Can the President Think?

The chaos and paralysis of the Clinton presidency reflect the chaos and paralysis of Bill Clinton's mind--and he is not going to change.

Edith Efron from the November 1994 issue

(Page 22 of 22)

And the anonymous senior diplomat says something equally significant, and again I have italicized it: "[Secretary of State Warren] Christopher has tried to keep a steady course but he has been hampered by Clinton's tendency to flitter between issues like a butterfly."

Flitter?

People who use verbs like flit and flitter have large vocabularies and know exactly what they are trying to convey: They are saying that Clinton cannot concentrate.

An inability to concentrate is a disturbing attribute in a president, and one can understand people using code language to communicate with each other about it. They are wasting their time, however. The latest embarrassment to hit Clinton is a mass diagnosis of him as suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. That is the childhood disorder, which can continue in adulthood, that is characterized by a scattered mind, an inability to concentrate, and acute distractibility. According to Time (July 18, 1994), people with the disorder have decided that Clinton is one of their number. And Wired (June 1994) has carried an article by Evan I. Schwartz saying that some 7,000 sufferers from the disorder are logging onto the Attention Deficit Disorder Forum on CompuServe, where they acquire knowledge about the disorder, offer each other support and encouragement--and discuss famous people who they think share their symptoms. One of these famous people, says Schwartz, is Clinton.

The bizarre truth is that the president has become the poster boy of the Attention Deficit world. And Schwartz explains why. He describes the most important characteristics of a person with ADD as "ashort attention span" and "a multitasking mind"--a mind that seeks to perform many tasks simultaneously.

He then elaborates: "Those afflicted are constantly scanning their environment seeking for all things captivating. They may read lots of books, but they finish few ... They're news junkies and channel-clickers/cable-surfers. In conversation, they often detour into parenthetical tangents, never returning to the main point ... They juggle too many projects and are chronically late. But when something grabs their full attention, they can launch into hyperfocus marathons that last well into the night. It's not so much that they lack the ability to pay attention. It's more that they cannot control what they pay attention to and how long their attention lasts."

It is easy to understand why Attention Deficit sufferers want to claim Clinton as their own, but they are probably deluding themselves. Clinton's record of academic achievement--and his last-minute cramming, which requires a capacity to muster attention when it is absolutely essential--is such that it is inconceivable that he has ever had this disorder.

But it is nonetheless significant that the president's fractured cognitive state is so widely known that it is being publicized in a major newsmagazine and chattered about in cyberspace, and that it will inevitably run its course through the media. The White House aides, State Department officials, and others who are now whispering about Clinton's inability to concentrate would do better to realize that they don't just have a secret on their hands, they have something resembling a public relations emergency.

Clinton's fractured attention span, his acute distractibility, his incessant talking, are further manifestations of his compulsive disorder. He is undoubtedly accurate when he describes himself as "compulsively overactive." This diagnosis is yet another way of looking at his cognitive damage. It provides further evidence that we have a mentally impaired president in the White House.

There is one last symptom for us to consider, the one we set aside--the extraordinary untruth Clinton told Charles Allen in 1991 when he redefined his "compulsive overactivity," his "hurry," to mean amazing organization and tight control over every minute of his life. It is only now that we can see the full magnitude of that untruth. But it would be an enormous error to think that Clinton was consciously lying when he described himself as superbly organized. One need only remember more than 15 years of profoundly unconscious and robotic invocations of "I do too much, too fast" to know that Clinton has no understanding of his "hurry."

Clinton's assertion that he is superbly organized is an almost ferocious denial of his cognitive impairment.

We have now seen two variations of the same clashing themes in Clinton. There is the dark, dirgelike theme of paralysis and fear. And there is the racing, rushing, striving theme which seeks ceaselessly to escape from and to override the dirgelike theme.

The first is the theme of "death" and inertia: "I can't move" "I will die" The second is the theme of life and action, of doing: "I must hurry and do things", "I try to do too much, too fast", "I will try not to do everything at once".

Those two warring themes seem central to Clinton's very being. Whatever else is wrong with him, and whatever may be right with him, he is riven by this particular conflict. Clinton is deeply proud of and deeply afraid of his own mind. He is in ceaseless flight from its tragically damaged aspects. But no matter how fast he races, no matter how proud he is of racing, he cannot outrace it. It is with him always--assaulting his confidence, corrupting his efforts, and mocking his dreams of glory.

