IT'S MY PARTY: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP.

• Author: Buckley, Christopher
• Position: Review

IT'S MY PARTY: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP by Peter Robinson Warner Books, $24

UNTIL NOW, PETER ROBINSON has been one of the lesser-known of George Bush's and Ronald Reagan's speech writers, but with this sprightly and amusing book, that may change. He has an honest, uncomplicated, almost naive prose style and appears not to have a mean bone in his body, which really ought to disqualify him from writing about politics. But don't let this Jimmy Stewart quality fool you: Robinson is a shrewd inside player, who has been not only wordsmith to the above, but also a cherub-faced consigliere to the Dark Lord himself, Rupert Murdoch, as well as assistant to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Currently, he perches at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. This book comes with enthusiastic imprimaturs and nihil obstats by Tom Wolfe, William E Buckley Jr., Peggy Noonan, P.J. O'Rourke, Andrew Ferguson and Morley Safer. All that is missing is an official endorsement by The Skulls. Since we are obviously dealing with the vast right-wing conspiracy here, I might as well disclose that I hired young Peter Robinson of The (notorious) Dartmouth Review to replace me as speech writer to Vice President George Bush in 1982.

Robinson's book is what its subtitle says it is: one man's attempt to come to terms with a question that has baffled philosophers since the days of Aristotle, namely, what does it mean to be a Republican today? Why are some people cradle-to-grave Republicans? Why are others, conspicuously the majority of Jews, blacks, and Hollywood stud muffins, not?

He calls his inquiry a "travel book," in which he criss-crosses the country from New York City, Jersey City, Washington, DC. Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Fresno to elsewhere, talking to such grandees and worthies as Gov. George Bush, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Reps. Henry Hyde and Christopher Cox, former California Gov. Pete Wilson, Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, GOP consultant Arthur Finkelstein, New York Mayor Rudy Giuiliani, and many others. His style of asking almost simple yet pro found questions makes him sometimes sound like the eager young pachyderm in Rudyard Kipling's Just So Story, "How The Elephant Got Its Trunk."

He finds out a great deal about the GOP's mink, returning from his peregrinations with penetrating answers that should occasion some hard thinking among (us) elephants, about who we are, where we are going, and whether we have...