In the Defense of Liberty

By Evan Thomas

By cutting arms shipments to Nicaragua's freedom fighters . . . the national Democratic party has now become, with Moscow, co-guarantor of the Brezhnev doctrine in Central America.

Even by the combative standards of partisan political prose, accusing the Democrats of bedding down with the Kremlin in the cause of Soviet expansionism is more than a little extreme. The author of this statement, which appeared last week in the Washington Post, has never been known for moderation, however. Indeed, he cheerfully scorns it.

Patrick J. Buchanan, White House director of communications and resident ideologue, is chief architect of the President's strategy of pugnacious confrontation with Congress on aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. Reagan's decision to make a slam-bam push for contra aid was widely regarded in the capital as a personal victory for the tenacious Buchanan, who lately has been on something of a roll. If the contra aid strategy succeeds, Buchanan's ascendancy may signal as well a fundamental shift in the way the White House does business --from political pragmatism and compromise to ideological purity and contentiousness.

A onetime White House speechwriter for Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon, Buchanan, 47, has no trouble distinguishing Right from wrong in his own mind. While speaking at White House meetings, he often busily draws little boxes, as if he were sorting the facts into tidy little ideological compartments. Says Tom Braden, a liberal columnist and Buchanan's former sparring partner in radio and TV debate: "Pat always polarizes an issue. He never sees shades; he's plain black and white."'

A year ago, when he abandoned his lucrative ($400,000 a year) perch as a syndicated columnist and commentator to take on the $75,000-a-year job of overseeing speechwriting and press relations for the White House, Buchanan was expected to give the Republican right a voice that would carry straight to the Oval Office. But more often than not he was trumped by moderates, particularly National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who favored compromise with Congress and the Soviet Union. Buchanan's shaky start disappointed the true believers, but he professed to be unfazed. After all, he would assure friends, he had hung in under more trying circumstances as a Nixon aide during Watergate.

His patience was rewarded when McFarlane resigned from the White House last December and was replaced by Admiral John Poindexter. Buchanan and the new National Security Adviser became allies on most foreign policy questions. Buchanan has benefited as well from Chief of Staff Don Regan's recent willingness to loosen, at least slightly, his tight control over the White House staff. One former Reagan aide frets that Buchanan "reinforces Regan's worst instincts. Don has a tendency to be confrontational. On contra aid, I'm sure Pat has him all revved up."

Most important, Buchanan is in sync with Ronald Reagan's core convictions. The President's State of the Union address in early February, with its embrace of family, freedom and free enterprise, showed Buchanan's hand. He was able to overcome the objections of White House pragmatists who urged that the speech be more programmatic and less ideological. (Purists allied with Buchanan derisively refer to Regan's more moderate staffers as "Twinkies" and "the mice.")

Buchanan puts no stock in the theories espoused by earlier Reagan aides like Treasury Secretary James Baker, who saw presidential prestige as a precious commodity to be expended frugally. "Presidential capital is something that can be constantly replenished," Buchanan asserted in an interview with TIME last week. "When the President goes to the wall and gives everything to win, he's strengthened for the next battle, not weakened." But what of the risk that a strategy of confrontation on aid to the contras will cost Reagan a resounding defeat? Buchanan is unconcerned. "You're strengthened by your defeats," he says. Such doomed conservative crusades as Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign "got us here," asserts Buchanan. "We lost the battle and won the war."

Ebullient, relentlessly energetic (he jogs 4 miles a day at lunchtime), Buchanan shows refreshingly little ego for a White House potentate. "He's entirely without any of the personal demons that so often occupy the men in power," says White House Speechwriter Anthony Dolan. Shrugs a Regan aide: "He's just a happy warrior for the right."

Some Congressmen accuse Buchanan of trying to revive the Red-baiting of the McCarthy era with his remarks about the Democrats doing the Kremlin's work, among other canards. Indeed, President Reagan was said to be concerned about the harsh tone of Buchanan's newspaper column last week, and Chief of Staff Regan privately chided Buchanan for rushing his blast into print without first getting White House approval. Buchanan protests, "I'm not suggesting that anyone on the Hill is a Communist. But I do say that this is a choice between the freedom fighters and the Sandinistas." He adds with relish, "This is politics as it should be."

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Washington