“Oh Jesus,” I replied, thinking this naturally meant the end of any relationship we'd ever have. But he laughed. “Yeah, it's one of the funniest things I've ever read.”

One of the first things I asked him that afternoon was something that had been simmering in my head for at least a year or so and that was how he could feel comfortable with strange friends like me and Rick Sterns, and particularly how he could possibly feel comfortable sitting out in the open -- in plain sight of the whole Watergate crowd -- with a known monster whose affection for Richard Nixon was a matter of fairly brutal common knowledge -- or how he felt comfortable playing poker once or twice a week sometimes with Rick Sterns, whose political views are almost as diametrically opposed to Buchanan's as mine are. He shrugged it off with a grin, opening another beer. “Oh, well, we ideologues seem to get along better than the others. I don't agree with Rick on anything at all that I can think of, but I like him and I respect his honesty.”

A strange notion, the far left and far right finding some kind of odd common ground beside the Watergate pool and particularly when one of them is a top Nixon speechwriter, spending most of his time trying to keep the Boss from sinking like a stone in foul water, yet now and then laughingly referring to the White House as The Bunker.

After the sixth or seventh beer, I told him about our abortive plot several nights earlier to seize Colson out of his house and drag him down Pennsylvania Avenue tied behind a huge gold Oldsmobile Cutlass. He laughed and said something to the effect that “Colson's so tough, he might like it.” And then, talking further about Colson, he said, “But you know he's not really a Conservative.”

And that's what seems to separate the two GOP camps, like it separates Barry Goldwater from Richard Nixon. Very much like the difference between the Humphrey Democrats and the McGovern Democrats. The ideological wing versus the pragmatists, and by Buchanan's standards it's doubtful that he even considers Richard Nixon a Conservative.

My strange and violent reference to Colson seemed to amuse him more than anything else. “I want to be very clear on one thing,” I assured him. “If you're thinking about having me busted for conspiracy on this, remember that I've already deliberately dragged you into it.” He laughed again and then mentioned something about the “one overt act” necessary for a conspiracy charge, and I quickly said that I had no idea where Tex Colson even lived and didn't really want to know, so that even if we'd wanted to drag the vicious bastard down Pennsylvania Avenue at 60 miles per hour behind a gold Oldsmobile Cutlass we had no idea, that night, where to find him, and about halfway into the plot we crashed into a black and gold Cadillac on Connecticut Avenue and drew a huge mob of angry blacks who ended all thought of taking vengeance on Colson. It was all I could do to get out of that scene without getting beaten like a gong for the small crease our rented Cutlass had put in the fender of the Cadillac.