Volume 03 - Number 1 - June 1996
Pages: 1 - 35
Barry, H. III. (1996). Displaced targets of Pat Buchanan’s anger. Clio’s Psyche, 3(1), 25-26.
Displaced Targets of Pat Buchanan’s Anger
Abstract
In this article, the author applies the psychoanalytic concepts of displacement of aggression and identification with the aggressor to Patrick Buchanan, drawing on his autobiography Right from the Beginning, his speeches, and biographical details of his upbringing in Washington, DC, his parochial schooling, and his undergraduate years at Georgetown University. The author describes a household with an authoritarian, physically punitive father and four competing brothers. The author argues that Buchanan’s professed devotion to his father, his school, and the Church, alongside his denunciations of abortion, illegal immigrants, imported goods, the United Nations, atheists, and Communists, reflects anger redirected from its original source onto substitute targets. The author reads a gamecock metaphor repeated in the autobiography as pointing to that original target. Critical of the rhetoric, the author characterizes anger and fear as Buchanan’s principal themes and contends that his 1996 Republican nomination campaign addressed workers’ job insecurity by directing anger at foreign competitors, immigrants, and domestic executives rather than offering sympathy or problem solving.
Bob Dole, conservatives, displacement, liberals, Patrick Joseph Buchanan, psychohistory, Republican convention, U.S. politics
Patrick Joseph Buchanan has considerable influence on current United States politics. His speech denouncing moderates in addition to liberals at the Republican convention in 1992 contributed to the defeat of President Bush. Buchanan now has the opportunity to contribute to the defeat of prospective Republican nominee Bob Dole in 1996.
Pat Buchanan was born in 1938 and grew up in Washington, DC. His father, William Baldwin Buchanan, became senior partner in a large accounting firm. His mother, Catherine Elizabeth Crum Buchanan, was a former nurse. The first four of their nine children were boys, born within a span of four years. Pat, the third in sequence, manifested verbal superiority from an early age. The four boys shared the same
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bedroom and competed vigorously with each other, physically and intellectually.
Their father was an authoritarian head of the family who tried to be a good parent. Unfortunately, he had a bad role model. When William was 11-years-old, his own father, Henry Martin Buchanan, deserted the family. William Buchanan’s resentment affected his subsequent treatment of his sons. He was a highly punitive father, frequently beating his sons with a strap. Pat and his brothers were also subjected to the authoritarian discipline of parochial school and the Catholic Church.
William Buchanan encouraged Pat and his brothers to fight each other and boys outside the family. Pat Buchanan’s behavior as an undergraduate at Georgetown University, 1956-1961, was a contrast to Bill Clinton’s at the same university, 1964-1968. Buchanan frequently fought other young men. He was suspended for a year for assaulting two policemen who had arrested him for a traffic violation. Many sons of authoritarian fathers act out in this fashion.
The adult Pat Buchanan exemplifies identification with the aggressor. Contrary to rebellion against the principal source of his anger, he professes exaggerated love and devotion toward his father, the parochial school, and the Church. He defends the Church’s traditional doctrines and his father’s admiration of Douglas MacArthur, Joe McCarthy, and General Franco. Lavish praise of his father is included in Pat Buchanan’s autobiography, Right from the Beginning (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988). In the paperback edition (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1990) an epilogue reproduces the author’s eulogy of his father, who died in 1988.
Pat Buchanan’s autobiography and speeches denounce abortions, illegal immigrants, imported merchandise, the United Nations, atheists, and Communists. These antagonists are classic examples of displaced targets of aggression. His principal themes are anger and fear, contrary to the dominant Christian doctrines of love and trust.
Pat Buchanan’s autobiographical account of his aggressive behavior as a young man reveals the original target of his displaced anger. Referring to his brothers and father, he writes (p. 229), “…the game chickens had reached an age where they were taking on the game rooster, and everyone else.” The author usually writes very clearly and forcefully, but this is a confusing statement in accordance with the ambivalent mixture of love and hate that motivates displacement of anger onto a substitute target. (The adjective “game” probably refers to the slang meaning of “plucky” and to the violent fights between gamecocks.) The same confusing metaphor is repeated later in the autobiography, referring to his relationship with his father several years later (p. 306): “The game chicken and the game rooster could now walk the beach together, without argument.” His anger against his father was being more thoroughly displaced onto substitute targets.
In Buchanan’s 1996 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, he emphasized the insecurity of workers whose companies are downsizing or making products that may be undersold by foreign imports, and whose jobs may be given to immigrants. He also extended the displaced targets of his anger to executives of domestic companies in addition to foreign workers and immigrants. He thereby exploited the anxieties of many Americans in order to win their votes. His dominant theme was not sympathy and problem solving for his audience. Instead, it was anger against the sources of the threats to their jobs.
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How to cite this article
Barry, H. III. (1996). Displaced targets of Pat Buchanan’s anger. Clio’s Psyche, 3(1), 25-26.
