Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, by Ann Coulter. Crown, 2002, 256 pages.

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Blonde Bombshell

by Clark Stooksbury

I have strongly divergent opinions of Ann Coulter. I sometimes find her outrageously cheeky — attacking the editors of National Review as "girly-boys," advocating a massive war to convert the Middle East to Christianity . . .

But Coulter often strikes me as shrill, snide, and petulant, all in service to a particularly vacuous brand of conservatism — Rush Limbaugh in a mini-skirt. In a column last fall she gave as an example of liberal "treason," the "toppling [of] the Shah of Iran and giving Islamic fundamentalism its first real foothold in the Mideast" while ignoring the role of her hero, Ronald Reagan, who directly supported Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and armed the Teheran regime. She is easier to take in small doses — the longer I spend reading and studying Coulter, the less I like her.

I experienced this ambivalence while reading her latest book, "Slander." When she attacks The New York Times, Gloria Steinem, or Michael Moore, I find myself agreeing with her. Her attacks are sometimes misguided, but since she sprays with a verbal machine gun, she's bound to occasionally hit her target. On the other hand, when she comes to the defense of her Republican heroes, brandishing G.W. Bush's SAT scores or gushing over Ronald Reagan, I was slightly embarrassed for her.

There is no question that the political left is bankrupt. Democrats and left-wing pundits (with a few notable exceptions) traded in their integrity and self-respect to defend Bill Clinton and in return got NAFTA, GATT, welfare reform, the slaughter of innocent foreigners at his political convenience, and repeated assaults on civil liberties. At the same time, their attacks on the right were frequently reduced to hysterical name-calling. In this atmosphere, Gloria Steinem denounced Bob Dole, a middle-of-the-road hack with no discernible principles, as a "right-wing extremist."

Forrest Gump, Call Your Office

Consider, for example, Coulter's response to the habitual leftist attack on the intelligence of those on the right. She grossly overstates that "every consequential Republican to come down the pike is, instantly, invariably, always, without exception called 'dumb.'" This is nonsense. Every person in the world has been called stupid by someone, even if only by a brother or sister, but who would argue that the left expended any great effort trying to characterize such consequential Republicans as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, or Henry Kissinger as stupid? Appropriately, Coulter expends most of her energy countering attacks on the intelligence of Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, and George W. Bush. Reagan was often accused of being dumb, senile, or both, but you would never learn from Coulter that he had a disturbing habit of giving people evidence for these charges. She makes no mention, for example, of Reagan's doddering performance in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984, or of his delusional belief that he filmed a death camp liberation while in the Army Signal Corps when he actually served out the Second World War in the States, or of any other instance that called into question Reagan's grip on reality when he was president. Instead, someone relying solely on Ann Coulter would assume that the attacks on Reagan's intelligence were devoid of content, simply the product leftist hate-mongering.

Reagan deserves credit for having a superficially successful presidency and for continually succeeding while his political enemies underestimated his abilities. Politicians like Pat Brown and Jimmy Carter learned the hard way that Reagan was a formidable opponent, but it would be absurd to pretend that he didn't give his enemies repeated opportunities to question his intelligence and coherence. Coulter's defense of Reagan would be a lot easier to swallow if she did not insist on canonizing the 40th president. I counted nine places where she refers to Reagan as "the guy who won the Cold War"(or words to that effect) sometimes, "single-handedly." She refers to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the result of the Gipper's "massive defense buildup, military invasions, support for anti-communist insurgents around the globe, and finally, walking away from the table at Reykjavik." If all it took to get rid of the Soviets was to invade Grenada and fund the B-1 bomber, one wonders whether defeating them was such a great accomplishment.

Elsewhere she refers to Reagan as having a "spectacularly successful" second term and repeats, "arms for hostages, arms for hostages" as an example of a "stupid, meaningless phrase" used by leftists. In Reagan's second term, the Republicans lost control of the Senate, Robert Bork's supreme court nomination failed, aid to the Nicaraguan Contras (the overriding issue of his second term) was consistently hindered by Congress and the Reagan Administration was distracted for long periods of time by the Iran-Contra scandal. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to turn Republican politicians and conservative pundits into apologists for exploding deficits.

Coulter is merely following the party line among movement conservatives where it is obligatory to fawn over the 40th president. It requires a Stalinesque rewriting of history to pass this record off as "spectacularly successful" and pretend that "arms for hostages" is an empty chant. I've already quoted Coulter damning "liberals" as traitors for supposedly enabling an Islamic fundamentalist regime to come to power in Iran. The Reagan administration sold arms to the same regime. One is tempted to shout in the fashion of the talking head shows that Coulter haunts, "HE WAS ARMING THEM, DAMN IT!" That would seem to be vastly more treasonous.

