Pat Buchanan's season of success was brief, but respectable opinion in America and beyond is still shell-shocked by the appeal of his heretical economic ideas (protectionism to lift wages!). For nowadays there is only one economic orthodoxy, taught and proclaimed by almost all academic economists, happily celebrated by Wall Street and corporate chiefs, and fully accepted by Democrats, by Republicans and by most European political parties.

LRB 9 May 1996 | PDF Download