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Blinded by the Right by David Brock

Cannonball Read / Josie Brown

Book Reviews | June 16, 2009 | Comments (13)

A while back, I posted a fairly broad post on some recent comments from Michael Steele, and amongst my other gripes with Steele’s specific topic, I also mentioned that the GOP has deviated from its early-90s era strategy. Regardless of your political affiliation, it’s easy to see the power of The Gingrich led strategy, which demanded that members of the party adhere to certain key principles in public discourse, leaving more individual initiatives for behind-the-scenes development. This presented a clear image of the party to the public and allowed the GOP to define their political agenda in a more coherent way than really had been done before in any party.

David Brock came to conservatism as this GOP revolution picked up speed. Having spent much of his formative political life either somewhat disconnected from the prevailing drift of his environment or immersed in the drippy hyperliberalism of certain sections of academia, conservatism seemed to be the answer to many political questions Brock wanted to answer. His fearless approach to political discourse and willingness to push the boundaries served him well, and he became a key party player. However, he eventually became uncomfortable with the GOP’s direction through a series of events and a shift in tone, and fell away from the party somewhat dramatically.

This is an interesting look into modern party politics, consulting, lobbying and … politicking, really. You should check it out, because from the outside, it’s very hard to understand how politics happens in this country. There are just so many moving parts; this allows people to see a little bit of how it all comes together. I think it’s particularly helpful to see one individual’s path from burgeoning political awareness to active participation in the system to the need for change once involved. It’s very easy to discount political actors as being hopeless ideologues, but Brock’s account of his political life shows that there is consideration and evolution in thought for many people in politics, particularly when a party undergoes a seismic shift. It will be interesting to see how the Republican party — and the Democrat party — changes in this new political landscape. I expect the combination of Michael Steele’s leadership at the GOP and Obama’s new vision of the Democrat party to be extremely interesting in the years to come.

I think Brock’s story speaks to a very common modern dilemma — the tendency to inaccurately explain and understand conservatism and liberalism. I don’t know that Brock is truly an ex-conservative. I think he’s probably an ex-NeoCon or an ex-GOP-Member, but his values as he explains them still trend towards the conservative. The problem with aligning our political parties with longstanding political ideologies is that it eventually becomes impossible to separate the two. Many of my friends would rather wind up naked at a public, televised speaking event than call themselves liberals, but they cling tightly to a fairly large selection of classical liberal ideals. Same thing with liberal friends and conservatism. We’re really at a strange point in political discourse and to a certain extent it does worry me - if we can’t separate pop liberalism from classical liberalism, how can we hope to discuss either, much less contrast them?

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. You can read more of Josie Brown’s reviews at her blog, The Outlaw Josie Brown


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Comments

Very interesting. I liked your review - and admit that I don't particularly understand conservatism (or liberalism apparently) and that leaves me with a bad tasted in my mouth every time I go vote. It also means that those of us who straddle issues dear to both ends of the spectrum are left looking a little awkward and silly.

Posted by: Stella at June 16, 2009 9:43 AM

One thing- I notice that you say "Democrat party." I believe that's actually a little Conservative inside joke started to imply that Democrats have nothing to do with Democracy, or something of the like. The irony of course being that Republicans are no longer interested in a Republic either (and I would bet a stupefying majority of both parties don't know the difference anyway).

Continuing:
I haven't read this, but I would bet that Adam Curtis' BBC documentary Century of the Self is an even more clear vision of the processes at work here, and as a bonus he also shows them at work in the Clinton years. As great as it is that people realize that one party is hoodwinking them, it's so frustrating that they then assume theirs isn't, or dismiss the hoodwinking as a necessary evil to combat the hoodwinking of the other side.

Finally, I'm wary of the implication that everybody would agree if it weren't for political machinations, and more importantly that that would be a good thing. People are supposed to disagree about a lot of things. This country was at one time unique in its freedom to explore those differences. The beauty of our system of government is that it when it works properly, it only achieves the things that everybody agrees on, not the whims of one person or group. Deliberately aligning your views with someone else's for the sake of compromise defeats the purpose; the compromise is built into the process. Compromise your principles before you vote and before you know it you're screaming about things you have no reason to care about, like gay marriage or abortion.

Posted by: Eep at June 16, 2009 9:43 AM

Is it too much to refer to the Democratic Party by its right name? Not doing so makes the writer look like . . well, it makes you look like a right-wing jackass pushing coded terms.

I'm not a Democrat, but I react to these things like an English teacher confronted with regionalistic triple negatives.

