Pat Buchanan

Kevin Phillips said it right (Opinion, Sept. 19). Pat Buchanan’s appeal, or that of any other third-party candidate, will draw votes from both sides, but it does not answer the problem that has to be addressed: the buying of Congress and the executive branch of government.

Call it lobbying or campaign money, it’s still a payoff that threatens American democracy and gives power to those who fund the politicians, confident they’ll win regardless of whom the voters elect, as most play both sides of the aisle.

Any real changes will call for a parliamentary system of government and/or three political parties, one left, one right and a centrist. Limits have to be placed on amounts given and on lobbyists who have served in government.

HYMAN H. HAVES

Pacific Palisades

* Did Ross Perot consider it to be a victory when he siphoned away enough George Bush votes that Bill Clinton was elected? Will Buchanan claim victory if he can do the same to the GOP nominee so that Al Gore will be elected president? As a democrat (small d) I think that Gore should do everything possible to get Pat the Reform Party nomination.

LOUIS INNERARITY

Los Angeles

* The older I get, the more I appreciate America’s propensity to hatch blinder-wearing characters who make our political life a bit less dull: eccentrics and fanatics in the mold of John Brown, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, George Wallace and Pat Buchanan.

In the end, these worthies tend to drag their audiences, kicking and screaming, into a less-superficial examination of what far too many of us tend to take for granted: what makes America great and how to make it even better. Here’s a toast to them all, and to their nonpolitical equivalents such as the flat-Earth folk, the creation “scientists” and the ubiquitous religious fundamentalists. You have to admit they make life a lot more spicy!

FRANK LaROCHE

Los Angeles