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Right from the Beginning
One of the nation's Republican conservatives speaks out on his life and career, discussing his Catholic upbringing, his family, his influence on both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and his decision not to run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination
Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
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About the author
Patrick J. Buchanan
22 books395 followersOne of America's best known paleoconservatives, Buchanan served as a senior advisor to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He ran for president in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Buchanan is an isolationist on the subject of American foreign policy and believes in a restrictive immigration policy.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/patric...
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 3, 2023
Pat grew up in the suburbs of DC. His accountant father wanted a big and happy family after his own father had run out on his mother. His dad taught the boys to box and all of the kids to be loyal, loyal to a fault if necessary. This explains the contradiction of a doctrinaire conservative like Pat eternally loyal to the moderate Nixon that gave Buchanan his first job in politics.
Back to the fighting, those Buchanan boys were brawlers. Pat doesn't pretend any different, leaning into the Irish Catholic cliche. He doesn't downplay the drinking nor the fighting. He's of such mild temperament on television I wouldn't have guessed. I suppose his wife domesticated him as wives will often do. But you also get a glimpse of why he so easily became friends with Hunter S. Thompson despite their differences in politics. In that same time period he tells us of his regretful meeting with Walter Cronkite. Cronkite had accused Pat's brother on air with an unsubstantiated story that included illegality, later proven untrue. After being introduced, Pat shook Walter's hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Cronkite.” It was a reflexive move based on his upbringing and respecting your elders. I think he'd like that one back.
Pat tells us how he didn't like Catholic Georgetown university despite his faith, but really enjoyed Columbia, despite being a political minority. He has lifelong friends from their journalism school. Next he went to St. Louis to work at the conservative newspaper becoming an editorial writer soon after. After a few years he went to work for Richard Nixon and that begins the period that is covered in-depth in later books.
This book ends with a scattering of his syndicated column that seems like a tack on, and of less interest 35 years later.
Back to the fighting, those Buchanan boys were brawlers. Pat doesn't pretend any different, leaning into the Irish Catholic cliche. He doesn't downplay the drinking nor the fighting. He's of such mild temperament on television I wouldn't have guessed. I suppose his wife domesticated him as wives will often do. But you also get a glimpse of why he so easily became friends with Hunter S. Thompson despite their differences in politics. In that same time period he tells us of his regretful meeting with Walter Cronkite. Cronkite had accused Pat's brother on air with an unsubstantiated story that included illegality, later proven untrue. After being introduced, Pat shook Walter's hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Cronkite.” It was a reflexive move based on his upbringing and respecting your elders. I think he'd like that one back.
Pat tells us how he didn't like Catholic Georgetown university despite his faith, but really enjoyed Columbia, despite being a political minority. He has lifelong friends from their journalism school. Next he went to St. Louis to work at the conservative newspaper becoming an editorial writer soon after. After a few years he went to work for Richard Nixon and that begins the period that is covered in-depth in later books.
This book ends with a scattering of his syndicated column that seems like a tack on, and of less interest 35 years later.
December 13, 2022
This is Patrick Buchanan’s early life autobiography; reading it I can’t help but think how the America Buchanan grew up in is not the America I grew up in. Even though Buchanan is more awake than most people of his generation he was still naïve to the threat the left posed. This naïveté was likely brought about by his upbringing in the American golden age. While leftists were committed to take any actions to advance their goal, Buchanan was an idealist who believed in the American mythos and who could not think outside of the narrow American democratic system (although he may be hiding his true opinions somewhat).
January 14, 2017
Pat Buchanan's memoir/political manifesto is undeniably a product of its time. Published in 1988, it assumes the reader's intimacy with him as an aide and speechwriter for Nixon, Ford and Reagan and dives headlong into an extensive biography of his years prior to his involvement with politics. The book even opens with him deciding not to run for the Republican Party nomination in 1988, with the implicit statement that he is too conservative to lead the party to victory. Yet Buchanan would run three times for President afterward, and under considerably different shades of conservatism than he professes within the book.
The last two chapters of the book seem to show a political figure that has been sheltered by years of service to presidential administrations. The issues he would become known for -- trade, immigration, and American foreign entanglement -- are hardly mentioned at all. There are strong shades of his infamous "Culture War" speech of 1992, but the final chapter has him more concerned with the technical details of how many nuclear weapons the Russians have and not how many immigrants (both legal and illegal) the United States has been taking in.