Posted by: idiosynchronic at June 16, 2009 9:44 AM

His fearless approach to political discourse and willingness to push the boundaries . . .

Um, no. We're talking about the guy who gleefully took the blades to Anita Hill. "A little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" is not fearlessly pushing boundaries, it's slander. Let's not whitewash what this little puke did in service to the Gingrich Revolution.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at June 16, 2009 9:48 AM

Eep, I disagree about having the choice - there's a false choice at work in our system. Either you vote for Democrat (who ostensibly is for social welfare, big government and socialized healthcare, not to mention an abortion clinic on every corner) or you vote Republican (who ostensibly is for less government, fiscal responsibility, big military, who-cares-what-the-rest-of-the-world-thinks-of-us, zero sex education, zero condoms, zero abortions, zero social welfare).

Problem is, most of us fall somewhere in between those two extremes. So those of us social liberals but fiscal conservatives are left feeling like we are the red headed stepchildren. Further, we cannot vote with a clear conscience because each vote becomes a vote AGAINST something we care about.

Posted by: Stella at June 16, 2009 9:49 AM

Stella-
I agree that's the way the system works now, but that's because people sold out some of their principles to consolidate their power. First politicians did it, but now voters do it too. I know uber conservatives who are fine with gay marriage... but they'll still vote for candidates who oppose it because, as you say, that's the choice they have. The country wasn't supposed to have parties they way it does; we should be able to vote to people much closer to our own views, and our votes and the power should be much closer to the local level.

You might want to look at the views of the Libertarian or Constitution Parties, but of course they're parties too with the same issues associated, but I bet their views would be closer to your own. The really important thing at work here is that you're aware that you aren't really being served well by the system as it stands. The more people realize that, the better chance that things can actually change.

Posted by: Eep at June 16, 2009 9:56 AM

Eep, that was my completely-unstated and mangled point; if we had more choice (as in other countries, who have a multitude of political parties) I would at least feel more represented.

Posted by: Stella at June 16, 2009 10:08 AM

Well-stated, Eep. I voted Libertarian last election, but there's a chicken-and-egg thing with that party. I think most people would agree with the party's basic tenets -- let's all mind our own damn business and keep more of the money we earn -- but think voting Libertarian is throwing a vote away. Unfortunately, it is, until more of us vote Libertarian.

Something's gotta give. The two major parties now (and their accomplices in the MSM, as Limbaugh would put it) seem so polarized, the time is ripe for a party of the middle to emerge. It's changing people's mindsets and voting habits that will be hard hard hard. Too bad Reform fizzled.

BTW, I like that we can have (mostly) rational, reasonable political discourse here.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at June 16, 2009 10:31 AM

Agreed on all points, bucdaddy. I've talked politics on a baseball board but it was just yelling and logic wasn't really invited to the party.

Posted by: Eep at June 16, 2009 10:41 AM

Eep/Stella,
That is one of my many problems with the political system. Both major parties immediately dismiss any other party as "crackpot" and convince everyone not to listen to them. People need to be smarter about voting than just blindly following a familiar name, and candidates from smaller groups need to be savvier about how they present themselves.

Posted by: Kballs at June 16, 2009 11:04 AM

Indeed, kballs. Dear Libertarian party: when the major knock on your act is a reputation, undeserved or otherwise, for being a bit wacky, sending up a candidate with a mustache and kooky glasses is not the correct play.

Posted by: Eep at June 16, 2009 11:37 AM

My impression was that this guy wasn't so much a journalist with a right-wing bent as he was a party hack, who then took an opportunistic flip. Not really a principled or admirable character.

As for "Democrat party" I always thought this term was used to make clear that it was referring to that particular political party, and not implying that it was the "democratic" party while the opposition was opposed to democracy (as would be the case in a political system where one party was pro-democracy and the other was authoritarian).

Posted by: Bd at June 16, 2009 3:36 PM

Re: Democrat Party. It's a thing conservatives came up with to drive liberals/Dems nuts. It also has the benefit of having the word "rat" right at the end so backs up all kinds of fun associations. The correct name is Democratic Party (seriously it's on the building and everything).

Tracer--He actually talks about what he did to Anita Hill in the book quite a bit. He's apologized to her repeatedly and publicly. It's fine if you still hold it against him, just didn't know if you were aware of that.

I really like this book a lot, mostly because it illustrates a lot of the disinformation that we have in our political discourse now. It focuses on the right's lies, but the whole idea of undermining people's character and whisper campaigns is seen from all sides with the way the media works now.

Posted by: zenhound at June 16, 2009 5:03 PM