Dumb and Dumber

Coulter also rallies to the defense of J. Danforth Quayle and George Walker Bush, although she leaves out a lot of important details. Quayle got off to a bad start immediately after Bush nominated him in 1988 because of his inartful handling of his Vietnam-era draft evasion via the National Guard. Later he was hurt by his poor debate performance with Lloyd Bentson in which the Texas senator elevated himself from nonentity to statesman by telling Quayle that he was, "no Jack Kennedy." Actually, the problem was that Quayle was precisely Jack Kennedy — without the dozens of family retainers constantly applying a veneer of wit and erudition. As in her defense of Reagan, Coulter simply doesn't mention these embarrassing incidents. Quayle's term in office was marred by repeated gaffes (some, no doubt apocryphal) such as his difficulty in spelling "potato." On the upside for Quayle, he headed up the influential anti-regulatory Competitiveness Counsel and he thoroughly outdebated Al Gore in 1992. Coulter strangely fails to mention these factors that mitigate in the former Veep's favor. At the risk of earning Coulter's formidable ire, I should point out that Dan Quayle seems to be smarter than George W. Bush.

Only a partisan Republican could fail to see the evidence of George Bush's dullness. He recently asked Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "do you have blacks, too?" When Bush spoke in my hometown a few months ago he gave an incoherent and muddled speech about how the terrorists hate "the fact that we believe there ought to be honest political discourse," and about the importance "for citizens in this country to put a face on America for the world to see, the true face. And that's by loving somebody . . . It certainly means mentoring a child; putting your arm around a child . . . It means organizing a program in your church or your synagogue or your mosque, to help hear the universal call of loving somebody just like you would like to be loved by yourself." He prattled about his now notorious domestic spy program. "We call it terrorism information program, it's a TIP program. This is a program where truckers can report anything that might be suspicious to local authorities. One of the most innovative TIP programs in the country took place in Maine. Governor King, working with the local FBI, signed up a lot of lobstermen. So when they're out there pulling their pots to get the lobsters, if they see something suspicious taking place along the Maine coast, they share the information with the local jurisdictions, local law enforcement jurisdictions . . .

These are not gaffes or mispronunciations (Grecians, Kosovians, etc.). These are nonsensical ravings. In the midst of war and recession, the Leader of the Free World prattles on about Maine lobstermen on the lookout for terrorists and about "organizing a program" in your "mosque." But Ann Coulter is an extremely partisan Republican and sees only a "masterful leader" full of "charm and resolute determination."

Who Will Grade the Guardians?

It is fair for Coulter to question the neutrality of journalists who, while, talking about how stupid George W. Bush and Dan Quayle are, inflate mediocrities such as Bill Bradley and Al Gore into Deep Thinkers. She quotes a litany of descriptions of Bradley as "cerebral," and a New York Times article in which,

"a presidential candidate was repeatedly quoted using such expressions as 'That's no good for sure' and 'Isn't she cool?' Telling a reporter he wanted to discuss 'big think' ideas, he stammered 'I can't say this, it's going to sound so weird.' That was intellectual colossus Al Gore. Naturally, this led the New York Times to query: 'Is Al Gore too smart to be president?' Mr. Gore's 'challenge,' the Times explained in that very article, is "to show that he is a regular guy despite a perceived surplus of gravitas, which at least some Americans seem to find intimidating.' Or as Gore himself eruditely put it: 'weird.'"

Coulter goes so far as to compare verbal SAT scores among Bradley, Gore and Bush. (Gore wins with a 625, but Bush with a 566 is solidly ahead of Bradley's 485.) She also quotes a litany of Democrat and media gaffes (Al Gore: "A zebra cannot change its spots.") and errors that would be endlessly mocked if they were made by Dan Quayle.

In her zeal to display the flaws of Al Gore, Coulter ridicules his performance in the 2000 debates.

"In the first debate, he was his natural self — little Miss-Know-It-All . . . In the second debate he overcompensated and became Norman Bates in the last scene of Psycho . . . Naturally, therefore, the entire nation was on tenterhooks waiting to see what new weirdness Gore would unleash in the third debate. . . Even the audience was laughing at Gore for his ridiculous pomposity. Bush was in on the joke, laughing and winking at audience members as Gore grew increasingly insufferable. "

All of which accords, roughly at least, with my memory of the debates, but begs a question that doesn't occur to Coulter: if Al Gore was such a complete laughingstock — a universally mocked buffoon — how did he manage to win the popular vote in the 2000 election? Without the timely intercession of Ralph Nader, Al Gore would have won a solid victory. The debates gave voters an unfiltered opportunity to view the candidates. One would assume from Coulter's analysis that Gore would have received only the votes of New York Times editors and of Barbara Streisand's sewing circle, instead of finishing ahead of her champion.

Meet the New Boss . . . Same as the Old Boss

Ultimately Coulter's constricted world view is her biggest weakness. She signed on to the Republican "team" and is a forceful advocate of her side's cause. But she should take a good hard look at her teammates. The Republicans gave up on rolling back the leviathan state during Ronald Reagan's first term. After the Cold War, they continued to advocate a meddlesome foreign policy to the detriment of the national interest. Even their family values talk is empty — Newt Gingrich was no more faithful to his second wife than Bill Clinton is to his first. For Coulter, none of this matters, she can always fall back on her mantra, "it's all liberals' fault!"

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