Republicans Mount A Counter-Attack on Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton

After eight years of Bill Clinton, the Republicans were eager for blood. Many called for a change in tactics.
Clinton was a chimera. In 1992, he came from out of nowhere and won a race most Democrats chose to sit out assuming the incumbent was unbeatable. [Morrow, Lance. "William J. Clinton: The Torch is Passed." TIME Magazine January 4, 1993, pp. Tk]

The Republicans never could quite figure out how he beat Bush. Bush's high public approval during the Gulf War sank in a stagnant economy, and the glories of war were uncertain, with Sadaam still in power. The Bush White House was vulnerable to James Carville, the chief strategist in Clinton's camp. In contrast to Clinton's "vision-thing," the Bush camp was rudderless. The Republicans were beaten by a fresh face from the Boomer generation partly because the fresh face had superior political intelligence.

To David Horowitz, and other leading American conservatives, Clinton is variably seen as a crimeboss, a bumbling bureaucrat, and, more often, the traditional target of the Right: a liberal who gives minorities unfair advantages.

"To me the Democratic Party is a left-wing party" Horowitz said in a phone interview. (Perhaps this confusing assertion points out how ambivalent the word "left-wing" has become.) How does Horowitz explain Clinton's policy on welfare reform? Horowitz said, "Bill Clinton has confused a lot of people. He was faced with Dick Morris saying 'Sign this bill or you're going to lose the election.'...I learned this on the Left: there were people...who really believed what they were saying. And there were people who didn't believe it or they considered themselves so elevated that they didn't pay attention to it." To Horowitz, Clinton is a blind "sociopath" guided only by ambition, not values. Utterly amoral, wouldn't that make Clinton's politics not "left-wing" but rather ruthless and Machiavellian?

Conservatives agree, without actually saying, that Clinton and Carville understood modern power. They thrived on the intrigue; they were good at controlling information, covering up mistakes, manipulating public opinion and handling the press.

The Republicans needed strong tactics to respond to Clinton. This Centrist had robbed them of their agenda. In his campaign year motivational manual, The Art of Political War, David Horowitz lamented, "the Clinton Democrat Party is now the party of economic vibrancy, anti-crime laws, welfare reform laws, budget surpluses and free trade. That's what the American people want." Rove used the central ideas of The Art of Political War in his full frontal assault on the Clinton/Gore fortress. Horowitz claimed that the Left (i.e. Carville's Clinton) had a monopoly on strategy, aggression, and tactics, and that the Republican Party would not reclaim the White House until they crushed their opponent with the mercilessness of total war. Karl Rove praised Political War as the "perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield."

Borrowing liberally from The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and stereotypes from pop culture, The Art of Political War calls on Republicans to create a politics that appeals to the masses: the working families, minorities, gays, unions, etc. Horowitz demanded the Republicans abandon the traditional G.O.P. image: stiff, moralistic, intolerant. It's all about image to Horowitz, the G.O.P. politics and ideas are perfect as is.

"Republicans lose a lot of political battles because they come off as hard-edged, scolding, scowling, and sanctimonious. A good rule of thumb is to be just the opposite. You must convince people you care about them before they will care about what you have to say. When you speak, don't forget that a soundbite is all you have...keep it short-a slogan is always better. Repeat it often. Put it on television....In politics, television is reality."

By embracing the art of the soundbite and the rules of modern televised politics, Horowitz unwittingly exposes one of the themes of his politics: contempt for democracy. He does not want to have an informed electorate. He understands that television has truncated the information voters get, and this is fine with him.

Horowitz calls on Republicans to emulate his former hero Lenin, and "not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth." Horowitz's politics have remained the same from left to right: politics is war by other means. In the American arena, the battlefield is television and soundbites. You've got to instantly summarize, and sloganeer. You must be as ruthless as a young communist.

In a rare, astute observation, Horowitz points out that the American tradition is to root for the underdog. This is, after all, a country descended from immigrants, slaves, religious outcasts, native peoples, and any variation of dreamers. The idea of the frontier has left its restless impression on us. Recent surveys report only ten percent of the country identifies themselves as "Hard Republicans." The right-wing agenda isn't palatable to the majority. Horowitz realized it needs to be wrapped in a different package. Horowitz used what he knew-he drew on the messianic, liberating vision of Socialism and grafted it onto the party of big business, the military, and supply-side economics. A case could be made that the traumatic experiences of his life have actually produced a kind of intellectual disintegration and a deep need for revenge, not a consistent political ethos. A close look at his writings and interviews suggests David Horowitz hasn't weathered the turbulent century with all his faculties intact.

Superhuman strategist Karl Rove was called upon to do the impossible: defeat the Clinton/Gore legacy with Bush, an inexperienced, unaccomplished candidate who had little more to him than a name. Rove found Horowitz's writing at the right time. Rove recommended Horowitz's books to Bush, hoping he would read them despite the fact that leading Republicans readily admit Bush is "dyslexic." Rove wanted Bush to somehow understand that Horowitz could be part of the cornerstone of the agenda that could capture the White House. But without a visionary leader at the helm directing policy, Rove's plan seems less like the creation of an agenda, and more the creation of a shiny new marketing campaign.
In The Art of Political War, David Horowitz coined the term "Compassionate Conservatism," a new brand identity for the essential messages of the Right. Karl Rove became the salesman, Bush the warm, smiling mascot. The Republican Party has followed Rove's lead: Political War is today used nation-wide by the Republican Party Chairs in thirty-two states.

