Divided we fall

National Review, March 30, 1992

NATIONAL REVIEW'S objectives in giving Pat Buchanan a qualified endorsement in the early primaries have been achieved to a degree far greater than we could have expected. President Bush has already fired the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, embraced voluntary school prayer, and disavowed the 1990 budget deal. None of these gains would have been achieved without Mr. Buchanan's candidacy. Conservatives have that to thank him for.

The Buchanan candidacy has also been a blessing, albeit in disguise, for the Republican Party. It woke up a White House immured in a complacency that, if undisturbed, would have invited defeat in November. Meanwhile, Mr. Buchanan gave discontented voters a safe haven in the Republican column. Some of those voters were independents, some Reagan Democrats who might otherwise have returned to their former allegiance. This was an important service to the Republicans because voting Democratic is insidious: like adultery, the first time you feel terribly guilty, but it gets progressively easier.

Finally, Mr. Buchanan deserves the gratitude of society for dispatching David Duke into the outer darkness of single-digit support. Mr. Duke was promoted as a political force by Mr. Bush when he handed him the important quota issue by signing the civil-rights compromise on Senator Kennedy's terms. Without Mr. Buchanan in the field, Mr. Duke would have been the sole repository of protest votes. His success would have discredited conservative issues and set off a national liberal talk-in on the unregenerate racism of American society. As it is, he has been confined to the racist fringe.

After Super Tuesday, however, Mr. Buchanan confronts a difficulty earlier than he had expected. He has done both too well and not well enough. He cannot prevent Mr. Bush's renomination, but he can continue to win thirtysomething per cent of the vote in most remaining primaries and might even score upsets in such states as Michigan or even California (where Governor Pete Wilson's inept tax hike has discredited moderate Republicans). But a Republican duel all the way to the convention would weaken President Bush to the point where he might be vulnerable to almost any Democratic candidate in November. That would be in the interests of no one on the Right-including Mr. Buchanan, who would be bitterly resented by party regulars for contributing to defeat.

Yet there seems to be almost a conspiracy to keep Mr. Buchanan in the race. His occasional coded offers to withdraw have been ignored and, as William McGurn points out on page 18, even rebuffed with attacks that provoke him to keep fighting. Those attacks come from three quarters. First, there are those, such as the 13 signatories of the letter in our last issue, who believe Mr. Buchanan to be antiSemitic and thus unworthy of any support, however qualified. Second, there are Bush campaign officials anxious to discredit an opponent they cannot be sure of dispatching. And, third, there are conservative leaders who wish to squash now any prospect of Mr. Buchanan's ascendancy in the conservative movement in 1996. Some of these leaders may be inspired by considerations of personal rivalry; but some undoubtedly harbor the genuine conviction that Mr. Buchanan's conservatism is too narrow, exclusive, and ungenerous to be the conservatism of tomorrow.

LET US ADDRESS these objections in order. NATIONAL REVIEW has consistently taken the view that Mr. Buchanan, though not himself anti-Semitic, has nonetheless said things that have given rise to suspicion among reasonable people that he is. We have therefore called on him to reflect on his past statements, to retract the relevant phrases, and to apologize to those he has offended by them, even if he is conscious of no ill-feeling or wrongdoing on his part.

Mr. Buchanan in turn is entitled to evidence that a retraction and apology would be heeded sympathetically by serious conservatives and not used to condemn him further. The relentless hostility of some critics will hardly encourage him in that expectation. He may also wonder if any such apology would be reported without bias, since the media, having characterized him as a candidate mired in controversy, have successively played down his condemnation of David Duke, his appeal to racists and bigots not to vote for him, and his statement on the Middle East guaranteeing Israel's security and confining Palestinians to a small, demilitarized rump state.

These are not trivial objections. But they are outweighed by other factors. His conservative critics are in general men of goodwill. Continued silence on his part will imply consent to the allegations against him, serving to justify his critics and to undermine his defenders. And given the ambiguity of the case against him, his failure to apologize is now the main support for the indictment. So whether Mr. Buchanan's critics will seem justified in their suspicion is now largely up to him. We believe not, but he may prove us wrong.

The criticisms by Republican Party managers, being entirely tactical, are easier to answer. If they believe Mr. Buchanan will depart the field in good time, they will keep their criticisms impersonal in order not to devalue the support that he might give the President at and after the convention. If not, they will unleash Mr. Bush's bloodthirstiest surrogates. How can this second course be avoided? Let us suggest three steps. Rich Bond, RNC chairman, should apologize to Mr. Buchanan for comparing him to David Duke-and Mr. Buchanan should accept the apology. Then, after the next primary in which Mr. Buchanan does well, Mr. Bush's campaign managers should pay a few conventional tributes to his fighting performance. And they should then open negotiations with Miss Bay Buchanan on exactly how, when, where, and with what degree of enthusiasm Mr. Bush and Mr. Buchanan will shake hands.