Pat Buchanan

Well, when I went back to school and did all this nonsense, I did feel like I had to take a shower every night when I got back from classes.

But my background is I was a chair in Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign, so I'm pretty much coming from the right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, John Bolton, Pat Buchanan.

Wow.

Jeb Bush, not that he's doing much of anything, but Mark Carney, dangerous banker.

They'd never really trusted the faux-Texan Bush anyway, but he had said, read my lips, and they believed him.

But it turned out he had no lips! Now, when coupled with Bush's lukewarm support of the evangelical wing of the Republican Party and his running mate's inability to spell the word potato, it all prompted a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, which he beat back easily.

However, some of the GOP voter base, especially evangelical Christians, stayed home on election day.

Then there was also a third party candidate, Texas billionaire and Muppet impersonator H. Ross Perot, who won 19% of the vote, the best third party performance since Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

And we know he was actually kind of a neocon, you know, basically.

But on firing line, we were first introduced to people like Patrick J. Buchanan in the 1970s when Buchanan was a young guy.

So I was exposed to, you know, this, you know, the conservative thought that, even in my teen years, 1970s.

But yeah, Toffler's a future shock.

And George W. Bush, who is a Republican and wants to cut taxes anyway and feels that way anyway, probably thinks, you know, he's got a kind of [laughs] child's duty to do what his father didn't do, and he wants to cut his taxes.

But I think 9/11 is the shock that increases the spending along with the tax cuts and against the backdrop, Anthony, of a 2000 election where those people from the outside, Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, who we mentioned earlier, have got 0.4% of the vote for Pat Buchanan and 3% of the vote, less than 3% of the vote for Ralph Nader.

And you can see why George W. Bush in that context along with 9/11 is thinking, "Of course I have to do what normal politicians will do.

I believe it anyway.

I believe in these tax cuts, and I..." 9/11 triggers the global war on terror, and there isn't really an outside threat to him.

There, I mean, you look at Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan and you, and you think, "Well, they didn't get anywhere, and so let's just go that conventional path." And so he does this thing where he has two aims, right? One is to pursue the terrorists, whatever it costs, and the other is to cut taxes, and he doesn't compromise on either.

Yeah, you know, when I, when I think about it, Katty, I, I've gotta ask you this question 'cause you're living in DC at the time.

Uh, tell us about the political environment in DC post-9/11.