If there’s one familiar face you always see on TV around election time, it is conservative three-time former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Those who don’t watch him very much may still associate him with the staunch right-wing stances of the politicians like Nixon and Reagan for whom he worked as speechwriter and advisor, and with his often bellicose shouting matches with opponents on TV on political pot-stirrers like Crossfire. If that were all he were, his chart would be mysterious, indeed.

After all, the only solid, conservative earth in the chart are the generational outer planets Uranus and Neptune, and a Pisces Moon is not exactly the stuff of someone who holds his ground after the times move on — quite the opposite, it’s a shifting, windsock kind of indicator. And, a see-saw chart would suggest that this is someone who swings from one side to the other and doesn’t stake out a single stance.

Of course, those who have followed his career and enjoy him today know that this is precisely what he’s made of. His greatest enjoyment comes not from staying the course in a single mission but having a simply marvelous fight of it, taking a contentious and opposite side whenever there’s an issue to disagree on. He’s usually on the far right, because that’s the most contentious position to be had, but not always. He’s not so much on a single political life mission but pursuing a journalistic (or debating-club spawned) art, which he excelled in during college and before getting into politics, and again well after leaving the political arena and rejoining journalism.

With Uranus at the MC and 7th-house Aquarian Jupiter opposite his showy, roaring Leo Ascendant, he loves a good scrap and has been known to take either side of most issues if there’s no one else in the room willing to argue the point. For all his bellowing, that Pisces Moon betrays a sensitive and rather jovial nature. Whichever side of the fray he’s on at the moment (which can be several, within a single broadcast), and that Scorpio Sun keeps him true to himself while being willing to recognize the rules and history of the game and respect them. He’s really rather like his current MSNBC camera-mate Chris Matthews (whose official politics lean leftward but who also appreciates all sides) in that they both love the game of politics in and of itself, however it’s currently turning out.

Current events: It’s worth noting his solo political career began on his progressed New Moon of 1986 when his sister Babe began a Buchanan-for-president movement and it ended with the full Moon of that cycle in 2000 in his last run for office (new Moon is where you launch out, full Moon is where you cash in), and he’s been back to journalism ever since. With transiting Neptune right on his Descendant (that’s Obama’s Ascendant, BTW), he’s more shifting than ever, giving as much good advice to the Democrats as the Republicans, lying back on his own always-libertarian beliefs to justify his positions in combination with sage, on-the-ground political advice. He’s in the catbird seat, looking down on the fray, and happy to be there…

[note: for those observant sticklers who may have had Buchanan’s birth data from that usually-impeccable source AstroDatabank listing him born in Mt. Vernon, NY, all other sources say Washington, D.C., including his autobiography. Regardless, between the two places, the Ascendant is the same, the MC only two degrees different]