Rumble In The Beltway

By MICHAEL KRANTZ

The Beltway calls the sort of public relations pounding Microsoft has taken in recent months "getting Borked," in honor of the partisan drubbing that kept Judge Robert Bork off the Supreme Court. So it was acutely ironic that the person doing the Borking last week was Judge Bork.

No one knows how much it cost Microsoft nemesis Netscape to convince the infamously conservative author of the free-market classic The Antitrust Paradox that Bill Gates is in fact guilty of violating a set of laws that Bork hitherto regarded as contradictory at best and destructive at worst. But as hostilities flare between the software titan and its many foes (the Justice Department, the House and Senate judiciary committees and a flock of state attorneys general are all scrutinizing Microsoft's monopoly power), both sides are hiring whomever it takes to win over public opinion, and price appears to be no object.

The result? Some of the Beltway's most bold-faced names have waded, often blindly, into the fray. Bork's surprising initiation into the regulatory camp took place at a press conference introducing the Project to Promote Competition Innovation in the Digital Age, a group of Microsoft rivals that will pursue its lofty goal by urging the authorities to sue Bill Gates' pants off. ProComp, as it's called, will have help navigating D.C.'s treacherous lobbying shoals from ex-Senator and Visa pitchman Bob Dole as well as from such heavy hitters as ex-Federal Trade Commissioner Christine Varney, ex-FTC general counsel Kevin Arquit and Powell Tate, the p.r. firm headed by Carter White House vet Jody Powell and onetime Reagan aide Sheila Tate.

Gates, for his part, after years of dismissing official Washington as a bunch of clueless and irrelevant bureaucrats, now has his own team of spin cyclists whirring into high gear. Redmond's roster boasts ex-Republican National Committee chairman and renowned spinmeister Haley Barbour, former Minnesota Congressman Vin Webber (a Newt Gingrich confidant) and former New Jersey Congressman Tom Downey (an Al Gore confidant). Edelman Worldwide, in the person of Reagan-era imagemaker Mike Deaver, is handling the company's overall Washington p.r. effort.

Whose spinners will prevail? It's too early to tell. Clearly, though, this is only the first of many lobbying rounds that D.C. heavyweights will get rich(er) fighting, as Silicon Valley prepares to do battle over such digital-era terrain as banking, encryption and copyright. Let the air wars begin.

--By Michael Krantz. Reported by John F. Dickerson and Bruce van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by John F. Dickerson and Bruce van Voorst/Washington