McLean, Virginia: Here Comes Pat, Right On Cue

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Once you've had termites, as every homeowner knows, you're never quite sure you're entirely rid of them. Maybe the exterminator missed one, and the moment you close your eyes at night, it goes to work. For whatever reason, this thought crossed my mind last week as I drove to McLean, Va., to see what Pat Buchanan has been up to lately.

Buchanan has been frighteningly quiet since jumping from the Republican to the Reform Party last fall. Even when an attendant opened the front door of his house and allowed me in, Buchanan was nowhere to be seen. I was about to interview the bronze-colored bust of him in the foyer, if not the painting of him in the living room, when suddenly he emerged as if from a basement bunker.

There is something disorienting about being in the company of three Pat Buchanans, especially with one of them referring to himself in the third person. Something in his gaze told me he doesn't ever sleep, and might possibly breathe through his eyes. As I was about to learn, he has been lying in wait for just the right moment to skitter out and chip away at George W. Bush and Al Gore, and that moment has arrived. Buchanan's plans this week include everything from national television appearances to a St. Patrick's Day fund-raising bash.

"John McCain has roiled the waters," says Buchanan, who was born with exclamation points where eyebrows should be. "And now there's tremendous disillusionment that it's over, and we've got these two sticks representing the Establishment of each party. That's our opportunity." An opportunity Buchanan has anticipated, driving his Navigator from one state to another like a tank commander, rounding up signatures to get onto state ballots. The antiestablishmentarians in McCain's army are natural Buchananites, he says. And now that Bush is shuffling back to the center, he thinks religious conservatives are in his pro-life pocket. From Gore, he plans to hijack Democrats who are riled about immigration and salivating for economic patriotism.

The bust in the foyer has a better chance of pulling this all off. "But Pat is a shrewd political analyst, and he'll be very capable of looking at the battlefield and figuring out which wounded to go heal," says McCain strategist Ken Khachigian, who thinks his old friend Buchanan can tip the outcome in November, harassing Gore but potentially torpedoing Bush. Oddly enough, Buchanan might never get the chance. The Reform Party functions like a flophouse for political gypsies and social outcasts, and no two members can agree on the time of day. Jesse Ventura was promoting Donald Trump for President, for crying out loud, until both checked out. Jim Mangia, the national secretary, says he has asked Gary Hart, Warren Beatty, and the Green Party's Ralph Nader to carry the flag. Each took a pass.