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[From "Shadows of Hope: A Freethinker's Guide to Politics in the Times
of Clinton" by Progressive Review editor Sam Smith, written after just
one year of the Clinton administration and published by Indiana
University Press]
The Clintonites' sense of entitlement stemmed from qualities they valued
in themselves and others: intelligence, skill in communications, and a
managerial ability to rise above the factions and ideologies of everyday
life.
The intelligence they admired was not that of the philosopher, the
artist nor even that of a good street politician or business
entrepreneur. It was of the sort that excelled in the accumulation and
analysis of information and data. It was the skill of the lawyer or
academician who could find every defect in an argument and compose every
possible counter-argument. . .
Politics has many traps for those who rely on rationality and analysis,
for it requires not only objective calculation but a blending of
experience, morality and knowledge into judgments that can not be parsed
and decisions that can not be charted. And it frequently demands choices
before all their implications can be calculated.
Further, skillful campaigners, no matter how brilliant their account of
the inadequacies and injustices of current affairs, will not necessarily
become wise or intelligent incumbents. The jobs are so different that
one politician, burdened with the newly discovered problems of office,
remarked, "Hell, I didn't want to be governor; I just wanted to be
elected governor."
When Clinton, the lawyer, became president some of the decisions he
faced seemed to propel him towards catatonia. In contrast, Harry Truman,
the haberdasher, directly and simply made even tougher choices and yet
slept well the same night. Clinton, seeing the possible flaws in a
policy, would hesitate, pull back. Roosevelt, on the other hand,
understood that government was a constant act of experimentation, and
that experimentation included failure.
The second virtue, the ability to communicate, is one common to all
animals. What distinguishes human beings, it has been noted, is that
they can also think. This is not a mere quibble, because people who use
the verb communicate a lot tend to mean something closer to a frog's
baroomph than an essay by Emerson. In response to their communications
they seek not thought nor an articulated response, but a feeling. We are
supposed to feel like having a Michelob, feel like the president's bill
will stimulate the economy, feel like all our questions about healthcare
have been answered.
The rhetoric of contemporary communications is quite different from that
of thought or argument. The former is more like a shuttle bus endlessly
running around a terminal of ideas. The bus plays no favorites; it stops
at every concept and every notion, it shares every concern and feels
every pain, but when you have made the full trip you are right back
where you started.
Consider Mrs. Clinton's comment on the death penalty:
"We go back and forth on the issues of due process and the
disproportionate minorities facing the death penalty, and we have
serious concerns in those areas. We also abhor the craze for the death
penalty. But we believe it does have a role."
She paused dutifully at major objections to the death penalty yet
finished her homily as though she had never been to them at all. In the
end, the president would propose fifty new capital crimes in his first
year.
The approach became infectious. As the Clinton administration was
attempting to come up with a logical reason for being in Somalia, an
administration official told the New York Times that "we want to keep
the pressure on [General] Aidid. We don't want to spend all day, every
day chasing him. But if opportunity knocks, we want to be ready. At the
same time, we want go get him to cooperate on the prisoner question and
on a political settlement."
If you challenge the contemporary "communicator," you are likely to find
the argument transformed from whatever you thought you were talking
about to something quite different -- generally more abstract and
grandiose. For example if you are opposed to the communicator's proposed
policy on trade you may be accused of being against "change" or "fearful
of new ideas" and so forth.
Clinton is very good at this technique. In fact, the White House made it
official policy. A memo was distributed to administration officials to
guide them in marketing the president's first budget. The memo was
titled: HALLELUJAH! CHANGE IS COMING! It read in part:
"While you will doubtless be pressed for details beyond these
principles, there is nothing wrong with demurring for the moment on the
technicalities and educate the American people and the media on the
historic change we need."
Philip Lader, creator and maitre d' of the New Year's "Renaissance"
gatherings attended by the Clintons for many years, liked this sort of
language as well. Said Lader on PBS:
"The gist of Renaissance has been to recognize the incredible
transforming power of ideas and relationships. And I would hope that
this administration might be characterized by the power of ideas. But
also the power of relationships. Of recognizing the integrity of people
dealing with each other.
There is an hyperbolic quality to this language that shatters one's
normal sense of meaning. Simple competence is dubbed "a world-class
operation," common efficiency is called "Total Quality Management," a
conversation becomes "incredibly transforming," and a gathering of
hyper-ambitious and single-minded professionals is called a
"Renaissance" weekend.
Some of the language sounds significant while in fact being completely
devoid of sense, such as "recognizing the integrity of people dealing
with each other." Some of it is Orwellian reversal of meaning such as
the president's pronouncement after his first budget squeaked through:
"The margin was close, but the mandate is clear." This is the language
not of the rationalists that the communicators claim to be, but straight
from the car and beer ads. One might ask, for example, exactly what has
really been transformed by the "power of ideas and relationships" at
Renaissance other than the potential salaries, positions and influence
of those participating.
The third virtue claimed by the Clintonites is the ability to arise
above the petty disputes of normal life -- to become "post-ideological."
For example, the president, upon nominating Judge Ginsberg to the
Supreme Court called her neither liberal nor conservative, adding that
she "has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels." In one
parenthetical aside, Clinton dismissed three hundred years of political
philosophical debate.
Similarly, when Clinton made the very political decision to name
conservative David Gergen to his staff, he announced that the
appointment signaled that "we are rising above politics."
"We are," he insisted, "going beyond partisanship that damaged this
country so badly in the last several years to search for new ideas, a
new common ground, a new national unity." And when Clinton's new chief
of staff was announced, he was said to be "apolitical," a description
used in praise.
Politics without politics. The appointee was someone who, in the words
of the Washington Post, "is seen by most as a man without a personal or
political agenda that would interfere with a successful management of
the White House."
By the time Clinton had been in office for eight months he appeared
ready to dispense with opinion and thought entirely. "It is time we put
aside the divisions of party and philosophy and put our best efforts to
work on a crime plan that will help all the American people," he
declared in front of a phalanx of uniformed police officers --
presumably symbols of a new objectivity about crime.
Clinton, of course, was not alone. The Third Millennium, a slick
Perotist organization of considerable ideological intent, calls itself
"post-partisan." Perot himself played a similar game: the man without a
personal agenda. . . "
"What part of government are you interested in?" I asked a
thirtysomething lawyer who was sending in his resume to the new Clinton
administration. "I don't have any particular interest," he replied, "I
would just like to be a special assistant to someone." It no longer
surprised me; it had been ten years since I met Jeff Bingaman at a
party. He was in the middle of a multi-million dollar campaign for US
Senate; he showed me his brochure and spoke enthusiastically of his
effort. "What brings you to Washington?" I asked. He said, "I want to
find out what the issues are."
If you got the right grades at the right schools and understood the
"process," it didn't matter all that much what the issues were or what
you believed. Issues were merely raw material to be processed by good
"decision-making." As with Clinton, it was you -- not an idea or a faith
or a policy -- that was the solution.
This purported voiding of ideology is a major conceit of post-modernism
-- that assault on every favored philosophical notion since the time of
Voltaire. Post-modernism derides the concepts of universality, of
history, of values, of truth, of reason, and of objectivity. It, like
Clinton, rises above "party and philosophy" and like much of the
administration's propaganda, above traditional meaning as well.. . .
Of course, in the postmodern society that Clinton proposes -- one that
rises above the false teachings of ideology -- we find ourselves with
little to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue happens
to be in power. In this case, we may really only have progressed from
the ideology of the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say,
from democracy to authoritarianism.
Among equals, indifference to shared meaning might produce nothing worse
than lengthy argument. But when the postmodernist is President of the
United States, the impulse becomes a 500-pound gorilla to be fed, as
they say, anything it wants. . .
In Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West the
Canadian historian John Ralston Saul argues: "When the 18th-century
philosophers killed God, they thought they were engaged in
housekeeping-- the evils of corrupt religion would be swept away, the
decent aspects of Christian morality would be dusted off and neatly
repackaged inside reason." Instead says Saul, came "a theology of pure
power -- power born of structure, not of dynasty or arms. The new holy
trinity is organization, technology, and information.". . .
After you cut through the talk about a "new covenant" and "inclusion"
and so forth, much of the Clinton campaign was about political power in
its purest sense. There was mention of "vision," but as they say in
Texas, it was all hat and no cattle. These weren't people out to build
coalitions or create a movement, only to win and make sure everyone knew
they had. Later, Time would calculate that phrase 'new covenant' had
virtually disappeared by the spring of Clinton's first year in office..
A check of five major newspapers found it mentioned 45 times in July
1992, 31 times in August, but only four times the following April.
The 80s began with the murder of John Lennon. In the early 90s, Mark
David Chapman explained it this way: "I wasn't killing a real person. I
killed an image. I killed an album cover."
Within days of the election, Ford began running a TV ad using a
voice-over that sounded just like Clinton delivering a speech to an
enthusiastic audience. Or was it really Clinton delivering a speech to
an enthusiastic audience? Or really Clinton selling cars a few days
after his election?
We had helped put Clinton in the center of the semiosphere. He knew how
it worked and how to work it. But did we?
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[From "Shadows of Hope: A Freethinker's Guide to Politics in the Times
of Clinton" by Progressive Review editor Sam Smith, written after just
one year of the Clinton administration and published by Indiana
University Press]
The Clintonites' sense of entitlement stemmed from qualities they valued
in themselves and others: intelligence, skill in communications, and a
managerial ability to rise above the factions and ideologies of everyday
life.
The intelligence they admired was not that of the philosopher, the
artist nor even that of a good street politician or business
entrepreneur. It was of the sort that excelled in the accumulation and
analysis of information and data. It was the skill of the lawyer or
academician who could find every defect in an argument and compose every
possible counter-argument. . .
Politics has many traps for those who rely on rationality and analysis,
for it requires not only objective calculation but a blending of
experience, morality and knowledge into judgments that can not be parsed
and decisions that can not be charted. And it frequently demands choices
before all their implications can be calculated.
Further, skillful campaigners, no matter how brilliant their account of
the inadequacies and injustices of current affairs, will not necessarily
become wise or intelligent incumbents. The jobs are so different that
one politician, burdened with the newly discovered problems of office,
remarked, "Hell, I didn't want to be governor; I just wanted to be
elected governor."
When Clinton, the lawyer, became president some of the decisions he
faced seemed to propel him towards catatonia. In contrast, Harry Truman,
the haberdasher, directly and simply made even tougher choices and yet
slept well the same night. Clinton, seeing the possible flaws in a
policy, would hesitate, pull back. Roosevelt, on the other hand,
understood that government was a constant act of experimentation, and
that experimentation included failure.
The second virtue, the ability to communicate, is one common to all
animals. What distinguishes human beings, it has been noted, is that
they can also think. This is not a mere quibble, because people who use
the verb communicate a lot tend to mean something closer to a frog's
baroomph than an essay by Emerson. In response to their communications
they seek not thought nor an articulated response, but a feeling. We are
supposed to feel like having a Michelob, feel like the president's bill
will stimulate the economy, feel like all our questions about healthcare
have been answered.
The rhetoric of contemporary communications is quite different from that
of thought or argument. The former is more like a shuttle bus endlessly
running around a terminal of ideas. The bus plays no favorites; it stops
at every concept and every notion, it shares every concern and feels
every pain, but when you have made the full trip you are right back
where you started.
Consider Mrs. Clinton's comment on the death penalty:
"We go back and forth on the issues of due process and the
disproportionate minorities facing the death penalty, and we have
serious concerns in those areas. We also abhor the craze for the death
penalty. But we believe it does have a role."
She paused dutifully at major objections to the death penalty yet
finished her homily as though she had never been to them at all. In the
end, the president would propose fifty new capital crimes in his first
year.
The approach became infectious. As the Clinton administration was
attempting to come up with a logical reason for being in Somalia, an
administration official told the New York Times that "we want to keep
the pressure on [General] Aidid. We don't want to spend all day, every
day chasing him. But if opportunity knocks, we want to be ready. At the
same time, we want go get him to cooperate on the prisoner question and
on a political settlement."
If you challenge the contemporary "communicator," you are likely to find
the argument transformed from whatever you thought you were talking
about to something quite different -- generally more abstract and
grandiose. For example if you are opposed to the communicator's proposed
policy on trade you may be accused of being against "change" or "fearful
of new ideas" and so forth.
Clinton is very good at this technique. In fact, the White House made it
official policy. A memo was distributed to administration officials to
guide them in marketing the president's first budget. The memo was
titled: HALLELUJAH! CHANGE IS COMING! It read in part:
"While you will doubtless be pressed for details beyond these
principles, there is nothing wrong with demurring for the moment on the
technicalities and educate the American people and the media on the
historic change we need."
Philip Lader, creator and maitre d' of the New Year's "Renaissance"
gatherings attended by the Clintons for many years, liked this sort of
language as well. Said Lader on PBS:
"The gist of Renaissance has been to recognize the incredible
transforming power of ideas and relationships. And I would hope that
this administration might be characterized by the power of ideas. But
also the power of relationships. Of recognizing the integrity of people
dealing with each other.
There is an hyperbolic quality to this language that shatters one's
normal sense of meaning. Simple competence is dubbed "a world-class
operation," common efficiency is called "Total Quality Management," a
conversation becomes "incredibly transforming," and a gathering of
hyper-ambitious and single-minded professionals is called a
"Renaissance" weekend.
