June 30, 1997

Washington Squares

Each week until July 14, MoJo Wire lets you test your prowess with political trivia and gives you a chance to win a <b><font color=red>FREE</font color></b> subscription to <i>Mother Jones</i> magazine. Every Tuesday we’ll have a new set of questions about a different politician, plus the answers and winners from the week before. Just make sure you play before 5 p.m. Pacific Time each Monday.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


This Week: Pat Buchanan

Pat BuchananUltra-conservative, former GOP presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan is famous for his forays in journalism and politics. Twice he left CNN’s “Crossfire” to launch presidential bids for the 1992 and 1996 races, only to quickly rejoin the show after failing to receive the Republican nomination both times. As “Crossfire” celebrates its 15th anniversary, Buchanan continues to offer the public a mouthful of controversial political debate with rotating co-hosts Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Press.

Will the political pundit finally stay in place or is he planning another leave of absence for the presidential race in 2000? Test your knowledge of his wordsmithing talents below.

  1. How does Buchanan characterize Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience?

    “Confined to negotiating water rights treaties with the governor of Mississippi.”
    “Confined to sneaking off to Moscow to get further instructions from the Kremlin.”
    “Confined to running his own travel agency.”
    “Confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes.”
    “A lot more extensive than mine.”

  2. In a cover story, TIME magazine labeled Buchanan, a “Hell Raiser: A _____ for the 90s.”

    Huey Long
    George Wallace
    William Jennings Bryan
    Joe McCarthy
    Richard Nixon

  3. Buchanan once described the Democrats as “the party of _______________.”

    socialists, Communists, and feminazis
    drum beaters for the Middle East
    national health insurance and Joycelyn Elders
    nattering nabobs of negativism
    worshippers of a false god

  4. According to Buchanan, the ” ____ is to me a symbol of defiance, courage, bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.”

    O.J. verdict
    Confederate battle flag
    McLaughlin Group
    National Liberation Front
    German military cemetery at Bitburg

  5. When Buchanan said, “they’re good people in a lot of ways,” who was he speaking about?

    Closet homosexuals
    Ivy League elitists in tweed jackets
    Pointy-headed bureaucrats who can’t park bicycles straight
    Libertarian labor workers
    Nixon, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman

Your name:

Your e-mail address
(for prize notification only):

Plus, you can add your name to our mailing list:

Ted Rueter is the author of several books on politics, including The Newt Gingrich Quiz Book and The Rush Limbaugh Quiz Book.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate