The Nation's Pulse: Paranoia Politics
Troy, Daniel E.
THE NATION'S PULSE by Daniel E. Troy Paranoia Politics W e have heard much lately about how the Clintonites view their enemies. According to U.S. News 6 World Report columnist Gloria Borger,...
...Even after the president decided to acknowledge lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Mrs...
...Let us hope that heads are not next...
...Did you express concern that the White House was somehow behind this subpoena...
...Michael Ledeen: Yes...
...They also show the topics Blumenthal was really interested in, and how tenuous their connection is to Drudge's allegations...
...Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things to the finish...
...Certainly some on the right have affected the paranoid style as well...
...Full disclosure—Michael spoke to me about his upcoming deposition, but not at a dinner party...
...Blumenthal lawyer William McDaniel asked Michael the following questions about a conversation with Newsweek reporter Mark Hosenball: "Did you express anger that you had been subpoenaed...
...A final indication of the paranoid style is the recent reference in the pro-Clinton Internet magazine Salon to a "Doomsday" strategy to oppose impeachment by revealing the sexual history of members of Congress...
...Borger added that Mrs...
...Q: Do you [know] why Amy Holmes [a project manager at the IWF] has told people there's something called the Blumenthal project at the Independent Women's Forum...
...The American Spectator • October 1998 69 crush them...
...Rather, its purpose plainly is to probe administration critics about their political views, activities, and associates, to the end of intimidating them...
...Q: And what serious crimes is it Mr...
...As historian Alan Brinkley writes in Liberalism and Its Discontents, "the idea that there was an establishment and that it exercised hidden power was an article of faith in the late 1960's and 1970's to revisionist historians (and the New Left more generally...
...Certainly this administration lies abundantly...
...The Clintonites do, and their obvious belief in a vast right-wing conspiracy, as well as their certain faith in their own moral rectitude, accounts for what the Wall Street Journal aptly called the "Smash Mouth Presidency...
...McDaniel also probed the Ledeens about their other alleged contacts with the press—what was said, for what purpose, and even who initiated the calls...
...His description of the "paranoid spokesman" fits the first lady perfectly: As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is obvious to the as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader...
...Nothing but complete victory will do...
...This paranoid style is shared by Blumenthal, who is among the first lady's closest and most influential aides...
...They were not...
...This report exemplifies what Hofstadter called "higher paranoid scholarship...
...In igg7, it released a 330-page report on an alleged "media food chain," purporting to show how conservative, anti-Clinton elements get their ideas onto the Internet and into print, and eventually into reports by the major news organizations...
...A: First and foremost the aiming of China...
...Despite the apology, Blumenthal sued...
...A few exchanges warrant quoting, because they show Blumenthal's disregard for civil liberties and deposition protocol...
...Blumenthal as part of a group in the White House that has committed crimes...
...This view, Hofstadter stressed, is "nothing if not coherent—in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities...
...Blumenthal as part of a corrupt White House...
...This line of inquiry has little—if anything—to do with the question of whether the Ledeens were Drudge's source for the allegedly libelous statement...
...She] does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of a working politician...
...Clinton's enthusiastic approval, Blumenthal suggested that the report be presented to Schmidt's boss Len Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post...
...Clinton strategist James Carville, for instance, has declared "war" on Starr...
...Blumenthal also played an important role in the attempts to "out" members of Ken Starr's staff...
...He has a "penchant for theories that don't normally come to mind," Emanuel said in February, "and seeing connections that you don't normally see...
...Taken together, they reveal the paranoia behind Blumenthal's political Weltanschauung...
...This paranoid style conflicts with the American project...
...Indeed, White House aide Rahm Emanuel nicknamed Blumenthal "G.K.," short for "Grassy Knoll," the spot from which the supposed second shooter shot at President Kennedy...
...Q: And you view Mr...
...Blumenthal refused...
...isn't that right...
...Clinton's charge that her enemies form a "vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president...
...A: Because there isn't one...
...T he paranoid style, and the view that enemies need to be "eliminated," explain the administration's illegal use of more than goo FBI files on former Republican staffers, as well as its use of the IRS against more than a dozen conservative critics including the Heritage Foundation, the Western Journalism Center, the National Rifle Association, National Review, and Oliver North's Freedom Alliance...
...Did you express concern that this was trampling on your First Amendment rights...
...Blumenthal as part of a group in the White House who is covered by omerta or the code of silence...
...Fighting these subpoenas would have cost the Ledeens tens of thousands of dollars...
...Hillary Clinton supposedly championed the report, and Blumenthal is suspected of having a hand in it...
...Yet during the 1960's the utopianism of the New Left, which spawned the Clintonites, quickly turned paranoid and then violent...
...Q: And so you therefore believe that he's guilty of serious crimes...
...He then used the discovery process to issue subpoenas to Michael Ledeen, TAS's foreign editor and my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, and to his wife Barbara, executive director of the Independent Women's Forum...
...A court would probably have refused to quash the subpoenas entirely, and at best, might have limited the scope of the questioning...
...Another example of the Clintonites' vehemence is Mrs...
...The plaintiff was present as his lawyers interrogated Michael and Barbara about the following: •Whether Michael had ever asserted Fifth Amendment rights (he hadn't...
