(with thanks to Glenn Greenwald)
None of this, of course, is new. Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his influential 1964 Harper's essay entitled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, described this dynamic perfectly (and, in doing so, he emphasized, accurately, that it "is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon"):
Emulating the Enemy
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms -- he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. ("Time is running out," said [John Birch Society founder Robert] Welch in 1951. "Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack").
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman -- sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.
The paranoid's interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone's will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).
It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through "front" groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist "crusades" openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Sunday, February 04, 2007
David Kurtz on what the hell Dick Cheney is up to
(February 04, 2007 -- 09:01 AM EST // link)
In a piece headlined "Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over Trial," the WaPo has a nice synopsis of Cheney's involvement in the Plame matter.
Actually, you could headline just about every story that way these days: "Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over _________."
Fill in the blank: Iraq. Iran. Global warming. Renditions. Domestic surveillance.
I will confess to having been extremely skeptical in the early years of the Bush Presidency that Cheney was really running the show. It seemed too facile an explanation for what I was convinced was a far more complicated situation. Until the 9/11 Commission report came out.
Even the watered-down version of events in the Commission's report made it absolutely clear that Cheney, ensconced in the White House bunker on the morning of the attacks, had issued shootdown orders outside of the chain of command and then conspired with the President to conceal this fact from the Commission.
Since then, I've gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d'etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President.
Last week, in trying to break the lock on who actually works in the OVP--which the Vice President refuses to reveal--the guys at Muckraker stumbled across this entry from a government directory known as the "Plum Book":
The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).
It appears that Cheney's office submitted this entry in lieu of a list of its employees, as federal agencies must do. It sounds like something Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, might have written. Cheney and Addington have been the among the most powerful proponents of the theory of a "unitary executive," but there are indications that they have also advanced, though less publicly, a theory of a constitutionally distinct and independent vice presidency.
For a long time, talk of Cheney's unprecedented power carried with it a whiff of left-wing radicalism and Oliver Stone conspiracies. But in the last year, several serious journalistic efforts have explored the Cheney vice presidency. Robert Kuttner surveyed the field in his essay, "See Dick Run (the Country)," for The American Prospect. While it is axiomatic that Cheney is the power behind throne, what remains missing, as Kuttner pointed out, is the sort of relentless, day-to-day media coverage of Cheney that befits his claims to constitutional power:
If Cheney were the actual president, not just the de facto one, he simply could not govern with the same set of policies and approval ratings of 20 percent. The media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England.
Yet the press buys the pretense of Bush being "the decider," and relentlessly covers Bush -- meeting with world leaders, cutting brush, holding press conferences, while Cheney works in secret, largely undisturbed. So let's take half the members of the overblown White House press corps, which has almost nothing to do anyway, and send them over to Cheney Boot Camp for Reporters. They might learn how to be journalists again, and we might learn who is running the government.
The other thing missing has been congressional oversight. Since Kuttner penned his essay, Democrats have gained control of Congress. A hearing on the constitutional role of the vice president might be an excellent place to start. From all indications, Cheney has amassed considerable power due to his experience and savvy vis-a-vis the President's relative lack thereof. But that is a separate issue from the constitutional role of the OVP, and whether, or in what ways, various statutory regimens, particularly in the national security arena, apply to the OVP.
By custom and tradition, the Vice President's role had been circumscribed by how little express power and authority the Constitution granted the position. Hence, all the jokes over the years about the vice presidency. But in a move that is decidedly anti-conservative, in the conventional sense, Cheney moved to fill the void. I fear that what we will eventually find are structural flaws that were deliberately exploited by the OVP, which in turn further undermined constitutional and statutory structures.
Still, I can't help but be fascinated by the more pedestrian issue of how Cheney continues to assert himself so vigorously without running up against the ego of a cocksure President. How is it that Bush, who is so caught up in macho public demonstrations of his own personal strength and courage, can tolerate a shadow presidency within his own White House? What kind of spell has Cheney cast that allows Bush to continue to believe he is the decider? You can imagine all sorts of dysfunctional psychological dramas playing out behind the scenes.
But whether it's the legal or political aspect of Cheney's role, it all comes down to the same thing: we just don't know.
It's about time we find out.
-- David Kurtz
In a piece headlined "Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over Trial," the WaPo has a nice synopsis of Cheney's involvement in the Plame matter.
Actually, you could headline just about every story that way these days: "Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over _________."
Fill in the blank: Iraq. Iran. Global warming. Renditions. Domestic surveillance.
I will confess to having been extremely skeptical in the early years of the Bush Presidency that Cheney was really running the show. It seemed too facile an explanation for what I was convinced was a far more complicated situation. Until the 9/11 Commission report came out.
Even the watered-down version of events in the Commission's report made it absolutely clear that Cheney, ensconced in the White House bunker on the morning of the attacks, had issued shootdown orders outside of the chain of command and then conspired with the President to conceal this fact from the Commission.
Since then, I've gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d'etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President.
Last week, in trying to break the lock on who actually works in the OVP--which the Vice President refuses to reveal--the guys at Muckraker stumbled across this entry from a government directory known as the "Plum Book":
The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).
It appears that Cheney's office submitted this entry in lieu of a list of its employees, as federal agencies must do. It sounds like something Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, might have written. Cheney and Addington have been the among the most powerful proponents of the theory of a "unitary executive," but there are indications that they have also advanced, though less publicly, a theory of a constitutionally distinct and independent vice presidency.
For a long time, talk of Cheney's unprecedented power carried with it a whiff of left-wing radicalism and Oliver Stone conspiracies. But in the last year, several serious journalistic efforts have explored the Cheney vice presidency. Robert Kuttner surveyed the field in his essay, "See Dick Run (the Country)," for The American Prospect. While it is axiomatic that Cheney is the power behind throne, what remains missing, as Kuttner pointed out, is the sort of relentless, day-to-day media coverage of Cheney that befits his claims to constitutional power:
If Cheney were the actual president, not just the de facto one, he simply could not govern with the same set of policies and approval ratings of 20 percent. The media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England.
Yet the press buys the pretense of Bush being "the decider," and relentlessly covers Bush -- meeting with world leaders, cutting brush, holding press conferences, while Cheney works in secret, largely undisturbed. So let's take half the members of the overblown White House press corps, which has almost nothing to do anyway, and send them over to Cheney Boot Camp for Reporters. They might learn how to be journalists again, and we might learn who is running the government.
The other thing missing has been congressional oversight. Since Kuttner penned his essay, Democrats have gained control of Congress. A hearing on the constitutional role of the vice president might be an excellent place to start. From all indications, Cheney has amassed considerable power due to his experience and savvy vis-a-vis the President's relative lack thereof. But that is a separate issue from the constitutional role of the OVP, and whether, or in what ways, various statutory regimens, particularly in the national security arena, apply to the OVP.
By custom and tradition, the Vice President's role had been circumscribed by how little express power and authority the Constitution granted the position. Hence, all the jokes over the years about the vice presidency. But in a move that is decidedly anti-conservative, in the conventional sense, Cheney moved to fill the void. I fear that what we will eventually find are structural flaws that were deliberately exploited by the OVP, which in turn further undermined constitutional and statutory structures.
Still, I can't help but be fascinated by the more pedestrian issue of how Cheney continues to assert himself so vigorously without running up against the ego of a cocksure President. How is it that Bush, who is so caught up in macho public demonstrations of his own personal strength and courage, can tolerate a shadow presidency within his own White House? What kind of spell has Cheney cast that allows Bush to continue to believe he is the decider? You can imagine all sorts of dysfunctional psychological dramas playing out behind the scenes.
But whether it's the legal or political aspect of Cheney's role, it all comes down to the same thing: we just don't know.
It's about time we find out.
-- David Kurtz
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Reed Hundt on What the Hell Dick Cheney is Up To
Here in South Asia
By Reed Hundt
At a conference on the shores of the Bay of Bengal I happened to have a long talk with a former general who while on active service ran an army engaged in conflict with a major Muslim nation. His comment about the "surge" was this: "You never reinforce a losing situation."
