I’ve always wondered about the details of the reconciliation between Hillary Clinton and David Brock. As an investigative reporter for The American Spectator in the 1990s, Brock published whatever the Arkansas state troopers told him about Bill Clinton and his women and put the rumor about Vince Foster and Hillary into print. His tone and loose reporting ethics arguably unleashed two decades of cheap tabloid right-wing best sellers that still dog Hillary and Bill today. Is that really something the Clintons ever got past?
Brock’s new book, “Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government,” provides the answer, which is yes, and without hesitation. In January 2003 Brock was alone in his Georgetown home when he got a call from Bill Clinton. Brock had recently published “Blinded by the Right,” his extravagant mea culpaclaiming that just as Hillary suspected, there had been a “vast right-wing conspiracy” out to destroy the Clintons, and he was sorry to have been a part of it. Bill was very well versed in the book, according to Brock, and had purchased dozens of copies for friends. Bill suggested, nay, “insisted” that Brock see Clinton’s speaker’s agent right away, and start touring the country to expose the lies of the right; Brock countered them with a permanent organization, which eventually turned into Media Matters.
Hillary, meanwhile, “sprang into action,” inviting Brock to pitch her Senate fund-raising council and speak at a dinner for donors in her Chappaqua home. She even followed him down the driveway to list the dinner guests who had already expressed interest. Brock’s book had made him a pariah among his conservative friends. The Clintons gave him a new place to be a hero.
This must be a distinctly Clintonian trajectory of forgiveness: If you are no longer my enemy, then I must immediately weaponize you. (Bill has made up with several of his old Arkansas foes. He even gave a fond eulogy at the memorial service for Richard Mellon Scaife, the chief funder of the vast right-wing conspiracy.) Being savvy and experienced politicians, the Clintons probably intuited what was changing in the political landscape, and what Brock lays out in his latest book: The conservatives had built an extensive and very effective propaganda machine, and the Democrats were going to need all the help they could get.
On this last point, Brock’s book makes a convincing case. When he was part of the enemy team, he and his fellow conspirators were hatching their stories at bars in Little Rock and, if they were lucky, getting a little viral bump from Matt Drudge. Now the enemies have offices on K Street and the full power of Fox News, plus dozens of other conservative media outlets, PACs and opposition research groups. The conspiracy has matured into a formidable conglomerate, amply funded and thoroughly integrated with the Republican establishment. It’s an important historical shift, but I wish someone else were documenting it. So dogged is Brock’s devotion to Hillary that it often gets in the way of his being credible, not to mention interesting.
Sometimes reading the book feels like being trapped in a particularly dull town hall meeting — as on the pages that bullet-point Hillary’s accomplishments as secretary of state or the achievements of the Clinton Foundation: “More than 33,500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced annually,” etc., etc. Sometimes it reads like a generic ad designed to introduce a political newbie: Hillary is “a woman with a steadfast commitment to public service, a clear political vision and a deep well of personal integrity.” Or the version that might fit on a bumper sticker: “America is so ready for Hillary,” because “she is so ready to lead.”
In Brockworld no criticism of the Clintons has ever contained a shred of truth. Hillary was an “outstanding” secretary of state. Benghazi is a “pseudoscandal.” The Clinton Foundation does “pathbreaking global philanthropy.” Hillary’s use of nongovernmental email when she was secretary of state was totally legit. Clinton fatigue is a myth. And after Bill left office, the Clintons actually were pretty broke, because “at every opportunity, they chose to devote their time and energy to improving their community, their country and their world . . . rather than cash out.” It doesn’t even seem to matter to Brock if the criticism was made on Glenn Beck’s show or in The New York Times; it’s always “sloppy” and “innuendo-laden,” as Brock complained to The Times about an early article on the email scandal. Or contradictory. Or sexist.
Brock is right about some of these criticisms. Benghazi does seem at this point like a trumped-up scandal merely designed to remind voters of all the other scandals attached to the Clintons. He is half right about some of them. Hillary may not have technically broken any laws by using a private email server, for example, but does she really expect us to believe that she did it because it was inconvenient to carry two BlackBerrys? And some of his defenses are just laughable — for instance, arguing that “there’s never been any evidence that the country is tired of the Clintons,” as if weariness needed data.
In his chapter on sexism, Brock recycles some of the low points of her last run for president: the heckler who yelled “Iron my shirt!,” the voter who asked John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” and the dozens of negative columns by Maureen Dowd. There is an interesting conversation to have about sexism and Hillary hatred, but this isn’t it. Eight years after her first run, the Republicans — Trump excepted, of course — have gotten more nervous about appearing sexist, more sophisticated about hinting at ugly thoughts without outright saying them. They know better than to say Hillary is too old to be president, for example. Instead, they say that she has old ideas. But Brock, who’s in permanent combat mode, goes for the easy targets.
Brock could be the ideal anthropologist of Clintonia in all its glorious forms. He was there from the beginning and is intimately familiar with the mind-set and tactics of the right. He knows the Clintons well, and if he weren’t always fighting could probably do an excellent and sophisticated analysis of how the haters have morphed over time. He’s even constructed for Hillary her own personal media watchdog, Correct the Record, which tracks and instantly zaps any negative stories about her. He really hasn’t missed a moment.
But he just doesn’t have enough distance to piece together the history effectively. “I am,” Brock writes at one point, “much more of a practical person than I am an ideological one.” I’m not sure why he would tell us that. Ideologues are unreliable narrators, but at least there is passion in their prose. Mercenaries, by contrast, are skilled at writing what this book sometimes feels like, which is an extended press release.