Is Pat Buchanan the architect of over thirty years' worth of Republican electoral advances? Now you can be the judge. As part of his research on an article assessing the current state of political conservatism, New Yorker contributor George Packer interviewed Buchanan regarding his involvement in the Nixon administration; during the course of their conversation, the conservative iconoclast volunteered what may be the Dead Sea Scrolls of the politics of polarization, a memo he prepared for Nixon in 1971 entitled "Dividing the Democrats." The document outlines all of the fissures and vulnerabilities of the New Deal Coalition, particularly the rift between Northern urban elites and Southern conservatives, typified by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, now famous for his tutelage of several prominent neoconservatives, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. As Buchanan himself admitted, according to Packer, the memo is "a little raw for today": it explicitly embraces race-baiting, urging the President to push for a constitutional amendment to end court-ordered integration of public schools and housing, and arguing that the Republicans should clandestinely encourage a black presidential candidacy ("There is nothing that can so advance the President's chance for re-election..."). Yet even in its supposed rawness and underhandedness, there is little in its contents which would shock the attuned political observer; indeed, the Buchanan Doctrine, if you will, is so ingrained in Republican politics that it has provided a path to victory for not only Nixon, but his G.O.P. successors - Reagan, and Bush pere and fils. Senator Obama - a liberal, African-American, urban Northern Democrat - provides the ideal theoretical target for this poisonous brand of partisanship. The questions thus are: will Senator McCain continue to punch above the belt, and has the American electorate progressed past the point were a simple bag of dirty tricks is enough to do us in?
