Is Donald J. Trump Channeling Pat Buchanan?

Cliches are sometimes unavoidable (hindsight is 20/20), but then so is history – it provides clarity when obfuscation is the order of the day. It seems fitting to say that in some respects we have been here before. Earlier it was with one who some say was a pioneer and in some respects a forerunner to Trump – Patrick Joseph Buchanan.

The author, advisor to Nixon, Ford, and Reagan and TV commentator pursued a political agenda that still resonates today among conservative American minds.

High on his list of priorities for America was a moratorium on unlimited immigration, including a wall along the southern border. He sought to rescind unfair trade agreements and reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing. Buchanan cautioned Americans against foreign interventions and warned that American culture was slipping away. He decried as un-American a “rigged” political system with a voice which produced a groundswell shaking Republican elites. And he was denounced (at the time) by the future 45th President of the United States — Donald J. Trump.

In 1999, the Reform Party in America had just been created from what remained of Ross Perot’s two efforts for the White House. Pat Buchanan was about to campaign under that aegis for his third presidential run in a decade. Contrary to his ‘92 and ‘96 bids, Buchanan arrived for his 1999 presidential campaign as a serious contender. It was assumed he’d give “the second Bush” a serious run. (READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: Is ‘Man the Measure’? From Where Does Our Freedom Come?)

But the Republicans were putting together something much stronger than what Buchanan had experienced before. It quickly became apparent; the contest was being orchestrated against him.

Sound familiar?

Buchanan realized his dilemma. He could surrender, like others before him; he could against all odds wage a principled but “rigged” battle against the second Bush. Or he could embrace America’s newest electoral entity — the Reform Party.

“The day of the outsider is over in the Beltway parties,” Buchanan said. “The money men have seen to that. Never again will our political establishment permit a dissident to come as close to capturing a nomination as we did in 1996. They have rearranged the primary schedules and rigged the game to protect the party favorites.”

Buchanan’s new book at the time was met with both enthusiasm and no small degree of trepidation. A Republic, Not an Empire, amounted to a concerted exposition against foreign entanglements — especially military interventions. The “year 1989 was the American moment,” he writes, “but such moments never last.”

Buchanan added, “It is time to let go of empire.” He castigated the establishment (including the military industrial complex) by reconsidering America’s past military ventures. Buchanan showed that “America’s latest commitments were a dramatic break with the most cherished and prudent traditions of American foreign policy. Washington’s Farewell Address was front and center in this story.”

The political commentator turned savvy politician fiercely resisted the Washington establishment by challenging not only the elites of the Republican Party but the scion of a former president from its ranks. He captured the fear and frustration of the latter couching his 1992 campaign as “a culture war … a struggle for the soul of America.” But he also garnered the attention and wrath of a former president and his son, who feared that the adage “like father like son” would eventuate politically.

It has been rumored that within the Bush family, itself, an uneasiness existed — if Perot cost the father a second term, would Buchanan now deny the son his first?

His solution to America’s problems would be the basis for three back-to-back runs for the White House. America, he said, needs a “new nationalism” that focuses on “forgotten Americans” left behind by unfair trade agreements, detrimental immigration policies, and foreign policy military incursions. The three-time presidential hopeful argued that “with the collapse of the Soviet empire, Europe, Japan, and South Korea were now more than capable of providing for their own defense.” America should no longer carry the burden of their defense.

The ideas which Buchanan employed were and remain a function of his political ideology: nationalist, noninterventionist, contra open-border immigration, anti-establishment, against unfair trade practices.

In a like manner the former president articulates his vision for America in ways that may strike a chord with the past, but that’s only because things haven’t changed much. The system doesn’t permit that. And the issues which need addressing are similar to those of the past. (READ MORE: The Enduring Ronald Reagan)

Yet, in considering the past, it is not Pat Buchanan who should garner our attention when considering the politics of Donald Trump today.

Yes, like Buchanan, he is nationalist, non-interventionist, contra open-border immigration, anti-establishment, and against unfair trade practices.

But Donald Trump is not constrained by those political characteristics; in fact, it was Pat Buchanan who has referred to the former president as the “heir to Reagan.”

The similarities are not insignificant. The two former presidents were outsiders, not career politicians. Reagan a successful actor in Democrat Hollywood — Trump, a real estate developer from Queens (a distinctly Democrat city). Both took on the Washington establishment of their day and left their imprimatur upon it.

Lest we forget history — let’s “give credit where credit is due.” While it is true that “Make America First Again” started with Buchanan in the ‘90s, it was Ronald Reagan who printed “Let’s Make America Great Again” on millions of buttons and posters in his landslide victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Like Ronald Reagan, Trump was regarded in Washington with derision, bordering on resentment for having the audacity to be President in “their city” and contempt for surviving their ridicule (in spite of assassination attempts.)

Reagan, like Trump, also admonished America that a country that can’t control its borders isn’t really a country any more. Many deride Reagan for signing the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which sparked the decades-long flow of immigrants into the U.S.

But no one doubts Reagan’s sincere belief in the efficacy of the employer sanctions he insisted be written into the bill. He couldn’t have known at that time of the overwhelming power of the metastasized civil rights regime, or that in its name the courts would step in to obstruct enforcement of those provisions.

Reagan and his “heir apparent” subscribe to federalism and state’s rights, preferring to send power and authority back to the people. A Pro-life commitment is tangible in each president’s tenure in office, with Trump appointing three of the justices who made possible the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And both articulate libertarian policies which focus on individual freedom, exemplified by both presidents’ record of deregulation.

Tax cuts are and were important to both presidents. For Reagan, they were employed to mitigate our dependence on government and kickstart a moribund economy. For Trump, they incentivized businesses and helped a beleaguered middle-class. Necessary programs like Medicare and Social Security were never in jeopardy.

Finally — and this is where the difference between Trump and Buchanan are most apparent — both presidents shared a commitment to Israel, embracing the Strategic Defense Initiative as now embodied by Israel’s Iron Dome Anti-Missile Defense System. Reagan became politically conscious at the time the Jewish state was created in 1948 and felt a warmth toward it stemming from Truman’s embrace of the embattled fledgling democracy. For Reagan, Israel was a stalwart anti-communist ally in a dangerous region.

Moreover, Israel now rejoices in Trump’s having moved the U.S. Embassy to its capital city of Jerusalem, as well as in America’s recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. Several Muslim countries in the region have begun “normalizing” relations with the Jewish State thanks to Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords initiative.

Those searching for Pat Buchanan’s influence on Trump and the Republican party will not find it in Buchanan’s animus toward the State of Israel. Republicans are now overwhelmingly pro-Israel and feel a kinship with Israel’s Likud party. Few (if any) Republicans would say today that the problems in the Middle-East are the fault of “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States,” as Buchanan did in 1990.

But in truth, the calls from both Reagan and Buchanan for Americans to “take back America” from those who care only for themselves — and not America or Americans — continues to ring true on the lips of Donald Trump.

Buchanan, now 85, looks back on a life replete with victories for many of the beliefs he thought redounded to America’s best interest. For a long period many thought these beliefs were at risk of being forgotten — but that was before Donald Joseph Trump became the 45th President of the United States.

For all of his influence, Buchanan himself now views Donald Trump as “the future of the Republican Party,” and he acknowledges that Trump possesses attributes that he himself did not. “Trump is sui generis, unlike any candidate of recent times,” writes the retired Buchanan. “And his success is attributable not only to his stance on issues, but to his persona, his defiance of political correctness … charging in frontally where others refuse to tread.”

High praise from an influential elder statesman.

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