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In Buchanan's world view, that means no more International Monetary Fund, no more World Bank loans, no more Mexican bailouts. And his audience responds with cheers; Michael Shea, an electronics engineer, even bought his own copy of the huge General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. "Those people are Democrats--they're union people," Buchanan says of the Pennsylvania crowd. "Some of them came up to me and said, 'I've never voted Republican, I've never been to a Republican gathering. But I'm with you.'"
International organizations, especially the U.N., come in for special vitriol, since they act as such handy substitutes for an overall sense of powerlessness, the ceding of sovereignty. Buchanan often reminds audiences of the 15 Americans killed by friendly fire while on patrol protecting the Kurds in northern Iraq. "The Vice President of the U.S. issued a formal statement," Buchanan declares with quiet fury. "He said the parents of these young Americans can be proud they died in the service"--and then he pauses--"of the U.N." After the moans and boos of the crowd subside, he continues: "I tell you, when I get to that Oval Office, never again will young Americans be sent into battle except under American officers and under the American flag."
The secret of Buchanan's appeal is not just that he has identified this sense of helplessness but also that he has grafted it onto his trademark message of God, country, family and faith; in this way he is engaged in a neat bit of political matchmaking between the economic populists and the social conservatives. Many of those drawn to his rally are responding to the moral positions Buchanan staked out in 1992, when he famously declared that "in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton and Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side." He plays to the family-values partisans, the isolationists, the creationists and the gun owners, and to the Perotistas who would vote for anyone promising to turn Washington on its head. "I can bring them home," he declared last week of the rebel Perot supporters, "because I'm not part of the system."
Taken separately, each group has many reasons not to vote for the same person. Economic conservatives often have libertarian views about government intervention in personal lives. Many antiabortion advocates and pro-family conservatives benefit from the types of government programs a fiscal conservative like Buchanan would eliminate. Nonetheless, they all seem to believe fervently in Buchanan, perhaps because he seems to believe so fervently in what he says. He is not the product of a pollster or a focus group. And that sometimes gets him into trouble as well.