The Telegraph
Patrick Buchanan has spent a lot of time walking the streets and chatting 
in coffee shops
By JEFFREY MERRITT,Telegraph Staff,01/03/96
  Commentator Patrick Buchanan's face hasn't popped up yet in 
television advertisements across the state, but he's spent more time 
walking main streets and chatting in coffee shops than any other Republican presidential candidate.
  Still, Buchanan says many New Hampshire voters only know his attack-dog 
image from his role as a panelist on CNN's "Crossfire", or 
his blistering attacks on President Bush in the state's primary four 
years ago. They're not familiar with the full Buchanan.
  "You have a reputation as a pugilist and a battler for ideas", 
Buchanan said Tuesday during a meeting with editors and a reporter at The 
Telegraph. "And there's no doubt about it that that's the impression 
or image you have.And so we live that, that's right. But that's not the whole 
man."
  In an hour-long interview, Buchanan said he would want to "take a 
look" at shrinking the size of the military in the wake of the Cold War, 
and agreed New Hampshire's recovering economy has given his economic 
message less appeal than it had before the 1992 primary.
  "Clearly my economic message, you would get a much greater receptivity to 
it when times are tough, there's no doubt about it", he said. 
"But I don't think anybody's going to want New Hampshire to remain 
what it was back then."
  Buchanan has been a vocal opponent of President Clinton's decision to 
send American troops to Bosnia, and said the United States should 
consider pulling its troops out of Europe entirely and re-evaluating its overseas military alliances.
  "We're in a new world, a brand new world, and many of my friends with 
whom I shared every view during the Cold War, Dick Lugar, Bob Dole and 
others, I think their foreign policy is rooted in inertia and 
nostalgia", he said.
  He did not advocate a percentage-based cut in the military budget, but 
said, "We need a whole bottom-up review of our alliances, what we're 
going to defend, what we're going to protect, what we need.... I 
would take a look at the military. I wouldn't rule anything in or 
out."
  Buchanan supports a major downsizing of the federal government, with the 
states making their own decisions on how to fund welfare, Medicaid and education programs. He said he would support a one- or two-year residency requirement before eligibility fo
r welfare, to prevent certain states with more generous policies from becoming magnets for welfare recipients.
  "I generally believe that the various states have different histories, 
different ethnic groups there, different backgrounds and different 
philosophies", he said. "Let them compete as social laboratories. 
That's the way the founding fathers believed."
  Regarding welfare, though, Buchanan said it was "a formula for 
disaster" for any government to give an 18-year-old single mother of two 
children enough money for an apartment and medical care.
  "Here I generally believe what that young woman needs is not so much a 
job as she needs a husband, for the children", he said."I don't 
believe you can abandon those kids, but at the same time you cannot reward anti-social beha
vior."
  Some conservatives have suggested Buchanan's strident economic 
nationalism, with assaults on big business and attacks on free trade, 
represents an abandoning of the traditional conservative view. But Buchanan was unapologetic, saying he was
"not hostile to the idea of capitalism" but committed to 
conserving the standard of living for American workers.
"Many of these trade deals that we've been supporting have been for 
the benefit of the corporate economy of, say, IBM, but not the national 
economy of the United States", he said. "What's good for 
General Motors is not good 
for America if General Motors sees as its interest shutting down all its 
auto plants in the United States and moving them overseas."
  A Buchanan presidency, the candidate said, would mean a Supreme Court in 
the image of conservative justice Antonin Scalia, which would overturn 
the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion.
  The widespread dissatisfaction with government, Buchanan said, is 
largely due to its failure to give voters things they clearly want, such as term limits for members of Congress, phasing out of foreign aid, stopping illegal immigration and allowing fo
r voluntary prayer in public schools.
  "Now every time the voters get a chance to vote on it they'll go 90 
percent for it, but every time they vote on it, it never gets done", he 
said."And they vote again and again and finally they say, 'They 
don't care about
 us anyway, they don't care what we say, politics doesn't matter, it 
doesn't mean anything.'"
  "So you get an enormous growth of cynicism and hostility and alienation. 
The government has got to get back to the point where it is responsive to 
the American people."
The Telegraph			The daily newspaper of Nashua and
P.O. Box 1008			southern New Hampshire since 1869
Nashua, NH 03061		voice: (603) 882-2741   fax: (603) 882-2681