The fact that many politicians are hypocrites who don't believe in the very principles they propound on a daily basis to be essential to the country's well-being is not news. It would be boring to spend the remainder of this column shrilly hectoring them for shrilly hectoring us about family values and then demonstrating that those family values are as transitory as a line of cocaine vacuumed from a prostitute's behind. But what I do find interesting is the psychology of the matter this self-effacing ego of ours.
I recall reading an article in Newsweek about how Elliot Spitzer was getting along, post-career-implosion. The author of the piece, Jonathan Darman, stated that, while trying to explain his actions and why exactly he sought to ruin his career through such a spectacularly gymnastic fall, Spitzer made constant reference to "human nature" (in the vein of the old platitude, to err is human). But Spitzer seemed to find human nature to be totally puzzling; he made it a blanket excuse for his actions, as though it were some mischievous imp that caused him to destroy his life. The machinations of the imp were totally beyond Spitzer's ken, let alone the possibility of exercising any self-control. Self-control never occurred to Spitzer his self controlled him, like a marionette pulling its own strings.
These observations are obviously pertinent to the respective predicaments of Sen. Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Sanford of South Carolina. Both men are the opposite of a character like Hamlet. Whereas Hamlet delivers one introspective soliloquy after another, driving himself mad with his own self-awareness, these men destroy themselves through their sheer inability to see themselves. They love and crave being seen by others, but to see the shiny, mesmerizing thing-in-itself would be incomprehensible.
Ever since I can remember, I have had a stream of thoughts running through my head, and certainly most people have such a stream of consciousness. But there is an additional element the meta-cognition, if you will. My stream of thought is always trying to figure out what it is, the stream trying to see the stream. The theorist of consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter, would call this a "strange loop." I am such a strange loop and, in fact, we all are (in theory).
But the problem with people like Senators John Ensign and Larry Craig, or Governors Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer, is that they are not strange loops. They are just lines. They never pause from getting borne on by time and tide, never take a breather and try to figure out where this stream is coming from, where it is headed, what it is. They just keep going. It gives the term "political animal" new meaning, because politicians are just like animals in this regard. An animal can never figure out why its impulses keep making it do what it does and it cannot attempt to put rational checks on its behavior. It merely keeps doing whatever it feels like doing, getting the occasional scary shock from time to time, as nature bounces it down the road towards death.
Think about how this political animal causes misery for everyone around him. He never stops to think about whether the domino theory is hogwash, and escalates troop levels in Vietnam. He never thinks that it would be meaningless to spy on his already dominated political rivals, and he breaks into Watergate. He never thinks that there might be an alternative explanation for Saddam Hussein's behavior over the purported WMDs. And in all of those instances of adultery, from the dawn of the American republic until now, he never thinks about his job, his constituents, or even his wife! He just thinks about himself and can't even try to understand it.
This kind of editorial criticism is just like asking someone who is dying of cancer to stop, please. Nothing will change, and the political animal will be as ravenous as ever. It is like launching a critique of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics. But nonetheless, it seems clear that we should vest absolutely no faith in this personality's ability to lead and should take total responsibility for our lives. The price is our own dignity and self-respect.