But to the meat of the book. Buchanan's upbringing is as you'd expect if you know anything about the man. Catholic, Irish, blunt and clever, Pat gets into far more drunken entanglements than would expect of someone who rails against the modern Catholic church, homosexuality, marxists, and all the other various targets of his barbed wit.
This is the great charm of Right From The Beginning. Buchanan never holds back any punches, and you get to know exactly the kind of person he is. Most modern political biographies are often extended advertisements for one's accomplishments, but RFTB, while not exactly a humble outing, never veers into pompous territory.
Recommended if you're interested in the man (I became interested due to his obvious influence on Trump plus his fantastic book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War) or in memoirs/biographies in general. I take off a star because I was interested in his political career once he started working Nixon in 1965, but he tells readers that's for another book that has yet to be written.
The last two chapters of the book seem to show a political figure that has been sheltered by years of service to presidential administrations. The issues he would become known for -- trade, immigration, and American foreign entanglement -- are hardly mentioned at all. There are strong shades of his infamous "Culture War" speech of 1992, but the final chapter has him more concerned with the technical details of how many nuclear weapons the Russians have and not how many immigrants (both legal and illegal) the United States has been taking in.
But to the meat of the book. Buchanan's upbringing is as you'd expect if you know anything about the man. Catholic, Irish, blunt and clever, Pat gets into far more drunken entanglements than would expect of someone who rails against the modern Catholic church, homosexuality, marxists, and all the other various targets of his barbed wit.
This is the great charm of Right From The Beginning. Buchanan never holds back any punches, and you get to know exactly the kind of person he is. Most modern political biographies are often extended advertisements for one's accomplishments, but RFTB, while not exactly a humble outing, never veers into pompous territory.
Recommended if you're interested in the man (I became interested due to his obvious influence on Trump plus his fantastic book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War) or in memoirs/biographies in general. I take off a star because I was interested in his political career once he started working Nixon in 1965, but he tells readers that's for another book that has yet to be written.
March 5, 2008
I have always been a Buchananite. This book lets me see where he is coming from, what his background is and why he feels the way that he does.
October 21, 2021
This is my third time reading this charming autobiography, joining it with Moneyball, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as the only books I've read thrice. To quote the Bobs, "That Pat Buchanan is just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him."
Right from the Beginning....15 stars. (5 stars for each read)
Right from the Beginning....15 stars. (5 stars for each read)
February 20, 2021
Mr. Buchanan writes with such clarity about conservatism that I had not heard expressed elsewhere. Aside from writing how he became conservative which is his life. He remembers details I would and have forgotten from my own high school day. Well written and passionate.
June 2, 2008
One of the key books that opened my eyes to conservative principles. I don't like a lot of things Buchanan has espoused in the last 10-15 years, but I loved this book.
August 19, 2014
One of two books that helped solidify my loyalty to the "dark side".
January 25, 2020
Great Book! Pat is the best!
November 10, 2025
An extraordinarily good book — rich anecdotes, exceptional detail (the family stuff is fascinating and intricate 50s middle-class nostalgia, the Georgetown and Columbia material is exceptionally interesting fodder for the cultural historian), polished & terse prose that’s Buchanan’s Columbia Journalism School meets GK Chesterton/CS Lewis-lite style — until Buchanan abruptly stops telling the tale (was a draft due to the publisher?) and lapses into a somewhat interesting but largely out-of-date political platform (much of which I disagree with , even where I agree or once agreed with it).
It appears that Buchanan did two subsequent Nixon administration books but no proper conclusion to this memoir that covers his time with Reagan and nothing that will ever address his 92 and 96 primary runs (both important!) and 00 reform party bid (even more important because Trump let him have the nomination and his presence on the ballot helped Bush win that state … and most important of all because he was my first presidential vote, at the tender age of 18, as a soon-to-be college graduate and proud homeschool alum in Raleigh, North Carolina).
Thanks to my father, I grew up awash in basic-b conservative writing. Much of it is either somewhat sophomoric (most of the Sowell books I consumed, Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind) in comparison to work from mainstream academics or just not particularly useful anymore, but Buchanan’s prose, like Daniel Moynihan’s analysis (absorbed via my dad’s copy of Coping) or Tom Wolfe’s stylistic flights of fancy (too many to list, and we had them all) have stuck with me and been the content on which I trained the small language model (SLM) that has paid my bills for years. For that I must thank these men, since I have always had the ability (like Moynihan I suppose) to sell right-sounding cultural content to left publications and vice versa.
Back to this: it is a wonderful and quite even-handed book, with loads of cutting barbs, right up to the sudden change of pace (though I’m sure most readers just wanted the platform at the end). What stinks is that he was weaving his ideas into the story of his life, which he should’ve brought at least into the 1980s, but he didn’t and now it seems clear he won’t. This guy could’ve become at least a Belloc, which I would’ve greatly enjoyed as a reader, but instead just keep doing “the work of politics.” Probably best for his pocketbook, but bad for me. Sad!
It appears that Buchanan did two subsequent Nixon administration books but no proper conclusion to this memoir that covers his time with Reagan and nothing that will ever address his 92 and 96 primary runs (both important!) and 00 reform party bid (even more important because Trump let him have the nomination and his presence on the ballot helped Bush win that state … and most important of all because he was my first presidential vote, at the tender age of 18, as a soon-to-be college graduate and proud homeschool alum in Raleigh, North Carolina).
Thanks to my father, I grew up awash in basic-b conservative writing. Much of it is either somewhat sophomoric (most of the Sowell books I consumed, Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind) in comparison to work from mainstream academics or just not particularly useful anymore, but Buchanan’s prose, like Daniel Moynihan’s analysis (absorbed via my dad’s copy of Coping) or Tom Wolfe’s stylistic flights of fancy (too many to list, and we had them all) have stuck with me and been the content on which I trained the small language model (SLM) that has paid my bills for years. For that I must thank these men, since I have always had the ability (like Moynihan I suppose) to sell right-sounding cultural content to left publications and vice versa.
Back to this: it is a wonderful and quite even-handed book, with loads of cutting barbs, right up to the sudden change of pace (though I’m sure most readers just wanted the platform at the end). What stinks is that he was weaving his ideas into the story of his life, which he should’ve brought at least into the 1980s, but he didn’t and now it seems clear he won’t. This guy could’ve become at least a Belloc, which I would’ve greatly enjoyed as a reader, but instead just keep doing “the work of politics.” Probably best for his pocketbook, but bad for me. Sad!
August 15, 2022
Really enjoyable read. Pat has a great life story, of old school Catholic kids, full of rigorous education and a boxer's attitudes, which all built towards his leading the charge of the Old Right. One of the modern greats.
April 21, 2024
Different than expected.
Reading it seems to be the first of a two-part planned biography as it covers a few years after he finished graduate school but none really any of his most notable work experience.
Doesn't like like the second part was ever written.
Reading it seems to be the first of a two-part planned biography as it covers a few years after he finished graduate school but none really any of his most notable work experience.
Doesn't like like the second part was ever written.
December 29, 2024
Third time reading this. Pat Buchanan’s writing is laugh out loud funny, and also such a valuable window of insight into what it was like growing up in a big pre-Vatican II Catholic family in the Washington DC of the 1940s and 1950s.
July 20, 2021
Great insights in the early life of Catholic families in the Washington's enclave.
February 1, 2008
Pat Buchannan worked as a partisan commentator, speechwriter, and general conservative-thinktanker for the Republican party. Political action-figure memoirs are fascinating to run through a generation later just to see how the ideas have played themselves out over time. Many tropes continue to play themselves out, especially the GOP Big-Tent policy where religious and economic conservatives eye each other suspiciously.
Most of the book does not center on his major political career at the time, but up until the point he started writing speeches for President Richard Nixon.
SPOILER: Buchannan was for stoking the fires of fundamentalism abroad to combat Communism, which led (in part) to the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. Quite the miscalculation.
Most of the book does not center on his major political career at the time, but up until the point he started writing speeches for President Richard Nixon.
SPOILER: Buchannan was for stoking the fires of fundamentalism abroad to combat Communism, which led (in part) to the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. Quite the miscalculation.
July 18, 2021
Good book by Buchanan. His origins in the conservative movement and pursuing Nixon for a staff position in the early days of the campaign led him into a permanent position in the public sphere of American politics. When he wasn't in a staff position he was a prominent guest on panel shows and columnist.
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November 7, 2013$18.95 sig Pat Buchanan
January 1, 2016
A collection of anecdotes from the 1950s and 60s with some political commentary about which I have mixed feelings.
June 3, 2008
GO PAT GO!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews