The Challenger What Does Pat Want?

By MICHAEL RILEY SAN ANTONIO

A Confederate sword in his hand and a white Stetson hat on his head, Pat Buchanan stands in front of the Alamo. "Take a look behind me," the Republican challenger tells the friendly crowd. "Those fellows put Texas first. They put their own freedom first. They put their own families first, and they were willing to stand up and fight and die for it." Buchanan's own candidacy may face a similar fate, but he hopes his quixotic battle against George Bush will help win the war for the soul of the Republican Party.

Buchanan has already bloodied Bush in a political cross fire that has preoccupied the Republican Party and may help topple the President in November. Just three months ago, Buchanan was an acerbic television commentator; now, thanks to tough economic times and Bush's bumbling ways, Buchanan holds hostage many of the angry "swing" voters who are likely to pick the next President. He has also ignited a crusade that could make him the country's most influential right-wing Republican. Still, when all the votes are tallied, Buchanan will not come close to winning the G.O.P. nomination ! this year, and that raises two questions: What is he really after, and What is he likely to get?

Most of all, Buchanan, who accuses Bush of hijacking the Reagan Revolution, is determined to return the G.O.P. to its conservative roots. While his rhetoric drips with the dark resentments of nativism, isolationism and protectionism, Buchanan is winning broad support with his denunciations of Bush as an unprincipled pragmatist who would rather win re-election than lead the nation. His battle cry of "America First" appeals to those who think the country is headed in the wrong direction. "It is time," says Buchanan, "to start looking out for the forgotten Americans right here in the United States."

Like Richard Nixon's Silent Majority, Buchanan's supporters -- overwhelmingly white, male and angry -- revel in his harangues as he attacks gays, environmentalists and foreigners. Though he denies charges of anti-Semitism, he last week put down a band of Jewish hecklers by telling them, "This rally is of Americans, and by Americans, and for the good old U.S.A., my friends." Says Marcel Bourgoin, 19, who turned out wearing an American-flag tie at a Charleston, S.C., harbor cruise: "He's not afraid to step on people's toes." As Buchanan puts it, "Real men gotta say what they mean and mean what they say."

That is the impetus behind Buchanan's two-pronged attack. On the home front, he slams Bush for breaking his no new taxes pledge and for signing last year's Civil Rights Act, which Buchanan calls an unjust quota bill. Buchanan rails against illegal immigrants, who he claims are draining taxpayer dollars. He wants to slash the size of the Federal Government, freeze government regulations for two years and roll back half of Congress's recent pay hike. He also wants to clamp term limits on "those check-kiting, boodling Congressmen on Capitol Hill." In one of his nastier pitches, he attacks the National Endowment for the Arts as "that upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal Establishment."

This poisonous populism also infects Buchanan's foreign policy. He mocks the "globaloney" of Bush's new world order, which he claims threatens American sovereignty and smacks of a move toward world government. He attacks international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations. He demands a cutoff of foreign aid and wants to bring U.S. troops home from Europe, while making Japan and Germany pay their share of the defense burden. On trade, Buchanan promises retaliation if other countries refuse to open their markets.

A former Nixon speechwriter, Buchanan uses his venomous tongue to insult almost everyone. He mocks top Bush advisers as the "geisha girls of the new world order." He has called Congress "Israeli-occupied territory," and considers AIDS "nature's retribution."

Journalists have been relatively easy on Buchanan for several reasons: he's not winning so far, he's charming and funny -- and he's a great story. Thanks to his TV experience, the former CNN Crossfire co-host can deliver crisp sound bites by the mouthful and play the camera angles like the professional performer he is. Up close, his genial manner trumps the tough public persona. But his deep-rooted conservatism is evident even in his dark blue suits and Brylcreemed hair.

Buchanan remains a long shot to win a single primary, and he knows it. So he is declaring victory by default. Pointing to Bush's sacking of NEA chairman John Frohnmayer and his admission that he should not have broken his no-new- taxes pledge in 1990, Buchanan claims that he has already shoved the President to the right. But Buchanan is hungry for more. "This is a crusade for a Middle American revolution," he says. He is searching for that elusive breakthrough state -- perhaps Michigan -- and he will keep giving Bush hell as long as the money keeps flowing in.

But the truth is that Buchanan may rapidly become the G.O.P.'s Jesse Jackson, a charismatic candidate who would rather lose and be right, as he sees it, than win and be wrong. And that raises the question, asked often about Jackson four years ago, of what Buchanan really wants. "There's a hierarchy of goals," says Buchanan during an interview on his crowded jet. "You'd like the whole pot at the end of the rainbow -- the nomination, a great campaign, the presidency -- all the gold. But short of that there are smaller pots of gold, and we've already got them. We're in the history books." What Buchanan wants is for Bush to run a Buchananesque campaign in the fall. Before that happens, though, the feuding parties must choreograph the delicate end game, which may be months away.

Will the White House make the first move? Not likely. "If we reached out now," says Bush campaign manager Fred Malek, who worked with Buchanan in the Nixon White House, "he'd slap our hand and go on national TV and make fun of us. We're just going to leave him alone." But unless Bush engages him, Buchanan may stubbornly balk at laying down his arms. Such a standoff might open the door to some back-door negotiations by an old friend of both men's: Richard Nixon. Buchanan, who says he plans no third-party run for the White House, is certain to support Bush against the Democrats in November. So what will he trade for his primary poker chips? Party-rules changes? A prime-time convention speech? Buchanan scoffs at such speculation. "Is that what they believe I care about, whether I get 12 minutes at the convention?" he asks. "I mean, what the hell do they think politics is all about?" Explains Buchanan: "What is the primary about if not for the heart, the soul, the direction of the party?"

That is the metaphysical quest that guides this right-wing crusader. Though he claims he has not yet thought about seeking the presidency in 1996, this year's campaign has thrust him into the top tier of contenders, along with Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp and Texas Senator Phil Gramm. It has also exposed the historic rift between Republican moderates and conservatives, long bound together by the fight against communism. With the cold war over, the G.O.P. is awakening to the fact that the new world order may threaten the quarter- century Republican domination of the White House.

With reporting by Nancy Traver/Shreveport