Street Corner Conservative: Patrick J. Buchanan And His Times

In the volatile world of post-Cold War American politics, few figures have stood out with as much clarity and controversy as Pat Buchanan. This book is a political biography, but it is also in part a history of modern American conservatism.Buchanan's career can be divided into two parts. First, there was his rapid rise through the ranks of the modern-day conservative movement. As a senior aide and speechwriter to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and as a combative columnist and commentator, Buchanan was a valued and popular figure among leading conservatives all throughout the 1970s and '80s. His 1985 decision, for instance, to take a significant pay cut and join the Reagan administration as director of communications was greeted with near unanimous praise and adulation from Buchanan's fellow conservatives in the Washington-Manhattan constellation. Indeed, by the middle of President Reagan's second term, conservative activists were urging Buchanan to run for president, with many of them claiming he was now a political figure who could stake his claim as a successor to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.With sections on Buchanan's growing up years, his service to both Nixon and Reagan, his rise in the conservative movement, his America First platform, and his presidential runs, this book tells the story of a man who raised issues during his time as both a pundit and a politician that are still significant today and, in fact, that the time of Pat Buchanan is far from being over.