History matters...and it's available for free on the Internet
Pat Buchanan & Company radio show, July 6, 1994
If you’ve been with me for a while, you will know that I hold Pat Buchanan in high regard. I read his weekly column and have read most if not all the books he has written.
This morning, by the strange power of the Internet Wormhole™, I discovered an old broadcast of the Pat Buchanan & Company radio show, simulcast on C-SPAN on July 6, 1994.
That summer, I was heading into my senior year of high school and had no particular regard for the news of the day, except the O.J. Simpson case. The Simpson case filled up the airwaves the entire summer and for another 14 months or so.
I’d go over to my grandparents’ house and plow through their magazines—Time or Newsweek for instance—to get a debrief on the news. We got Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News at my house. People Magazine, too.
This was fine by me, because I had a one-track mind. Sports were the only thing that mattered. It crushed me to see O.J. in that Bronco.
In the second hour of the show, Buchanan talked about the O.J. case with attorney Joseph diGenova. In retrospect, this was really interesting, considering we know O.J.'s subsequent fate.
I got the impression that all three of the folks in the conversation—Buchanan, diGenova, and Barry Lynn—believed Simpson to be guilty. Of course, none of them could have been certain of what the verdict was going to ultimately hold.
“Do you know Greta Van Susteren?” Buchanan asked diGenova during one of the breaks. Van Susteren, the lawyer and future cable news stable, had just been a guest on CNN’s Crossfire with Buchanan. Not long after this, Greta became one of the main faces in the legal analysis of the Simpson case on cable television.
Quite amusing in retrospect.
The conversation was also quite prescient about how things would develop in the case. Barry Lynn, formerly of the ACLU, was on the side of all the loopholes to get Simpson off.
“I don’t think that O.J. Simpson is going to get off on anything even remotely like a technicality, but I don’t think the idea that you have to have a warrant in most cases before you barge into somebody’s house…”
Lynn continued a few moments later, “Every once in a while, [Buchanan] does say something that I agree with. All the evidence points to O.J. and there’s not one shred of evidence that points in any other direction.”
I see this show as history-in-action. During another break the men talked about the "18-inch dishes," which were going to be available in a month, that had a chance to replace cable television —a development that led to DirecTV, Dish Network and the like.
At the beginning of another segment, a caller from Portland, Oregon called in. Had I known Buchanan was on the radio every day in my hometown (and I’m not sure if he was or not), I would like to say I would have listened.
Yet, I was preoccupied with sports. I don’t know if I would have tuned in back then.
I never read Buchanan's columns until I was in my twenties, but a little reading and listening would have helped get my head straight earlier in life.
I wasn’t politically engaged in 1996 when Buchanan nearly won the Republican nomination, but I had enough sense to back him in 2000 like so many of the Palm Beach County, Florida voters did.
The 2000 election ushered in a disastrous administration, but thanks to the Palm Beach voters in particular, we avoided the worst case scenario—our nation’s immediate demise under Albert Gore.
Meanwhile, voters in this country keep kicking the can down the road. While I am grateful for the Gore presidency that never was, each post-Reagan administration has led the United States closer to the brink.
Ronald Wilson Reagan faced the Soviet regime head-on and did as much as any man in history to end the Cold War.
Either way, once America had “won” the Cold War, it was time to bring our troops home. From Bush I to Biden, our leaders have since manufactured wars for America to take part in.
The first hour of this Buchanan & Company show focused on the 1994 political crisis in Haiti. I knew very little about it at the time other than what I got from Peter Jennings each evening.
Something like “President Aristede good, Haitian military bad. The great Bill Clinton hasn’t been able to unleash his military yet…let’s invade.”
A stupid idea that proved itself so. The Haitian episode parallels the current Ukrainian conflict in many ways, except that today, the stakes are much higher.
Essentially: We’ve got a 40-something, democratically elected, socialist president who is the darling of the western media for whatever reason. Zelensky happens to be an erstwhile television star, Aristede a defrocked Catholic priest. Forget that these men were or are a menace to not only their countrymen but enemies of humanity. Forget that...let’s get the whole world on board to back the madman!
It kind of worked in Haiti. Jean-Bertrand Aristede was Haiti’s president four times. He became president twice more after the coup d’etat of May 1994. The 1994 coup was a subject of much concern that summer (if you could get past O.J.-mania).
Democracy prevails. Free and fair elections. Or something like that.
Kick the can down the road if you can.
Brian O’Leary
P.S.—
Haley Heathman, a recent podcast guest, interned for C-SPAN during college. She talked about the experience on our show.
