the Greater Nomadic Council

Review: Patrick J. Buchanan - "Where the Right Went Wrong"

Politics makes strange bedfellows. As a teenager and young adult watching Pat (now, apparently, Patrick J.) Buchanan's various runs for President, my instincts led me to conclude that he was pretty much a racist and a bible-beater, albeit wearing a better suit than I was used to on his kind. But with the recent rise to power (and the swiftly approaching hilarious implosion) of neoconservatism, Buchanan has shifted his focus from breathing fire about immigration to championing a broader "traditional" conservatism in opposition to what he sees as the neocon's co-optation of the Republican power base. Just as some of my liberal friends have recently been heard conceding that Bush I was "not so bad," the Buchanan of Where the Right Went Wrong comes across as pretty darn sensible in this day and age, even when he's not directly attacking the administration that's done so much to make him look good.

For a short book (about 225 pages), Right is incredibly broad in its analysis, and to be honest Bucky doesn't quite succeed in drawing each and every element of his argument together into a tight weave. Nearly every page, though, shines with nuggets of insight on the current world situation. What surprised me most was the level of useful historical background provided – I learned more about Islam, terrorism, the IMF, China, and judicial activism than I think I have from any other single source (though admittedly that's not saying much). All of this history is marshaled in a critique that lambasts those he describes as "Conservative Impersonators," "Hijackers of America Foreign Policy" who are committing "Economic Treason" (all chapter titles). He contrasts the interventionist, nation-building, deficit-spending neocons with the Goldwater/Reaganite conservatism that formed him, and which he sees as the true faith. The Bush/Neocon axis, in contrast, are to him appeasers on the social front and heretics on economic, domestic, and international policy, whose decisions are based not on the self-interested pragmatism of the true conservative but on the utopian vision of a global "democratic empire" in which American political values will be universal, and American superiority will be unchallengeable. In this scheme, as Buchanan points out, the Iraq war is not a one-time misstep, but part of an overall policy of continued global military engagement. This policy has little to do with the war on terror, as it was hatched in neocon policy institutes and then outlined in documents by Rumsfeld and Cheney years before 9/11.

Lefties will draw great satisfaction (and ammunition) from the sections of the book that draw a bead on Bush II. On Bush's assertion that Islamic terrorists attacked us because "They hate our freedom," Buchanan comments that "these answers insult the intelligence of second graders." But Right isn't just a "see, even his own guy hates him" book – Buchanan contributes critique that is different from the standard Left line, and therefore both enlightening and challenging. He paints Il Buche as a puppet more effectively than most leftists have been able to, by casting William Kristol and Ariel Sharon in the role of puppeteers rather than Dick Cheney and Haliburton. He gutpunches Bush on the current budget deficit, not by pointing to Clinton's past fiduciary glories, but by pointing out that most recent increases in spending have not been in military or security categories. He deconstructs Bush's "good vs. evil" rhetoric by laying out all of America's Middle East interventions – but he avoids the accusations of anti-Americanism so often lobbed at liberals by encouraging disengagement not on moral grounds, but on grounds of national self-interest. Buchanan asks, in a phrase whose mix of exasperation and hopelessness is representative, whether "a permanent imperial presence in that part of the world [is] worth the price of repeated acts of terrorism against us"?

I wasn't old enough in the Reagan, much less Goldwater, eras to bring much real historical perspective to bear here. But the ingredient of Buchanan's analysis that seems most missing from that of the neocons is, quite simply, an ongoing engagement with reality. While Grover Norquist seeks to convince the nation that we are in a "War on Terror," Buchanan unflinchingly informs us that a war on terrorism is unwinnable, because in this case "the enemy is a cause, a movement, an idea." He also delves into the semiotic depth of the term "terror," pointing out that "governments applied the label 'terrorists' to criminalize insurgents and justify a refusal to address their demands," and citing the many instances in which governments have engaged in terrorism by any other name. Buchanan's call for a realpolitik sometimes goes to far, as when he encourages cooperation with friendly despots when it is in the United States' interest, but it is certainly preferable to castles in the sand.

