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That consensus has imploded with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now that the Red Menace is gone, so-called paleoconservatives like Buchanan see no justification for vigorous American involvement abroad. Like many liberals -- and most of the Democratic presidential candidates -- Buchanan initially opposed Bush's aggressive response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. He contended that U.S. security interests defined only in the most narrow sense warranted going to war. Meanwhile some Democrats are arguing that all could be made well at home if the U.S. would only adopt a more protectionist trade policy, shielding American firms from foreign competition.
New Hampshire, hit harder than most areas by the recession, is an excellent place to make that case -- especially since the state's G.O.P. has a strong right-wing faction that has long distrusted Bush. Both moderate and conservative New Hampshire Republicans, who rescued Bush's faltering nomination campaign in 1988, now feel resentful and abandoned. In that contest Bush vowed not to raise taxes, a pledge he broke in agreeing to the 1990 deficit-reduction deal. Buchanan slams the President on that issue in every speech.
Buchanan, at minimum, can embarrass Bush by harping on the President's seeming indifference to the nation's domestic problems. Bush's obsession with foreign affairs would have caused him little political grief had the recession been short and shallow. But the downturn's severity, together with Bush's slowness in taking steps to combat it, have left him open to the charge that his attention begins at the ocean's edge. The President betrayed his worries about such attacks last week when he responded to Buchanan's charges, "We must not pull back into some isolationist sphere, listening to this sirens' call of America first." Protectionism, Bush said, will only "shrink markets and throw people out of work."
The President is right. Despite the $66 billion trade deficit, U.S. exports have been growing, in constant dollars, as a proportion of the gross national product. Says Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International: "A country that exports 15% of its GNP cannot turn its back on the world economy and hope to prosper." But Bush only grudgingly and recently has begun to consider measures to make the U.S. more competitive. His muzzy pronouncements about creating a new world order fail to address the need to redirect the energies formerly focused on the cold war to long-term economic revival.
Even if Buchanan's underfinanced campaign flops early, Democrats will continue to bash Bush for his preoccupation with foreign affairs. Well before the plunge in Bush's poll ratings lured Buchanan into the race, some Democrats were honing variations on isolationist and protectionist themes. Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder came to New Hampshire in August to tout what he calls a "Put-America-First Initiative." He echoes Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who has stridently attacked Bush for his foreign travels, lambasted the free-trade treaty that the Administration is negotiating with Mexico and carped about foreign aid. While insisting that he is neither an isolationist nor a protectionist, Harkin often sounds like both. When he declared his candidacy, he spoke approvingly of Abraham Lincoln's decision to buy expensive railway track from domestic foundries rather than import cheaper supplies from Britain.