Pubdate: Sun, 06 Aug 2000
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Copyright: 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/
Author: Matthew Campbell

SWINGING LEFT FAST, ARIANNA THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN CHAMELEON

At 50, her skin seems as smooth as porcelain. Not a hair of her reddish mane
is out of place. But a look of mild annoyance ruffles Arianna Stassinopoulos
Huffington's immaculate countenance when asked if she knows George W Bush:
"Of course I do."

He is, she says, a "charming man" - but not one with the imagination
to do anything to help the poor, her new passion.

Huffington has made a career out of knowing rich and powerful people
in various phases of an eye-catching life as author, socialite and
political commentator. When the name Arianna crops up around political
dinner tables, nobody asks, "Who?"

She is famous for her chameleon-like ability to blend in. These days,
however, there is slack-jawed amazement at her shedding of yet another
political skin. This former queen of conservative policy seminars has
re-emerged as a champion of radical, left-wing causes - a
revolutionary in designer clothes.

Before the Republican party convention began last week, television
executives were complaining that the carefully scripted coronation of
Bush as a presidential candidate might find it hard to compete with
the weather channel for excitement. The same fears were forecast for
the Democrat gathering next week at which Al Gore, the vice-president,
will be proclaimed as the party's flagbearer.

Then in stepped Arianna with "shadow conventions" - gatherings of
stand-up comics, celebrities and reform-minded politicians designed,
she says, to highlight causes she accuses the main parties of
ignoring: the war on drugs, reform of the campaign finance system and
the growing gap between rich and poor.

"The main parties are vying about who is the guardian of our
prosperity while ignoring the fact that millions of people are left
out of it," she said over a caffe latte last week. "We have more
homelessness than at any time since the Depression. More people in
jail than in China - it went up from 1m in 1990 to 2m in 2000."

The doom-laden statistics tripped off her tongue as easily as the
instructions to the many minions fussing about her, one of them
fielding mobile telephone calls through a headset.

At home in Los Angeles are still more helpers, including a nanny, a
housekeeper and a "house manager" who doubles as a driver. Huffington
sees no contradiction between her newfound activism and
well-established credentials as a member of an affluent American elite.

"Look at the civil rights movement," she said. "It didn't just consist
of blacks, right? It consisted of a lot of whites who had nothing to
gain from blacks getting the vote except their recognition that they
would be living in a country where all men were truly equal."

She went on: "So, in the same way, there should be a lot of wealthy
people in a movement to overcome poverty, not because they would
directly benefit but because that sense of justice and fairness has to
be at the heart of democracy."

Not that she was born rich. From humble origins in Athens, Arianna
Stassinopoulos, as she then was, cut her polemicist's teeth as a
companion to the columnist Bernard Levin in 1970s London, where "even
something trivial like my accent" seemed to conspire against her being
taken seriously as a political player.

When she moved in 1980 to America, it seemed like a spiritual
homeland.

"So many people have accents here," she enthused. "I love living here.
The United States is a country built by immigrants." By contrast, "you
[in Britain] could never have a foreign secretary with an accent like
Henry Kissinger".

She first stepped onto the American political stage as a Washington
wife after marrying Michael Huffington, the son of an oil millionaire.
When he ran for the Senate in 1994, there were few doubts that his
wife was orchestrating the campaign. It cost $30m, a record for a
Senate race. That role ended when her husband lost. He also announced
that he was gay.

She moved on, befriending Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the house, in
his campaign for the conservative Contract with America. She started
her own think tank, the Centre for Effective Compassion, emphasising
the need for private charity rather than government aid for the poor -
a message touted last week by Bush.

When that fizzled, she moved on again, settling in Los Angeles, where
her home became as much of a celebrity salon as it had been in the
capital. Surrounded by the more liberal denizens of Hollywood,
Huffington's views turned leftward.

Her friend Warren Beatty, the actor, helped to instil in her an
abhorrence for a political system that puts politicians in the pockets
of lobbyists. She became publicist-in-chief for his brief attempt to
stand as a potential third party presidential candidate. The title of
her latest book gets straight to the point: How to Overthrow the Government.

"I call myself a recovering Republican," she says.

Huffington sees the jargon of addiction therapy as a particularly
appropriate metaphor. The Republicans and Democrats are "addicted" to
cash from special interests, and only a complete overhaul of the
campaign finance system - a solution advocated by John McCain, the
Arizona senator, in his thwarted campaign to snatch the Republican
nomination - will make government healthy again.

"Our goal," she told delegates at her convention last week, "is to
generate a national conversation on urgent issues and force the two
main parties to end their destructive addiction to campaign cash. So
we are going to stage a citizens' intervention in American politics,
even if it means dragging our political leaders, kicking and
screaming, off to donor detox."

Her ability to reinvent herself is as remarkable as her disdain for
other political figures who bend with the wind.

Gore, Huffington says with a wave of a jewel-encrusted hand, "would
adopt any cause if he thought it would help get him elected".

An unspoken question hangs in the air. "I would never run for office,"
she says at last.

Matthew Campbell
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens