Brazile and Buchanan Get Cozy at the Lesher

Anyone expecting a lioness vs. the lion teardown at the Lesher Center’s Newsmakers debate between political commentator Donna Brazile and three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan left the theater disoriented.

Even Steve Lesher, who introduced the lecture series match-up, worried the pair’s backstage camaraderie would lead to a spark-free evening.

Laying their individual groundwork came first and Brazile was given the opportunity to open.

“I’ve been to eight of the Republican Party’s presidential debates,” she announced. “Soon, I’ll need to be baptized again as a Democrat!”

Predicting that Mitt Romney would likely “knock down enough delegates” to win his party’s nomination by mid-April, Brazile itemized the rough road ahead.

“He’s not rallying independents, women, young people, and those making less than $40,000,” she declared. “He’s going to come out [of the primaries] a battered candidate.”

Standing astride a deep history of political involvement that started when she was 9 years old and worked to have a city council candidate elected after he promised a priority for playground equipment, Brazile also foresaw grim reality for President Barack Obama.

Citing rising gas prices, tension in the Middle East and the European debt crisis — and despite the fact that Congress is “as popular as a root canal” — she described the political landscape as “volatile.”

Americans are in a “foul mood,” she suggested. Searching for humor, she added that even with a hurricane and an earthquake last year, "nothing moved in Washington, D.C.”

Before turning the floor over to Buchanan, she made a promise.

“If you decide to run in 2016, Pat, I’ll go buy another red suit.”

Buchanan was also in a joking frame of mind.

“[Obama’s approval rating] is so low, even the Kenyans are saying he was born in the United States.”

Matching Brazile’s bullet-style list, he outlined Obama’s weakness: a 41 percent approval rate that hovers close to Romney’s, an agenda that is largely “wrapped up”, the inability to unite the country, a lack of fiscal hawkishness and a presidency that has lost its aura.

“If we elect Obama, is not the next four years going the the same as the last four?” he asked.

Offering a malodorous cliché, Buchanan said “the bloom is off the rose” and Democrats are losing because they “don’t have George W. Bush to kick around anymore.”

The elephants in the closet — and one of the subjects on which the speakers aligned themselves side-by-side — are super PACs.

“Both Mr. Romney and Mr. (Rick) Santorum have sugar daddies,” Brazile complained. “All we’re doing is flooding the airways with money.”

Brazile called the large donations “corrosive” and Buchanan agreed.

“These are weapons of mass destruction,” he said, repeatedly. “They are operators that are utterly unaccountable.”

Buchanan said the negative attack ads that super PACs support have hurt Newt Gingrich, but added, “Gingrich is so angry, [to get him to drop out of the race,] they’d have to take him out to the crossroads and drive a stake through his heart.”

An audience member asked why anyone would want to run for president.

“Because they love the country, believe in freedom and in service,” Brazile answered.

Another asked if the country is involved in a culture war and what that even means.

“There’s a dominant, irreconcilable division in beliefs,” Buchanan said, citing Proposition 8 and abortion as issues that make it impossible for the country to come together.

“We don’t listen to each other — we trample on each other,” Brazile interjected. “I just lost my dad and I have to tell you, he called me on 9-11 and said, ‘Have you joined the army?’”

Brazile laughed, telling the audience what she had told her dad. That her age, 41 at the time, was too old, and that his, 69, was way over the limit.

“‘Get President Bush on the phone,’” he insisted, proving his devotion to America, if not a realistic mindset.

“He saw this country and that’s what I see — not these divisions,” she concluded.

Tap dancing across issues relating to the economy, reproductive health services for women and other political hot buttons, Brazile and Buchanan left a last impression uniting their distanced positions on the political spectrum.

“It’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to,” Brazile said, quoting her mother.

The call they both hear? 

Proud to be Americans.