Politics

At the opening of this article I said that a psychological perspective on Bill Clinton should contribute to one's understanding of him, of his presidency, and of the political events of the past two years. I now add that it should contribute to one's thinking about the political future.

After two years, Clinton's presidency has degenerated into chronic crisis and, to all intents and purposes, it is now in receivership while three California Democrats try to rescue that presidency in time for the 1996 election. Clinton alone cannot rescue it. He was not psychologically qualified for the presidency, and he is not now able to save it from the corrosive effects of his own psychology.

This profile does not exhaust the subject of Clinton's psychological problems. He has others I have not discussed, such as grandiosity, and I have scarcely mentioned the first lady, save to say that she is in far better cognitive shape than Clinton. But even this discussion of a few key problems should suffice to tell the reader that the California trio--Leon Panetta, the new chief of staff; Tony Coelho, the new de facto head of the Democratic party; and political consultant Bill Bradley--will not solve Clinton's problems with managerial reorganization and Reaganesque appearances in the Rose Garden.

Coelho has been quoted as saying that all the White House needs is "some old pros who know the town." Clearly, he does not know, any more than Gergen knew, what he is walking into. "Old pros" cannot heal the fractured cognition of the man in the Oval Office, whose morning ritual includes vomiting out his terror of the burden he cannot carry.

While the Californians have their unrealistic honeymoon with their captive president, others can use the time to reflect more soberly on the political implications of the situation.

Since Democrats, liberals, and leftists have the most thinking to do, I'll review quickly the major implications for Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians. First, it is preposterous to attack Clinton as a leftist or a socialist. A man who collapses in the face of corporate hostility is not a leftist or a socialist. Second, it is preposterous to carry on feverishly over the disposition, past or present, of Clinton's genital organs when the man has a fractured mind.

It is demanding, I know, to ask older Republicans to think about something radically new. But the younger ones might start paying close attention to the fact that Democrats have put a cognitively disabled man in the White House. Defenses of the family, moral homilies, and economics lessons do not address the problem.

As for Democrats, liberals, and leftists, they must answer the question suggested by Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution, who, on learning of the California trio's plans to resurrect Clinton, observed, "Their chances of succeeding are based on the assumption that he is educable." (Quoted by Howard Fineman in Newsweek, August 29, 1994.) Hess's formulation implies that he does not think Clinton "educable."

Actually, if it is simply a matter of saying words, of memorizing chunks of information, of delivering speeches, Clinton is entirely educable: He can learn to say anything. And in sheer terror of losing, he will say anything anyone wants him to say. But if rescuing Clinton requires any change in his psychology, he is totally ineducable. No one can change his psychology on command.

Thus, Hess and like-minded liberals have other questions to consider: Does Clinton's charisma compensate for his problems? Is there really no other unimpaired and reputable Democrat who could be nominated to run, with a good chance of success, in 1996? Must Democrats prop up a cognitive cripple? And, if they must, why must they?

This is just a hint at the kinds of questions it is time for both Democrats and Republicans to consider. Above all, political thought for the future requires that both Democrats and Republicans retain the awareness of Clinton's past.

It is not an accident that Clinton has ended up in Democratic party receivership. It is not an accident that the first attempt to control him personally was directed at his compulsive talking. It is not an accident that the first attempt to control the White House was to deal with the chaos that Clinton always generates around him. It is not an accident that the public sees him as weak and indecisive. It is not an accident that mainstream journalism, to quote Michael Kelly, treats Clinton with "dismissive contempt." And it is not an accident that his fractured attention span is so obvious he is now the poster boy for the Attention Deficit world.

None of this is an accident. That is what one can learn about the political past by thinking about Clinton's psychology.

It is now time to think about Clinton's psychology in terms that will shape the political future: What is it about contemporary politics that has put such a damaged man in the White House? Why, rather than repudiating him, has his party rallied to save him by camouflaging the reality of his fundamental incompetence? Why can we be certain that Republicans in the same situation would do the same thing?

And how, in the face of all this, does anyone dare to chastise the public and the press for their cynicism?