(3 of 7)
In one sense this target practice is nothing new: politicians have been using symbolic demons as a rhetorical device since the time of ancient Greece. But in recent elections the rules have changed. The disappearance of a cold war enemy invites politicians to take aim at internal targets that were once protected by the rules of patriotism. The industrial giants that built the arsenal of democracy are no longer sacred: What was good for General Motors was good for America--until GM began shipping jobs to Mexico. Psychologists have encouraged the trend by demonstrating that voters retain negative messages four to six times as readily as positive ones.
So when the economy turned pitiless and social disputes raged, politicians scrambled to find new enemies. In many ways, they are still searching, but most of the emblems of blame have one thing in common: they are surrogates for the sense of economic and cultural uncertainty that pervades modern life in America. "The American people see that the country they grew up in and loved is slipping away," Buchanan explains. "There's a large gut sense of economic insecurity that is pervasive in the middle class." He hears it from parents wondering how they will possibly manage to send their children to college; from mothers who would rather not go back to work but feel they have no choice; from workers laid off by downsizing corporations or manufacturers who have moved jobs overseas.
At a glance, Buchanan seems like an improbable champion. Born in Washington, the son of an accountant, he has spent most of his life in the capital, living beside and preaching to the rich and powerful, and eventually becoming both himself. Michigan voters in 1992 were put off by his references to Cadillacs as "lemons" and by the fact that he drove a Mercedes (he has since sold it). Even when he trades his dark blue suits for a sweater and chinos, he has the bearing of a man in a tie.
BUT WHEN HE STARTS TO TALK about economic treachery, Buchanan speaks with the passion of the converted; those who have known him awhile can even recall his epiphany. It came in 1991, when he was campaigning in New Hampshire and visited a Groveton paper mill where laid-off workers were standing in line for their Christmas turkeys. "This fellow looks in my eyes," he remembers, "and says, 'Save our jobs.' Parts of their paper mill are closing down, and then you go down to Manchester and you read about how the Export-Import Bank is financing a new paper mill in Mexico. And you ask yourself, What are we doing to our fellow countrymen here?" Buchanan has no illusions about what the future holds for high-school-educated, semiliterate factory workers. "You look at those fellows, and you realize they aren't going to be making computers. They're about my age. They're the type of fellows I played ball with. And these guys' lives are never going to be as good as they are now." And for some reason, Buchanan marvels, his Republican rivals don't grasp any of this. "This is what gets me about my Republican friends," he says. "It's not just that they disparage me. They will not even recognize what is going on in their own country."