Far less comfortably for leftists, Buchanan states that our enemy, instead of terrorism, is 'militant Islam'. His historical recounting of the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire has undoubtedly been bested elsewhere, but it is enough to make the point that many have agreed on – that, in addition to the more immediate indignity of Western imperialism, it is the preserved memory of the Arab world's past glory that fuels the resentment of some of its citizens towards the West. But he does not commit the great fallacy of blaming the current balance of power on Islam itself, asking, "How can Islam be the cause of the decline of that world, when Islam was, for a thousand years, the faith that sustained the most advanced culture and civilization on earth?" The current breed of Islamists, he seems to argue, are not the result of Islam acting on geopolitics, but vice versa.

There are, inevitably, moments present (perhaps even intended) to remind liberals that Patrick J. isn't our new, slightly churlish but lovably useful sidekick. When he lists "women's liberation" alongside sex and drugs as culprits in the decline of American cultural stability, or when he flatly endorses cooperation with brutal dictators who share our goals, we are reminded of what was not to love about Reagan. His sorrowful and sharp section on the folly of judicial activism devolves rather pitifully into a screed against the separation of church and state, and against equal rights for homosexuals. In his recitation of anti-Keynesian dogma and lionization of the past over the present, Buchanan does overlook a few inconvenient facts – for example, that Reagan ran record deficits in peacetime.

These deficits, as well as more recent ones, lie at the heart of the most frightening portion of the book, in which Buchanan chooses to acknowledge the twin 900 pound gorillas in the room – America's ballooning trade and budget deficits. His searing critique of globalization and its proponents is full of juicy tidbits ripe for plucking by the street-protest set (most dramatically, the fact that the International Monetary Fund was founded in the 1940's by Harry Dexter, a Soviet spy), but the argument is miles different. Most leftists agree with free trade in principle, but abhor the working conditions of the global workforce and seek to improve them through protest and direct action. The forces of economics, after all, will ultimately push global wages to a state of equilibrium, and how is it that U.S. workers deserve wages any better than those of their international counterparts? But Buchanan points out the flaw in this reasoning – that those who implore our trading partners to raise their standards of worker pay and treatment are whistling Dixie, and that globalization is intended by its architects not to raise the wretched of the earth, but to offer them up to the machinations of international capital. With good work safety standards, pay rates, and representative government already established in the U.S., good liberals must ask themselves why it advances our dearest values to allow U.S. companies to transplant jobs to places where workers are abused and denied their freedoms. Does it not, after all, make the most sense to defend the justice we have?

Buchanan provides the conservative bookend to this question by arguing that trade liberalization, more than just reinforcing despotism abroad, is destabilizing our own republic. The chilling conclusion of Where the Right Went Wrong outlines the "perfect storm" that he sees on the economic horizon as a result, in large part, of continued neoconservative profligacy. In this scenario, the entry of the baby boom generation into the pool of social security recipients eliminates the possibility of a balanced budget for the foreseeable future. The continuing trade deficit results in majority foreign ownership of American assets. The departure of heavy industry erodes the American economic base. Falling revenue and rising debt make America a less and less worthy credit risk, and our Asian bondholders begin to call in their principal. You can perhaps imagine how things go from their – and all of this, Buchanan asserts, is quite likely to happen in the next fifty years unless serious measures are taken to stop the bleeding.

This sort of reasoning and forethought, not the cowboyish declarations and imperialist fever dreams of the neocons, represent the best that conservatism has to offer the political dialogue. While leftists should have better things to do than work, or even hope, for a Reaganite restoration, many signs point to a shakeup of some sort on the Republican horizon. The political debt for Iraq must be paid, and Buchanan's convincing case for the culpability of the Weekly Standard set is part of a chorus emerging in recent months. It seems likely it will become the standard line used by Republicans to distance themselves from the debacle – "We've been hijacked!" However, Buchanan also points out why even such a public reversal would be unlikely to be accompanied by a genuine policy reversal – quite simply, true economic conservatism is no longer politically popular. Small-scale pork barrel has long since crossed the aisle, but with huge social programs like No Child Left Behind and programs to promote marriage, the Bush administration has crossed the Rubicon, joining with the left to declare that, rather than being the problem, government is, indeed, the solution. Such a declaration having been made, it will be difficult for any true fiscal conservatism to rise again in the Republican Party, since, with the Laffer Curve still taken as gospel, an end to relentless and foolish Republican tax cuts is nowhere in sight.

Dedicated leftists should have a well-established disdain for George W. Bush, but this book will supplement and deepen it – and it will also provide all that a true conservative should ever need to feed a similar, and perhaps even more bitter, ire.