ES MOINES - Four years after he nearly took the early Republican contests by storm, Patrick J. Buchanan returned quietly to Iowa yesterday to sign copies of his new book and to try to energize a disorganized Reform Party.
Talking with a few reporters in front of a suburban bookstore where a dozen people were lined up to have ''A Republic, Not an Empire'' autographed, Buchanan insisted he had not marginalized himself by leaving the GOP.
''If I were still running here in the Republican caucuses, there would have been a much larger crowd,'' he said, ''but the election I'm in is not until November. After the two fields are cleared out in February, you're going to have Bush and Gore and people are going to be bored by the choices they've got.''
Buchanan predicted he would soon pop into the vacuum as the Reform Party's standard-bearer, arousing the same sort of populist following that beat the Republican favorite, Bob Dole, in New Hampshire in 1996 and almost carried Buchanan to victory here.
Wearing a patriotic ''E Pluribus Unum'' necktie and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Buchanan took several swipes at his erstwhile Republican allies and said he would ''turn this into a three-way race'' by autumn's general election.
The task in front of him, Buchanan said, is a ''50-state chore for us to get delegates and 29-state chore to get on the ballot.'' He met with supporters last night to begin rounding up signatures to get the Reform ticket on the November ballot here.
He minimized a report that the Reform Party's founder, Ross Perot, might become a candidate again. In a story about discord within the Reform Party in yesterday's New York Times, Perot's former hand-picked party chairman, Russell Verney, speculated that the Texas billionaire ''hasn't ruled out the possibility of running himself ... if this circus-like atmosphere gets out of hand.''
Perot's loyalists, who are generally supporting Buchanan, are involved in a struggle for control of the party with Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. Though Buchanan said he had not talked with Perot in months, he added there was ''no indication'' Perot intended to run.
As for another potential rival, Donald Trump, Buchanan said, ''I don't want to talk about a man when he's had a personal setback. He broke up with his lady,'' the model, Melania Knauss. Buchanan cackled.
The former White House speechwriter said he had not been troubled by the Republican candidates who criticized him for his historical observations in his latest book, which suggested that Hitler's Germany was no menace to America. ''They said what they said, so that's sort of behind us,'' Buchanan said.
He said the ''class warfare'' aspects of his relationship, as a pugnacious, middle-class Catholic, with the patrician Bush family had been ''drastically overstated.'' Though he referred to President Bush as ''King George'' during his challenge of the Republican incumbent in 1992, Buchanan said the elder Bush ''was a very good friend of mine in the Reagan White House.''
''I think his son - whom I don't know very well - seems to be a very personable individual,'' Buchanan said. ''But I do think it's become a Bush party, and that's not the Reagan party I recall and not the party I want to belong to.''
Asked whether Texas Governor George W. Bush had become ''King George's heir,'' Buchanan laughed again and said, ''He looks like it. I don't see anybody who's going to stop him right now.''
He complained that Steve Forbes had appropriated one of his old mantras - ''No US troops under UN command'' - in an attempt to win over the Buchanan bloc. Buchanan said he expected his former followers to scatter their votes among all the GOP candidates.
Buchanan, who joined the Reform Party in October, expressed annoyance that a presidential debate commission might cut the Reform candidate out of next fall's nationally televised debates. He said it was another instance of ''the two-party establishment trying to deny a third party access to the American people.'' Speaking of one of the commission members, former Republican national chairman Frank Farenkopf, Buchanan questioned his right to make the determination and dismissed him as ''a million-dollar-a-year lobbyist for the gambling industry.''
Recalling his days as a Republican insurgent, he said he expected to win support again for his views on limiting immigration and for American intervention overseas, and for his support of a trade policy ''that says `America First' and retains our economic independence.''
When it was suggested that prosperity did not enhance a Buchanan candidacy, he retorted: ''You mean I depend on hard times and bad attitudes?'' He laughed, and then grew serious again. ''There's no doubt that the issue of trade resonates more when people are hurting, as they were in New Hampshire in '92.''
Referring to recent disruptions in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization, he continued, ''I think more and more Americans are seeing that even in good times, their sovereignty and control of our national destiny is being surrendered. I think our issues are going to bite.''
He paused. ''But if the Dow is at 15,000, then it's much tougher to make the case.''
