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This Ain't No Party

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"Look at that deal on Communist China," he continued. "They sell us $6 in goods for every $1 we sell them, and they take all that money, and what are they doin' with it? They're persecutin' Christians. They're usin' that money to target missiles on the United States of America. If I get elected, we will call in that Chinese ambassador and sit him down and say, 'You boys are gonna stop persecutin' Christians -- or you boys have sold your last pair of chopsticks in any mall in America." He also wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts ("What is the federal government doin' subsidizing dirty pictures in New York City?") and curtail the federal Department of Education ("We don't need some guy in sandals and beads telling us how to teach our kids"). Above all, he wants to seal the country's "bleeding" borders against illegal immigrants. "Ronald Reagan said a country that can't or won't defend its borders isn't even a country anymore. So instead of sending soldiers over to Kosovo and Bosnia and Kuwait, places we never heard of, I'll send them to our own borders.

"When my right hand goes up to take that oath of office," he concluded, "their New World Order comes crashin' down."

Missing from the fireworks was Lenora Fulani, a psychologist who ran for U.S. president as an independent in 1988 and became the first woman and the first African-American to appear on the ballot in all 50 states. Buchanan invited her to join his campaign as co-chair last fall, and she shocked the country by accepting. On Nov. 11, at the National Press Club, she said, "In traditional political terms, Pat Buchanan stands for all the things that black progressives such as myself revile ... so, how did we get to be standing here together with me endorsing his candidacy? Because we have a common interest in overthrowing the traditional political terms." At that point, she insisted that Buchanan was not a fascist, a racist or a anti-gay bigot, he just couldn't stand hypocrisy.

She's changed her mind.

"He pandered to the most right-wing element in his brigade, and they gained control on the ground, at the local conventions," remarks Fulani, interviewed by phone from New York. "I met with him in May to say, 'Pat, we have to have a signal that you are still interested in coalition politics, and when you get on TV and say you're building a party in Buchanan's image, it doesn't indicate that." She challenged him to prove an open mind by naming her national chair of the Reform Party. He declined. "What Bay Buchanan (his sister and campaign manager) told me was that they could not get their supporters to support me," reports Fulani, who promptly withdrew her support of Buchanan and resigned as co-chair. "I'm still a member of Reform," she adds. "I'm going to go to the convention and see if what I'm concerned about has actually happened, see what the party looks like."

See, in other words, whether it looks like Lindstedt, who called Buchanan's Missouri staff last fall and asked, "'What is it with this lesbian Marxist Negress here?' They said, 'Oh, it's just a marriage of convenience,'" reports Lindstedt. "I said, 'Well, what does she get out of it?' and they said, 'Hopefully, nothin.'" He chuckles for a minute, satisfied. "We recognize that Pat has to go ahead and do a little boob bait for the bubbas. Well, maybe not so much for the bubbas. But throw a few pinches of himself on the altar of political correctness."

The Snowball in Hell

The 1999 Missouri Reform Party convention drew about two dozen people. The 2000 Missouri Reform Party convention, held April 29 in Columbia, drew more than 100 -- about 80 of whom party regulars had never seen before. "It took us a while to check everyone's party membership, and the delay added a lot of drama to the event," recalls party chair Lewin of Kansas City. "There was a brief effort to impeach me before they got into the building," he adds, "but then things settled down."

Lewin is one of the old-style Reformers, a handful of Missourians who've spent the past few years tugging and smoothing the clay of reform, modeling their ideal, socially liberal, economically conservative country. Now Buchanan has punched his fist into its dense center, thwacking a new shape entirely. "The people Buchanan brought with him were the most conservative fringe, the abortion-rescue crowd and the gun nuts," explains a former party member. "They were people to the right of Buchanan! And because Missouri's party was so small to begin with, it made them a supermajority."

At the convention, Kline watched, with mounting fury, "some sort of leader within the Buchanan group telling people how to vote for delegates. Then they asked, before the vote, would we or would we not support Pat Buchanan? At the time I was noncommitted, but because he irritated me, I flat-out told him exactly how I was going to vote. Charles Collins (one of two other Reform Party contenders) would make an excellent president. He's a Christian, and he's been to five of our party functions, and Mr. Buchanan has not been to anything."

Still, Missouri is Buchanan country. It's the only state in which he entered a presidential primary, and it's the state where he launched his career. (As the youngest editorial writer the St. Louis Globe-Democrat had ever hired, he met Richard M. Nixon, the president he served right through Watergate.) By the time the lights went down, eight of Missouri's 12 delegates to the national convention were pledged to vote for Buchanan. (One supports Charles Collins; three haven't decided.)

Of course, there's a general election, too: On July 4, the Reform Party USA mailed presidential ballots to all party members, as well as any registered voter who requested one. But even if the popular vote elects Collins or the other Reform Party presidential candidate, John Hagelin, the convention delegates can override that choice with a two-thirds majority. (Already concerned about tantrums, fisticuffs and outright violence, convention organizers have increased the security budget by 15 percent.)

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