Pat Buchanan

* Before Democrats start cheering at the prospect of a third-party run by Pat Buchanan, they should remember some painful lessons of recent history. Yes, Buchanan would probably take enough votes away from George W. Bush to make it possible for Al Gore or Bill Bradley to emerge as president. But the last thing the Democratic Party and the country need is another minority president elected with 42% or 43% of the vote, who would then have to beg Congress to get anything passed. Bill Clinton’s life would have been a lot easier had he been elected with a clear majority.

What the Democratic Party needs is a strong candidate who can defeat Bush with 55% of the vote. The country would then have a president who would be feared and respected by the opposition.

WILLIAM WOHLGANG

Sherman Oaks

* I was 10 years old at the end of World War II and grew up with certain assumptions about the world that were drawn from the community around me. Those assumptions were somewhat slanted in favor of democracy. When you look back at the history that I missed before the war, you find that the right wing in this country had a flirtation with Hitler. There were rallies in this country for him. There was an active German-American Bund. Father Coughlin, a Catholic radio personality, was virulently anti-Semitic.

In the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and beyond, members of the right wing in this country have had to completely shut up about their core beliefs. They were reduced to supporting surrogate Hitlers like Francisco Franco, Ferdinand Marcos and Augusto Pinochet. Now Buchanan has broken the bonds of political correctness and let us know what a Nixon speech writer and the Republican right wing are really about. Germany suffered a chain of catastrophes that led into the Hitler period. We are currently at the top of our game. The joke that is Buchanan could get serious if we returned to bad times.

DAVID L. EASTMAN

Costa Mesa