About Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

From 1966 through 1974, Buchanan was a confidant and assistant to Richard Nixon. From 1985-87, he was White House Director of Communications for Ronald Reagan. In 1992, Buchanan challenged George H. W. Bush for the Republican nomination and almost upset the president in the New Hampshire primary. In 1996, he won New Hampshire and finished second to Sen. Dole with 3 million Republican votes.

Buchanan was born in Washington, educated at Catholic and Jesuit schools, and received his master's degree in journalism from Columbia in 1962. At 23, he became the youngest editorial writer on a major newspaper in America, The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

In 1966, Buchanan became the first full-time staff member in the legendary comeback of Richard Nixon. He traveled with the future president in the campaigns of 1966 and 1968, and served as special assistant to the president through the final days of Watergate.

On leaving the White House, Buchanan became a columnist and founding father of three of the most enduring talk shows in TV history: "The McLaughlin Group," and CNN's "Capital Gang" and "Crossfire." In 2002, he joined MSNBC.    In his White House years, Buchanan wrote foreign policy speeches and attended four summits, including Nixon's opening to China in 1972 and Reagan's Reykjavik summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986.

Buchanan has written eight books, including four New York Times best-sellers: A Republic Not an Empire, Death of the West, Where the Right Went Wrong, and State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, as well as a Washington Post best-seller about growing up in the nation's capital, Right From the Beginning.  He is married to the former Shelley Ann Scarney, a member of the White House staff from 1969 to 1975.