test o that dinner

table.38

The Crusader; The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan

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