Sex, lies, and… (Book Review)

01 Wednesday Feb 1995

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Commentary

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. By Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. Houghton Mifflin. 406 pp. $24.95.

The media blitz that accompanied the publication of Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Wall Street Journal reporters Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, ought to be studied and analyzed by publicists much as the campaigns of Hannibal, Nelson, and Rommel are studied by military tacticians. Now here was a brilliant public-relations barrage: a massive excerpt in the Wall Street Journal; an hour-long edition of ABC’s Turning Point devoted to the book, with Ted Koppel’s Nightline and Larry King Live in tow; a volley of morning shows; articles landing everywhere from Newsweek to Mirabella; and even a National Book Award nomination announced in a feat without precedent in the annals of history before the tightly-held volume was in the hands of anyone but the publishers and the competition’s judges.

This tally is hardly exhaustive, merely illustrative. Strange Justice clearly struck a chord that set virtually the entire American media culture humming in sympathetic vibration.

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Early Planning Helped GOP Overcome Big Hurdle in House

30 Monday Jan 1995

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Insight

I had a meeting to go to in the Capitol shortly after the Nov. 8 election. On previous occasions, I’ve greeted the prospect of a visit there much the way a vegetarian would look forward to a trip to the stockyards. The problem is here.

The imperial Congress, the growth of government and of its intrusiveness into American life, the disingenuousness bordering on fraud in the legislative process – the whole catastrophe. In my darker moments, I could imagine the place as the center of evil in the universe, complete with demons such as Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio.

This view is, of course, nuts: In fact, the monumental political achievement of constitutional, representative government, in which a free people manage their own affairs, will be a light unto the ages, and anyway, the real center of evil in the universe is 1111 Constitution Ave., headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service.

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Now, the Best Revenge Is to Play Hard By Their Rules

25 Wednesday Jan 1995

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Insight

The holiday season is upon us, a time to gather with family and friends in the spirit of fellowship, to look back at the past year with thanks, to look forward to the promise a new year brings – and to plot revenge against our political enemies.

Unfortunately for such right-wing types as myself, in holiday seasons past, plotting was about as far as we got. This year, however, looks to be different. Thanks to the change in power in Washington, we actually may be able to make the leap from plotting revenge to exacting it.  It is, of course, an awesome responsibility, one not to be taken lightly. If we seem like we are in any way enjoying this task, well, it’s probably just the Christmas eggnog.

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Taking the Old Guard to School: Bring Plenty of Dunce Caps

19 Monday Dec 1994

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Insight

I have decided that I should open a one-room schoolhouse. In my little schoolhouse, I will have a desk, a lectern, an old-fashioned chalkboard and a pointer. There will be an American flag in the corner of the classroom. In neat little rows in front of my desk will be desks for my pupils – little wooden desks with inkwells. And the desks will be hinged so that my pupils can store their school supplies inside. The little wooden chairs for my pupils will be attached to the little wooden desks, forming little wooden units that my pupils will have to slide into from the side.

And into the little desk units in my one-room schoolhouse, I will put the entirety of the
Washington press corps, minus the tiny number of its members who already have mastered the subject matter that I will teach.

And I will commence the lesson: “Republicans for Beginners.”

I also probably am going to need a lot of dunce caps.

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Bob Woodward Meets Bill Clinton

01 Tuesday Nov 1994

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Commentary

IS THERE a more celebrated journalist, or for that matter a more reviled one, than Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer prize-winning assistant managing editor for investigations at the Washington Post? No one can deny that, for better or worse, his daily reporting with Carl Bernstein on Watergate contributed mightily to the downfall of the Nixon administration twenty years ago. The two books that came out of that episode, All the President’s Men and The Final Days, are as classic as they are controversial still.

Since then, Woodward has given us a look inside the Supreme Court (The Brethren, written with Scott Armstrong); an explosive and heavily litigated biography of a Hollywood superstar (Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi); Veil, a chronicle of “the secret wars of the CIA” during the Reagan administration, including, incredibly, a purported death-bed interview with the CIA’s William Casey; and The Commanders, a portrait reaching to the very top of the United States military establishment, published as the nation prepared to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

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The High-Cholesterol State (Book Review)

01 Saturday Oct 1994

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Commentary

Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government. By Jonathan Rauch. Times Books. 250 pp. $22.00.

“Demosclerosis,” in Jonathan Rauch’s diagnosis, is “government’s progressive loss of the ability to adapt.” Ever since World War II, he maintains, powerful underlying social forces have intersected with a structural weakness in modern democratic politics to allow entrenched interests to dominate government. This brief but sweeping book, by a contributing editor of the National Journal, is an attempt to describe and analyze those forces. Rauch’s hope is that if we cannot liberate ourselves from their grip, we can at least prevent them from choking off whatever vitality remains in American life.

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BOOK REVIEW: Capitol Games: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the Story of a Supreme Court Nomination

01 Thursday Oct 1992

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The American Spectator

Capitol Games: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the Story of a Supreme Court Nomination; by Timothy M. Phelps and Helen Winternitz; Hyperion /458 pages/$24.95

The problems with Timothy Phelps and Helen Winternitz’s Capitol Games: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the Story of a Supreme Court Nomination begin with its title and end with its last sentence. The title is noncommittal, nonjudgmental. It seems to promise a disinterested insiders’ account of events from June 27, 1991, when Thurgood Marshall announced he was retiring from the high court, to October 26, when the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas for the seat — journalism in its “objective” or “fair” or “balanced” sense.

As for the last sentence, we may take it as an oblique summa of the authors’ position on the truth or falsity of Prof. Hill’s charge that Thomas sexually harassed her: “The Republicans had no appetite,” the authors archly aver, “for investigating the alleged conspiracy that they say had been concocted to sabotage their nominee to the Supreme Court.” It is a detail, the final detail, that the authors seem to regard as “telling.” What does it tell? That even the Republicans, who are earlier described as willing to “stop at nothing” to see their man confirmed, may themselves not have believed Thomas.

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