Pat Buchanan

American right-wing politician with inflammatory rhetoric. He announced his candidacy for U.S. President on 10 October 1991 at Concord, MA. His run for office in 1992 and 1996 hobbled Republican front-runners by splitting the vote. Formerly a journalist, then speechwriter in the Nixon White House, he criticizes and mocks sensitive issues. Buchanan was a rabble-rouser in his "America first" campaign, winning by preaching to fears no one else had the courage to name, sounding fire bells for the loss of the America in which he was raised. America listens to his incendiary language and extreme views, bemoaning the specter of corporate downsizing and the decline of the once traditional family. Disregarding endorsements, he says, "I want to win by myself."

Selecting specific enemies to match the state in which he's campaigning, he refers to a long list: Mexican immigrants, the U.N., the World Trade Organization, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto, supply-side theorists, K Street lawyers and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In Arizona he denounced Mexican illegals and championed a law to make English the official language. In the Bible belt South, he stressed opposition to abortion, affirmative action and "corporate butchers" in the ranks of textile executives.

Buchanan apprenticed with Richard Nixon, traveling with him as an aide-de-camp and speechwriter during the '60s. He was at Spiro Agnew's side during the tumultuous midterm elections of 1970 and with Nixon again in 1972. He learned timing and tactics. The tag line in his ads summarizes his appeal: "He says what he means and he means what he says."

Raised in Washington, he has left the area only twice; first for a year at Columbia journalism school, then four years in the early '60s when he took nasty FBI leaks about the private life of Dr. Martin Luther King and turned them into incendiary editorials for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat paper.