‘Pitchfork Pat’s’ Revenge
Buchanan’s ‘culture war’ crowns a victor
It was a long time in coming, but the cultural war Pat Buchanan declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention has finally resulted in the election of a President of the United States.
Like a latter day Barry Goldwater whose presidential run paved the way for the election of Ronald Reagan, the roots of George W. Bush’s impressively solid win over John Kerry can be traced to “pitchfork Pat’s” upstart campaign against Bush-the-elder.
Buchanan nearly upset the first President Bush in the 1992 primaries, thus earning himself a featured speaking role at the party’s national convention in Houston, Texas. Buchanan used the time to deliver a fiery oration on the cultural crisis gripping America. “Bush 41” never got the point, and neither did the Republican Party, which headed off into eight years of Presidential exile.
Exit polls conducted on Election Day by the nation’s major news organizations found 22% of voters listed “moral values” as the set of issues which most influenced their vote. Eighty percent of those voters cast their ballots for George W. Bush. The “values vote” trumped the economy, terrorism, and the war in Iraq as the single most significant issue in the campaign.
Pat Buchanan was prescient in articulating the smoldering fear over values harbored by many Americans, and George W. Bush was perfectly positioned both by personal religious beliefs and political bent to benefit from the electoral expression of that concern. However, it was the events of September 11, 2001 that played the pivotal role in making values the issue that decided a Presidential election.
Values and religious beliefs were, of course, important to many Americans before Osama Bin Laden’s hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Somerset County. But what happened on that tragic day shook America to its core. Many Americans were moved to re-examine and reprioritize what was most important in their lives. Family, faith and friends replaced wealth and social status at the top of the priority list.
As this realignment was taking place, the American Left was stepping up its efforts to bring about cultural changes, many of which they had long sought. This backfired and created a sense of alienation and fear among those who had recently connected or reconnected with a more conservative values system.
This subtle change in the fabric of American culture was detected early on by the President and his political advisors. Although derided at the time, his support of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman both crystallized and energized cultural conservatives behind his candidacy.
It would be a mistake, however, to define the “values voter” based solely on that issue. A wide variety of concerns ranging from respect for human life; to fears for personal safety arising from the events of September 11, 2001; to the coarsening of pop culture as evidenced by the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, all came together in the perfect political storm to make the difference in a Presidential election.
George W. Bush was perfectly positioned to benefit from the values groundswell. The President had consistently sided with families on cultural issues, and had been more public about his faith – and its impact on his life – than most elected officials. Simply put, he had walked the walk for a long time, and there was no way John Kerry could ever catch up.