But reinforcing the American military commitment to the Middle East is the maxim of the Administration. It is the Vice President's essential thesis: the American military must be firmly installed in the Middle East until the end of oil, and until anti-American Islamic fervor fades away, no matter how long that may take. He sees American dependence on Middle Eastern oil lasting at least 60 to 80 years, notwithstanding the impact on the environment, not to mention the current account deficit. He sees armed opposition to Islamic fundamentalism as lasting at least as long as the Cold War, and of course he thinks of the conflict as the successor to the Soviet threat against capitalism and democracy. The Vice President has explained all this many times, in various ways, and in his heyday he persuaded virtually all of the mainstream media to agree with him.
Even now the Vice President plays the essential role in running the White House foreign policy strategy and, especially in the wake of Secretary Rumsfeld's departure, military strategy as well. From his perspective, withdrawal of the American military from Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East is wishful thinking at best, dangerous to America's economic future at worst, and, additionally, catastrophic for Israel. On this last point, Senator Lieberman is in strident agreement.
From the Vice President's point of view, the dire assessment of the security analysts about Iraq only underscores the importance of reinforcing the American commitment. He thinks that tactics may need to be changed, but the prospect of greater violence spreading from Iraq across the region only underscores the importance of the strategic goal: locking in American access to the region's resources and precluding the formation of significant military power under the control of any Islamic theocratic regime.
The Democratic Presidential candidates are not likely to be able to avoid direct debate over the Vice President's thesis for the whole long period until the election. John McCain and Mitt Romney agree with the Vice President and will articulate his views forcefully.
The Administration's actions with respect to Iran are part of this larger narrative. It isn't that the Administration actually wants war with Iran, but on the other hand it does want to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. What Democrat will disagree with that? And if that goal is stipulated, what then will Democrats argue in the general election about policy with respect to Iran? Just saying we should talk to Iran is not likely to suffice.
By Reed Hundt
At a conference on the shores of the Bay of Bengal I happened to have a long talk with a former general who while on active service ran an army engaged in conflict with a major Muslim nation. His comment about the "surge" was this: "You never reinforce a losing situation."
But reinforcing the American military commitment to the Middle East is the maxim of the Administration. It is the Vice President's essential thesis: the American military must be firmly installed in the Middle East until the end of oil, and until anti-American Islamic fervor fades away, no matter how long that may take. He sees American dependence on Middle Eastern oil lasting at least 60 to 80 years, notwithstanding the impact on the environment, not to mention the current account deficit. He sees armed opposition to Islamic fundamentalism as lasting at least as long as the Cold War, and of course he thinks of the conflict as the successor to the Soviet threat against capitalism and democracy. The Vice President has explained all this many times, in various ways, and in his heyday he persuaded virtually all of the mainstream media to agree with him.
Even now the Vice President plays the essential role in running the White House foreign policy strategy and, especially in the wake of Secretary Rumsfeld's departure, military strategy as well. From his perspective, withdrawal of the American military from Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East is wishful thinking at best, dangerous to America's economic future at worst, and, additionally, catastrophic for Israel. On this last point, Senator Lieberman is in strident agreement.
From the Vice President's point of view, the dire assessment of the security analysts about Iraq only underscores the importance of reinforcing the American commitment. He thinks that tactics may need to be changed, but the prospect of greater violence spreading from Iraq across the region only underscores the importance of the strategic goal: locking in American access to the region's resources and precluding the formation of significant military power under the control of any Islamic theocratic regime.
The Democratic Presidential candidates are not likely to be able to avoid direct debate over the Vice President's thesis for the whole long period until the election. John McCain and Mitt Romney agree with the Vice President and will articulate his views forcefully.
The Administration's actions with respect to Iran are part of this larger narrative. It isn't that the Administration actually wants war with Iran, but on the other hand it does want to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. What Democrat will disagree with that? And if that goal is stipulated, what then will Democrats argue in the general election about policy with respect to Iran? Just saying we should talk to Iran is not likely to suffice.
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