A successful demagogue needs the ferocity of a lion and the cunning of a fox. Thankfully, Pat Buchanan doesn’t quite measure up. He’s just Pat the Bunny, hopping around on the fringes of American politics, wiggling his nose in the air and nibbling away at whatever carrots our political system offers up for his purposes.

The biggest carrot in Pat’s sight right now is the $ 13 million of public funds available to the Reform party in 2000. And so all of a sudden he is looking to make a new home for himself in Ross Perot’s rabbit hutch. Pat indignantly rejects the notion that he’s interested in the Reform nomination because of the federal matching funds: “I don’t think anybody that knows Pat Buchanan believes he ever got into politics because of money.” That isn’t the accusation, exactly. Buchanan got into electoral politics because of vanity, not money.