Patrick Joseph Buchanan

    Patrick Buchanan cut his teeth as a conservative
 spokesman in the Nixon White House and refined that bite in
 the Reagan administration.
    And that bite made him famous as a syndicated columnist,
 lecturer and television commentator upholding conservative
 causes and savagely attacking liberal ideas.
    With those intellectual credentials intact, Buchanan, 53,
 announced Dec 10 in Concord, NH, he will enter the
 battlefront of electoral politics by running against
 President Bush for the GOP nomination.
    Buchanan's willingness to take on a sitting president of
 his own party is consistent with his longtime eagerness to
 speak as the conservative watchdog of the Republican Party.
    "If I can do well in New Hampshire and in the country,
 it's because George Bush walked away from the conservative
 base of his party," he said before his announcement.
    "Why am I running?" Buchanan asked. "Because we
 Republicans can no longer say it is all the liberals' fault.
 It was not some liberal Democrat who declared: 'Read my
 lips, no new taxes,' and then broke his word to cut a seedy
 back room deal with the big spenders on Capitol Hill."
    Besides Bush's going back on his promise not to raise
 taxes, Buchanan opposed the recent civil rights bill that
 many conservatives believe requires racial quotas.
    His campaign is expected to stress stands such as America
 first in foreign policy, massive budget cuts in fiscal
 policy and emphasis on English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon
 heritage in domestic affairs.
    Buchanan's association with presidential politics began
 when he became executive assistant to Richard Nixon.
    In his role as Nixon's chief speechwriter, he was
 credited with coining some of the president's most famous
 remarks.
    After working briefly with President Ford, Buchanan
 struck out on his own, launching a career as a columnist and
 political commentator.
    He became a well-paid and highly sought after figure in
 conservative circles and earned a national following through
 television appearances on such shows as Crossfire on CNN,
 where he would spar nightly with a liberal representative
 from the media.
    Buchanan returned to the White House in February 1985 as
 director of communications for Ronald Reagan in charge of
 the administration's long-range media planning. In that
 role, he was a major critic of the media, believing it to be
 heavily dominated by liberals.
    Known as one of the most conservative people in the
 Reagan White House, Buchanan vigorously sided with the
 president when the Iran-Contra scandal broke. He publicly
 denounced the media and "liberal" members of Congress, as
 well as members of the Republican Party who were critical of
 the sale of arms to Iran.
    "It is times like this--when a trusted friend is standing
 before a gathering mob--when people show their true colors,"
 Buchanan said.
    In 1986, Buchanan toyed with the idea of running for
 president in 1988 but bowed out on grounds that he might
 "splinter the conservative cause."
    "My heart said yes but my head said no," he explained.
    In resigning his White House job in February 1987,
 Buchanan said he would be better able to influence issues in
 the 1988 election from outside the Reagan administration.
    He became increasingly disenchanted with the Bush
 administration, which many conservatives thought was stocked
 with moderate Republicans at their expense.
    A major break with Bush came over the Persian Gulf War.
 Long a vigorous anti-communist, Buchanan said he saw no
 direct threat from Iraq to the US, believed Iran was the
 real problem in the Middle East and criticized Bush for
 going to war.
    Buchanan was born Nov 2, 1938, in Washington, and
 graduated from Georgetown U in 1961. 
 He married Shelley Ann Scarney May 8, 1971.
    "My views, my values, my beliefs were shaped by being a
 member of an Irish-Catholic conservative family of 9
 children," Buchanan once said.
    He earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia
 University and went to work as an editorial editor for the
 St Louis Globe Democrat, where he remained for 4 years.
    Buchanan published The New Majority in 1973 and 
 Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories in 1975.