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Book Review: 'Blinded by the Right'

By PETER ROFF, UPI National Political Analyst

WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- No one is exactly sure when political arguments first moved beyond policy into the realm of the intensely personal. Most observers point to the fight over Judge Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court as the turning point.

The Senate, it should be remembered, rejected Bork after a pitched and heated battle in which his opinions were distorted, his character was attacked and his qualifications were ignored.

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Other who have written on the subject call the Bork nomination the point at which the implicit concerns that exist over every Supreme Court nominee became explicit -- laying the groundwork for the way the Senate now handles, or mishandles, judicial nominations.

It was called the politics of personal destruction and it made some of the people who covered it famous.

One who parlayed these battles into wealth and celebrity is David Brock, a former journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and The American Spectator magazine who found fame and fortune in the tense ideological clashes of the late '80s and '90s.

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Brock fell out of favor with many former friends when his second book, on former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was not the hatchet job that many expected it to be.

Relations with his friends on the right became further complicated when his homosexuality became public knowledge shortly after that book was published.

Now, Brock has chronicled his life in Washington in a new memoir, "Blinded by the Right" (Crown Publishers, 2002, $25.95. 336 pages).

It is not a very good book.

Before proceeding further and in the interests of full disclosure let me say that I know David Brock and consider him a friend. I attended a farewell party for former U.S. Rep. Michael Huffington, R-Calif., and his now-former wife, columnist Arianna, at his Georgetown home.

I know many of the people about whom he writes in the book, some of them quite well. During my 15 years as a Washington political operative, I worked for at least two of them and socialized with many more.

Republican GOPAC, the legendary political training organization that helped advance the career of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and is mentioned several times in the book, employed me as its political director for several years.

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According to Brock a man named Peter Smith, who was one among the group's thousands of donors, helped underwrite his anti-Clinton investigative efforts. During my tenure, GOPAC was not involved in the effort and is likely only mentioned in an effort to give Gingrich, whom Brock repeatedly slams in the book, the appearance of a larger role in the undermining of the Clinton administration then is likely merited.

For all that, I eagerly anticipated the publication of the book, least of all to learn whether I was worthy of a mention.

I wasn't.

The book is narrative of Brock's life in Washington, the fame he found after exposing the flaws in the claims Anita Hill made about Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and his fall.

It is also his version of the conflict he felt as a closeted homosexual moving among the corridors of power alongside other the young conservatives who defined so much of what went on in Washington during the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton years,

The personnel aspect of his story has much of the "poor, poor me tone" one might expect from someone who is living a lie.

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The problem with giving this book a fair evaluation is that Brock, in the period after which his estrangement from the Washington conservatives began, recanted some of the allegations he leveled at Anita Hill in The American Spectator magazine and in his best-selling book, "The Real Anita Hill."

He has subsequently backed away from other things he has written as well.

Brock also found fame through his work on the so-called Troopergate scandal, culminating an American Spectator piece revealing the exploits of Bill and Hillary Clinton as experienced by some of the state troopers assigned to guard them.

Appearing on CNN in 1998, Brock, called that story "bad journalism." In that interview he would not identify what information the troopers had given him that he now believed to be false, saying only "That story was bad journalism, that I don't stand by the story any more,"

As anyone familiar with the tale of Peter and the Wolf knows, once a person has admitted to telling lies, it is hard to believe them when they are telling the truth.

The book also has a very catty tone to it, full of snide references to people who once called Brock a friend or whose hospitality he enjoyed.

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In one instance, he recalls a dinner he attended at the Washington home of Gay Hart Gaines held at her home early in 1995.

Gaines was, at the time, chairman of GOPAC -- the group I had joined as political director on Jan. 2, 1995. Brock refers to her as "an aging, blond-maned Palm Beach socialite." This is snide and unfair. As most anyone who knows her will say, she is a bundle of energy, youthful in both appearance and outlook. Anyone encountering her for the first time would likely be shocked to learn she is the mother of four grown children and a grandmother. She is also, as others can also attest, one of the kindest and most gracious people ever to set foot in the nest of vipers that is Washington.

"Blinded by the Right" is full of such ad hominem. Brock repeatedly belittles those with whom he once worked and socialized with petty slights. The overall effect is to give the book an unpleasant tone that will cause most readers to grow increasingly unsympathetic to him and his personal struggle, which undoubtedly caused him great pain for a number of years.

Equally distasteful is the way Brock speculates about the personal life of a Gingrich adviser, through comments made to him by columnist Arianna Huffington once she fell -- or jumped -- out of Newt's inner circle.

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Huffington went to some degree of trouble to discredit this adviser, whom she blamed for her inability to manipulate Gingrich as she sought to manipulate others through her money, good looks and intellect.

Again, in the interests of full disclosure, she once attempted to enlist me in this effort on the shuttle from New York to Washington, although I did not realize it at the time.

In any case, Brock recounts Huffington's efforts in a way that blackens the adviser's reputation. It is a tactic that is unfair, mean-spirited and suggestive while offering no proof. It is also a tactic Brock used against the Clintons, whose supporters attacked it then and should attack it now, if principle is any guide.

There are more insider tales that could be dissected but the general thrust should be clear. Brock, who bolted from the ranks of the conservative intellectual elite and into the political embrace of former Washington Post writer and Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, became an agent of those attempting to destroy what Brock himself had helped create.

Needless to say, both sides played by the same disreputable rules.

Much if not all of what is in the book that has been embraced by the pro-Clinton, anti-Clarence Thomas crowd is not new. It has appeared elsewhere under Brock's name and in the works of others.

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When all is said and done, the Thomas case will always be a matter of "he said-she said" for the few Americans who still care about it and it is unlikely that anything Brock says about the anti-Clinton journalism and political activity in the '90s will change any minds.

A quick best-seller, it will like be remaindered with equal speed, suffering the same fate as so many other "Washington insider" books from the Clinton era.

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