After a life of frustration and threats on the Left, David Horowitz has found the recognition he has always sought. However, he had to flip ideologies to get there, and endure immense psychological suffering. His mental faculties paid a heavy price.



Inside the Mind of David Horowitz

The biography of Lee Atwater starts with a childhood trauma at age six. In a bizarre modern kitchen accident, Atwater witnessed his three-year-old brother scorched to death in their kitchen by a falling deep fat fryer of boiling oil. The Atwaters repressed their suffering and never spoke about the experience. From that point on, Atwater developed an intense drive that made group acceptance and dominance his #1 priority, at the expense of relationships with his wife and friends.

Similarly, David Horowitz traces his own political transformation from personal trauma. Horowitz felt intense guilt after his friend Betty Van Patter disappeared from a job with the Black Panthers he had helped her get in Berkeley in 1974. Horowitz felt strongly that the Panthers were responsible for Van Patter's disappearance, and although no court ever named a culprit, some sources support his assertion. Simultaneous with his personal crisis and uncertainty, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge and NVA exposed the corruption of the liberation struggles that Horowitz had supported in the antiwar movement. As his personal experience with the Black Panthers made him question his Leftist politics, his politics themselves seemed to fail the grueling test of time. He realized that the Socialist Revolution, the riskiest experiment in human history, had imploded into cults of personality, hubris, and totalitarianism. The promise of the revolution and the dream of an ordered, planned economy were ruined. His personal life fell apart. He left his wife and three children following an affair with Abby Rockefeller, the main source of his dynastic biography of the Rockefeller family.

"Without question, David Horowitz was extremely traumatized by what happened with Betty Van Patter, as I think anyone would be....As a result, David just totally went berserk with regard to the left-liberal community," said Huey Newton biographer Hugh Pearson, to the Nation on July 3, 2000, [Sherman, p. Tk.]

Horowitz did not become politically active again until he voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. His memoir Radical Son takes a partisan turn and becomes intellectually suspect when Horowitz leaves the margins of dissent and enters modern party politics. Fearing that the Sandinistas would become a new Khmer Rouge, Horowitz voted for the Gipper. He wished to support the Contras, and even journeyed to Managua on behalf of the State Department to help this "band of peasant guerrillas whose land had been expropriated by the Sandinista regime." [Horowitz, Radical Son, p. 351]

In an interview, Gary Webb, (author of the suppressed Contra/CIA/cocaine expos? Dark Alliance) found Horowitz's description of the Contras highly suspect: "Some of the Contras fit that description-the cannon fodder-but the men who ran the organization and made the decisions were Somoza's old cronies from the National Guard, and the CIA. To describe them as peasant warriors is pure bullshit."

Similarly, Horowitz's description of the Black Panthers seems clouded by personal bias and his eventual political disenchantment. While attempting to put the Panthers into the context of history, he makes scant mention of COINTELPRO, the FBI's counter-intelligence program that sped their decline. Other civil libertarians from all ends of the political spectrum have railed against government infiltration and subversion of private political activities. Horowitz's neglect shows that he is regularly subjective in his selections from the historical record. He is willing to do anything to advance his point of view.

"David Horowitz is a conscious liar of the slimiest sort," states professor Ward Churchill. (Churchill is author of Agents of Repression the leading study of the relationship between the FBI, the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement) "In his book Hating Whitey, Horowitz has an essay lamenting the release of former LA Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) after 27 years imprisonment for a murder he in all likelihood did not commit....Pratt's conviction was overturned because it was finally demonstrated beyond all doubt that the key 'witness' against him, an FBI infiltrator named Julius C. Butler, had perjured himself repeatedly during the trial (another hallmark of COINTELPRO). Instead, Horowitz focuses upon trying to create the impression that Pratt was a sexual pervert who, it is implied, should have been kept behind bars regardless of his innocence of the charge on which he was actually convicted. He repeats a rumor-he attributes it to Huey Newton-that Pratt could not achieve an erection unless engaged in violence. I challenged David on this fable in a public forum at the University of Colorado during the fall of 2000. Leaving aside the question of whether the late Huey Newton was ever actually as close to Horowitz as Horowitz now maintains-and might therefore have been inclined to share such confidences with (rather dubious, when you think about it)-the fact is that Newton himself met Pratt exactly once. Hence, Huey himself was in no position to know what Horowitz claims he knew about Pratt."


"Horowitz slithered out of that one rather neatly, saying he agreed with me that this was a matter of concern, which is why he'd corroborated the story via a second source, to wit, testimony entered to the same effect by a witness in a trial. When I followed up by asking which trial, he finally began to look a bit trapped, blurting out, 'The Ollie Taylor torture case,' and quickly taking another question."

"There was never a trial concerning the Ollie Taylor torture allegations. The only trial record in which the matter appears is Geronimo Pratt's murder trial. There, it was discussed by precisely one 'witness': the perjurer, Julius C. Butler. Horowitz obviously knew this. Equally obviously, he was deliberately deceiving his audience into believing he had solid evidence where he had worse than none at all. It was a performance worthy of a Holocaust denier like David Irving-or the Feds who framed Pratt in the first place."

In an interview, Horowitz was the opposite of the conservative stereotype: the meticulous, pious, intransigent, and somber gray-haired thinker. Horowitz is still an extremist, and his personal tragedy with the Panthers seems to have simply inverted his political standing, not his style. Conversation with him is peppered with sarcasm, four-letter words, and lively jumps from idea to idea. "People are fuck-ups. They are lazy," shouted Horowitz into the phone. "With the Democrats in power, poor people are fucked, this country is fucked, and the world is fucked. That's what I think of the Democrats."