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This was posted on DU two years ago, but with the death of Ronald
Reagan I think that it's worth rereading (Full Disclosure: I wrote
this).
The Pathology of Clinton Bashing
What is it about the Bill Clinton?
Following eight years of relative peace and prosperity, conservatives
now blame the former President for everything short of the Lindbergh
kidnapping. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer last week announced
that the recent violence in Israel and the West Bank was caused, not by
the Bush Administration's disengagement, but by Bill Clinton's attempt
to broker a peace deal between the two sides. On a daily basis,
somewhere in America, there is a newspaper or magazine editorial that
bashes Bill Clinton for one perceived shortcoming or another. One recent
editorial claimed that if Clinton hadn't been fooling around with Monica
Lewinsky, all those FBI agents investigating the infamous blue dress
would have been free to flush out terrorists. This assumes that the
President specifically requested a four-year probe into his personal
life.
And when Clinton's dog was hit by a car in December, it was yet more
evidence of the former President's immoral character. While all previous
Presidents had their critics, it is nothing like that venom directed at
Bill Clinton between 1992 and 2000, and which is still freely flowing
today. Why do conservatives loathe him in ways that they never hated
Jimmy Carter or John F. Kennedy or Harry Truman? The reason, I think, is
that their hated of Bill Clinton has its roots in psychology and not
politics.
Conservatives today are furious over what they see as a series of
stinging political and cultural defeats, but their problem is that the
one man they should be blaming is also the one man they could never
possibly blame. I am referring, of course, to Ronald Reagan.
Far-fetched? Hardly. In the twentieth century, conservative political
identity has been linked to small government, fiscal responsibility, and
opposition to communism. Conservatives view themselves as the pious
champions of small-town values like a reverence for religion and for the
law. And Ronald Reagan was their president.
The problem was that by the time the 1980's were over, the Reagan
Administration had made a mockery of their core beliefs. Despite his
rhetoric to the contrary, Ronald Reagan did not limit the size of the
government; the federal payroll actually increased under his
administration. Budget deficits, long an anathema to Main Street
Republicans, grew to stunning levels courtesy of the first Reagan
budget. And it took a series of tax increases (supported by many those
same fiscally conservative Republicans, lead by Kansas Sen. Robert Dole)
to set the federal budget back on something like an even keel.
In a decade defined by its corporate greed, it seemed to conservatives
that far too many of their President's friends were feeding at the
trough. There were scandals involving the head of the Environmental
Protection Agency, who accepted bribes from major polluters, and then
there was the President's Chief of Staff who accepted gifts from the
same Japanese corporations who were decimating the American auto
industry. Finally, there came the revelation that while the
Administration talked tough on terrorism, it was actually selling
military supplies to Islamic radicals in the Middle East.
Religious conservatives, meanwhile, politely ignored that fact that
Ronald Reagan was a man of no discernible religious convictions, despite
his ability to repeat pious axioms on cue. They ignored the fact that he
was divorced, that his second child was conceived out of wedlock, that
he once fell asleep during an audience with the Pope. They even ignored
that fact that even though he promised it regularly, the President never
backed legislation to legalize school prayer or to outlaw abortion.
Blue collars workers who voted for Reagan were rewarded with plant
closures and a federal government that provided tax incentives to
corporations that relocated overseas. Fiscal conservatives were rewarded
with a $3 trillion increase in the national debt and what seemed like no
possibility of relief. Religious conservatives were rewarded with a
stony silence by the administration on their most cherished programs.
Their hero, the champion of their values, had sold them out entirely.
Conservatives found themselves in a difficult position. Having invested
so much of their identity in his presidency and having adopted Reagan as
a national father figure, it would required a conservative of no small
emotional fortitude to repudiate him. Just as abused children will
continue to identify with their abusive parent, conservatives continued
to identify with and to defend Ronald Reagan. Hating Ronald Reagan for
the gross abuse of their trust was simply not an option, even though it
was clear that Reagan was not a conservative, at least not by any
definition they themselves would have used prior to 1980.
Conservatives knew that they were responsible for shackling their
country with trillions of dollars in debt that their children and
grandchildren would have to repay. They knew that their government had
negotiated with and paid ransom to terrorists who then turned around
kidnapped and murdered more Americans. They knew that the Reagan
Administration had been conducting a covert war in Central America that
resulted in tens of thousands of murders that included women, children,
and in one particularly appalling case four American nuns.
So what ails conservatives? It appears to be something that strongly
resembles Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. While one can observe nearly
all the typical symptoms of PTSD in conservative behavior, I think that
four in particular are worth noting:
Inability to recall key aspects of the trauma: Reagan supporters appear
to be suffering from Alzheimer's Disease themselves, unable to recall
the murder of 240 U.S. Marines in their barracks in Lebanon, but able to
recall in detail the deaths of 24 US Army Rangers in Somalia.
Foreshortened Sense of the Future: Based on their fiscal and
environmental priorities, Republicans seem to have a carpe diem attitude
about the future. No Social Security? No Ozone Layer? No Problem!
Irritability or Outbursts of Anger: Notice the booming memberships in
paramilitary militia groups during the past decade. Timothy McVeigh, who
was treated with kid gloves compared to the abuse directed toward John
Walker Lindh, continues to be the poster-boy for conservative anger.
Exaggerated Startle Response: Following the September 11 terrorist
attacks, the Bush Administration activated a "shadow government" of some
100 bureaucrats. A plan devised during the Cold War in the event of
nuclear war, it was never activated even during the Cuban Missile
Crisis.
As the years passed and defending the Reagan legacy was clearly
untenable, conservatives' rage needed an outlet, which they found in the
person of William Jefferson Clinton. It was not enough to merely defeat
Clinton in the 1992 election, it was emotionally imperative that he be
destroyed and humiliated. He should, to use Clinton's own words, feel
their pain. Even before his election, conservative publisher Richard
Mellon Scaife was funding a series of investigations into Bill Clinton's
past that would eventually become Whitewater.
They portrayed Clinton as a spendthrift Democrat, until the federal
budget began to balance in the mid-1990's, and then they claimed
(however implausibly) that the economic good times were actually the
result of policies enacted by Ronald Reagan some fifteen years earlier.
They portrayed the Clinton Administration as corrupt, hurling a
half-dozen independent prosecutors at Clinton and his staff, and the
result was not a single appointee convicted for a crime relating to
actions as part of the Clinton Administration. They portrayed Clinton as
a liar, under the perverse logic that lying about one's personal life is
worse than Ronald Reagan's lying about multiple felonies committed by
his staff as part of White House policy.
That Bill Clinton should have escaped them was all the more infuriating
to conservatives. After eight years of relentless hammering, their bete
noir left office with an approval rating that was even higher than that
of Ronald Reagan. The wrath of God never descended on William Jefferson
Clinton, and he would retire to the friendly confines of New York City
to write his memoirs and hit the lecture circuit. With a majority of
Americans still approving of Bill Clinton's job performance, conservatives
like William Bennett could only grouse about a decline in
national character.
Unlike other disorders, this one holds out little hope for effective
treatment because there is a well-financed and highly-visible group
that constants stokes the fires of hatred. The Republican Party and its
handmaiden, the national media, will continue to portray Bill Clinton
in the worst possible light, just as they will continue to make excuses
for Ronald Reagan and his abysmal record as Chief Executive. Those who
wish to live comfortably with their delusion will never lack for enablers.
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