Some of the language sounds significant while in fact being completely
devoid of sense, such as "recognizing the integrity of people dealing
with each other." Some of it is Orwellian reversal of meaning such as
the president's pronouncement after his first budget squeaked through:
"The margin was close, but the mandate is clear." This is the language
not of the rationalists that the communicators claim to be, but straight
from the car and beer ads. One might ask, for example, exactly what has
really been transformed by the "power of ideas and relationships" at
Renaissance other than the potential salaries, positions and influence
of those participating.
The third virtue claimed by the Clintonites is the ability to arise
above the petty disputes of normal life -- to become "post-ideological."
For example, the president, upon nominating Judge Ginsberg to the
Supreme Court called her neither liberal nor conservative, adding that
she "has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels." In one
parenthetical aside, Clinton dismissed three hundred years of political
philosophical debate.
Similarly, when Clinton made the very political decision to name
conservative David Gergen to his staff, he announced that the
appointment signaled that "we are rising above politics."
"We are," he insisted, "going beyond partisanship that damaged this
country so badly in the last several years to search for new ideas, a
new common ground, a new national unity." And when Clinton's new chief
of staff was announced, he was said to be "apolitical," a description
used in praise.
Politics without politics. The appointee was someone who, in the words
of the Washington Post, "is seen by most as a man without a personal or
political agenda that would interfere with a successful management of
the White House."
By the time Clinton had been in office for eight months he appeared
ready to dispense with opinion and thought entirely. "It is time we put
aside the divisions of party and philosophy and put our best efforts to
work on a crime plan that will help all the American people," he
declared in front of a phalanx of uniformed police officers --
presumably symbols of a new objectivity about crime.
Clinton, of course, was not alone. The Third Millennium, a slick
Perotist organization of considerable ideological intent, calls itself
"post-partisan." Perot himself played a similar game: the man without a
personal agenda. . . "
"What part of government are you interested in?" I asked a
thirtysomething lawyer who was sending in his resume to the new Clinton
administration. "I don't have any particular interest," he replied, "I
would just like to be a special assistant to someone." It no longer
surprised me; it had been ten years since I met Jeff Bingaman at a
party. He was in the middle of a multi-million dollar campaign for US
Senate; he showed me his brochure and spoke enthusiastically of his
effort. "What brings you to Washington?" I asked. He said, "I want to
find out what the issues are."
If you got the right grades at the right schools and understood the
"process," it didn't matter all that much what the issues were or what
you believed. Issues were merely raw material to be processed by good
"decision-making." As with Clinton, it was you -- not an idea or a faith
or a policy -- that was the solution.
This purported voiding of ideology is a major conceit of post-modernism
-- that assault on every favored philosophical notion since the time of
Voltaire. Post-modernism derides the concepts of universality, of
history, of values, of truth, of reason, and of objectivity. It, like
Clinton, rises above "party and philosophy" and like much of the
administration's propaganda, above traditional meaning as well.. . .
Of course, in the postmodern society that Clinton proposes -- one that
rises above the false teachings of ideology -- we find ourselves with
little to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue happens
to be in power. In this case, we may really only have progressed from
the ideology of the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say,
from democracy to authoritarianism.
Among equals, indifference to shared meaning might produce nothing worse
than lengthy argument. But when the postmodernist is President of the
United States, the impulse becomes a 500-pound gorilla to be fed, as
they say, anything it wants. . .
In Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West the
Canadian historian John Ralston Saul argues: "When the 18th-century
philosophers killed God, they thought they were engaged in
housekeeping-- the evils of corrupt religion would be swept away, the
decent aspects of Christian morality would be dusted off and neatly
repackaged inside reason." Instead says Saul, came "a theology of pure
power -- power born of structure, not of dynasty or arms. The new holy
trinity is organization, technology, and information.". . .
After you cut through the talk about a "new covenant" and "inclusion"
and so forth, much of the Clinton campaign was about political power in
its purest sense. There was mention of "vision," but as they say in
Texas, it was all hat and no cattle. These weren't people out to build
coalitions or create a movement, only to win and make sure everyone knew
they had. Later, Time would calculate that phrase 'new covenant' had
virtually disappeared by the spring of Clinton's first year in office..
A check of five major newspapers found it mentioned 45 times in July
1992, 31 times in August, but only four times the following April.
The 80s began with the murder of John Lennon. In the early 90s, Mark
David Chapman explained it this way: "I wasn't killing a real person. I
killed an image. I killed an album cover."
Within days of the election, Ford began running a TV ad using a
voice-over that sounded just like Clinton delivering a speech to an
enthusiastic audience. Or was it really Clinton delivering a speech to
an enthusiastic audience? Or really Clinton selling cars a few days
after his election?
We had helped put Clinton in the center of the semiosphere. He knew how
it worked and how to work it. But did we?
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