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Edited on Tue Oct-17-06 06:24 PM by cryingshame
Meticulous Comstock Helps RNC Skewer the Opposition By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 22, 2001; Page A17 Barbara Comstock, a daughter of Massachusetts Democrats and the only kid in her eighth-grade class for George McGovern in 1972, recalls her moment of political revelation: She was a college intern in Washington for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and her roommate handed her a copy of a magazine she had never heard of -- National Review. Soon, she said, "I'd be at hearings and think, 'I agree with Orrin Hatch , not Ted Kennedy.' "
Democrats everywhere should bewail that that conservative magazine ever changed hands.
Since joining the GOP, Comstock has become a kind of one-woman wrecking crew targeting Democratic leaders. As a onetime senior aide to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) who directed numerous investigations of Clinton-era scandals, and now as head of research for the Republican National Committee, Comstock has perhaps done more than any other GOP operative to skewer Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their congressional allies.
Comstock is a practitioner of the mysterious Washington art of "opposition research" -- mining public documents for embarrassing facts about political adversaries and releasing them for maximum punch. "Rush Limbaugh should pay her as a news source for all her stuff he uses," an RNC colleague said.
Republicans rave about her effectiveness, but what is striking is that in this time of bitter political partisanship, even some Democrats privately acknowledge the even-keeled Comstock does her work with care.
Asked for a comment about her, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee called back with a statement from John Podesta, White House counsel under former president Clinton. He recalled his depositions at the hands of Comstock and Barbara Olson, her more overtly partisan partner during their years as congressional GOP investigators.
"In the world of the Barbaras," Podesta said, "you'd have to say Barbara Comstock is the good twin."
Gary Maloney, himself a GOP opposition researcher, said Clinton's presidential campaigns swamped Republican opponents in 1992 and 1996 with sharper research and swifter dissemination. But the GOP's research operation roared back under Comstock in the last two years, he said.
"She's meticulous and thorough . . . research was one of the most successful parts of the RNC in 2000," Maloney said. "She's built respect among reporters for not being exceedingly partisan, she avoids ideological boilerplate and she's not a hater."
In any case, politicking came late to her. She proudly points out that after law school, she stayed home raising three children -- "the hardest job I ever had," she said.
In 1990, she volunteered in the office of Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and later worked for him full time, on youth issues. In 1993, Wolf asked her to look into allegations that the Clintons had improperly arranged the firing of White House travel office employees, who were Wolf constituents.
Soon she was pursuing that case for the House Government Reform Committee, run by Rep. William Clinger (R-Pa.). Alone in the office one late night in 1993, she was scrutinizing boxes of newly released papers on the matter when she spotted a line in a White House official's memo -- "there would be hell to pay" with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, it said, if the travel office employees were not dismissed.
She immediately called her colleague Olson to return to the office. "We were up all night," Comstock said. Hillary Clinton, now a New York senator, has maintained she played no role in the firings, but last year independent counsel Robert W. Ray said her sworn testimony to that effect was false.
Soon Comstock was working on the panel for a more confrontational and controversial boss, Burton, for whom she led investigations into the Democratic fundraising scandals of 1996.
In 1999, she was recruited to revamp the RNC's research office. Soon she had a staff of 30, including experts in such fields as health care and foreign policy. Most were more experienced and a decade older than their Democratic research counterparts.
She was the one who publicized former vice president Gore's testimony that he hadn't been present for a key discussion of a questionable fundraising gambit because he "drank a lot of iced tea" and was in the bathroom. In that case and others, she said, "when something you put out ends up on Jay Leno, you say, 'Yay.' "
Drawing on a massive RNC computer data base and video library she built, Comstock compiled a foot-high binder and CD-ROM called "The Gore File," which became a bible of sorts for GOP publicists and ad-makers. When Democratic presidential contender Bill Bradley alleged in primary season debates that Gore had flip-flopped on abortion, he was relying on this Comstock lode, political sources said.
Her team also helped prepare George W. Bush for the presidential debates by amassing files on Gore's debating techniques. GOP officials credit her with discovering some of the alleged cases of Gore overstatement during the Bush-Gore debates that upended the vice president late in the campaign.
"We quote, we source, we document," Comstock said, "because we know we'll be attacked."
After the election, her team spent a month pulling virtual all-nighters at a West Palm Beach hotel assisting GOP operatives in the Florida vote recount. They then wrote the GOP playbook defending Bush nominees such as John D. Ashcroft, for attorney general.
Comstock's authority at RNC is widening fast, and she now heads not only its research but also its strategic planning. She is helping run an expensive new RNC initiative to address a problem that has deepened for her party since 1980 -- the fact that most women vote Democratic.
"Republicans have an opportunity with women because of the issues President Bush is working on, like education," she said. "I want my daughter to know, when he's talking about troop movements in Iraq, he's talking to Condoleezza Rice."
The women's initiative could be one reason Comstock, usually guarded about discussing her investigations, agreed to be interviewed for this article, GOP sources said. Her personal story -- returning to work after years as a homemaker, and then rising to the top of her trade -- as well as her gentle exterior, dovetail with the party's appeals to women, the GOP sources said.
"I care about these issues for my kids, and my parents," she said. "I'm doing something that connects to my whole life."
But one Democratic woman is unswayed -- her grandmother. After Comstock appears on television dispensing the GOP line, the older woman will call, she said, "and Grandma will say, 'I listened with the sound down. I liked your suit.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A43033-2001Aug21
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