Continuing the look at Politics and Elections past, here is a portion of an NPR All Things Considered Special election broadcast on the occasion of Pat Buchanan winning the 1996 New Hampshire Republican primary.

Winning by one percentage point over Bob Dole, who refused to concede, the victory of Pat Buchanan signaled a further shift to the Right for the Republican Party. Buchanan, a staunch Social Conservative, advocated a kind of "lock and load" policy where Foreign Policy was concerned. Also was vehemently opposed to Roe V. Wade and was determined to overturn it. He was also anti-gay, anti-government and favoring an isolationist view of our place in the rest of the world.

Interesting and eerie parallels between the Buchanan of 1996 and the current crop of hopefuls.

Here is the broadcast from February 22, 1996 from All Things Considered.

(So infamous, they even wrote songs about him)

The name J.Edgar Hoover has been fading from Americas collective memory the past few decades. He died in 1972. But from 1924 up until his death he ran the FBI, taking it from a somewhat bumbling government agency into a monolith that was synonymous with eavesdropping, wiretaps, file keeping, political power plays, espionage and dirty tricks. He was the reason all subsequent FBI Directors had term limits. He made the FBI his life and his kingdom and was in charge right up to the last. He was the guy with all the secrets and he made a lot of innocent lives uncomfortable as the result.

Here he is from September 23, 1940 giving an address to the America Legion Convention in Boston, talking about one of his favorite subjects, The Communist Threat and "Foreignism".

With all that paranoia floating around, it's a wonder anybody slept at night.