...Many Clintonites believe that the enemy—i.e., their critics—must be "totally eliminated...
...They have abused the power of the state to target "unfriendly" members of the press, intellectual critics, and other perceived threats...
...Blumenthal has committed in the White House in your view...
...The surest sign that Blumenthal had assumed the paranoid style was McDaniel's inquiry of Barbara as to whether the Independent Women's Forum ever "gathered information regarding Sidney Blumenthal...
...k The American Spectator • October 1998 71...
...Q: And what crimes is it Mr...
...Q: What do you base that on...
...That would mean they had won...
...Michael had written a National Review article comparing the Clinton administration to the Mafia, specifically the Corleone family from Mario Puzo's Godfather saga...
...Most outrageous of all was the questioning of Michael's views about this administration...
...A: No...
...Their personal views of Blumenthal —if they bore him "ill will," "hated him," or thought that he was "evil...
...70 October 1998 • The American Spectator Q: Do you view Mr...
...William McDaniel: And you view Mr...
...Q: What are they...
...The very structure of our government, embodied in such institutions as bicameralism and single-member districts, promotes moderation and compromise, which is precisely what the paranoid style rejects...
...A: The crimes referred to a White House that has committed crimes...
...The White House described a "communication stream of conspiracy commerce," a process supposedly begun by "well-funded right-wing think-tanks" and individuals who "underwrite conservative newsletters and newspapers, such as the Western Journalism Center, The American Spectator, and the Pittsburgh [Greensburg] Tribune Review...
...She added that there was "a great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it...
...Clinton and Blumenthal to discredit Sue Schmidt, the Washington Post reporter whose aggressive Whitewater coverage had angered the first lady...
...Even if Bill Clinton, left alone, might have been more of a "working politician" than a "militant leader," his administration is dominated by those who have adopted this paranoid style...
...Fearing a loss of "access to White House sources," however, these "reputable" media figures swore Ireland, who is openly gay, to complete anonymity...
...Blumenthal was out of control...
...In its rejection of complexity, the paranoid style is, like the president, basically adolescent...
...Hofstadter ascribed that style to the extreme right of the 1950's and early 1960's...
...Clinton apparently believes the only way to deal with these enemies is to Sidney Blumenthal's contribution to the Clinton legacy...
...Drudge could not substantiate the report and apologized within 24 hours...
...Q: And there has not been one...
...Yet were he to rewrite his essay now, he might well include the Clintonites...
...Blumenthal is guilty of in your judgment...
...Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated...
...Blumenthal's cast of mind, as well as his will-ingness to employ any weapon against his enemies, is revealed by his attempted use of a libel suit against Internet columnist Matt Drudge to uncover this "vast right-wing conspiracy...
...As Borger concluded, "Friends say that [Mrs...
...Michael and Barbara chose to submit to the depositions, asking that they be conducted publicly...
...Clinton and her coterie, egged on by Blumenthal, manifest the "qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" that historian Richard Hofstadter identified in 1963 as The Paranoid Style In American Politics...
...Mike McCurry buried the report after it had been written...
...Yet Blumenthal not only "imagined" doing the same to the Ledeens— he engineered it...
...Ireland acknowledged that "reporters' fears of White House retribution are hardly groundless," pointing to the plan by Mrs...
...In the March 30 edition of the left-wing Nation, journalist Doug Ireland wrote that three members of the media confirmed to him that Blumenthal "had indeed been spreading such stories: They'd heard him do it...
...In that article, he had also compared Blumenthal to the family's "consigliere," or adviser...
...Even scarier are the reported threats against Kathleen Willey, the firing and failed prosecution of Travel Office head Billy Dale, and the illegal use of confidential information from Linda Tripp's personnel file...
...A: Yes...
...The name of every person with whom Michael and Barbara had talked about their upcoming deposition, including everyone who had been at a dinner party at the home of Washington lawyer Theodore Olson...
...Did you express concern that Mr...
...A: I don't think she's done that...
...Drudge, it will be recalled, alleged that Blumenthal "has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up...
...But conservatives tend not to be utopians and, in any event, they do not now control the federal government...
...A: Yes...
...He did so even though the Ledeens, unlike White House aide Blumenthal, are private citizens whom the First Amendment is meant to protect...
...A: 1 believe that he's a member of an administration that has committed serious crimes and he has participated in them...
...These comments, as well as substantial other evidence, suggest that Mrs...
...These depositions, complete copies of which are posted on the Spectator's website (www.spectator.org), illustrate the paranoid cast of Blumenthal's mind...
...T he tendency of some members of this administration to blame its troubles on right-wing conspirators is not new...
...ting her husband give a mea culpa speech because, "She would never want to capitulate' to their enemies, says one ally...
...Mrs...
...Starting with "defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least what appear to be facts," it marshals "these facts toward an overwhelming 'proof' of the particular conspiracy to be established...
...Clinton's] enemies are enemies for life and should be consigned to outer darkness, then vaporized...
...With Mrs...
...Having affected the paranoid style of politics, it also breaks laws abundantly...
...The sources of funding for Michael's consulting company, for David Horowitz's Second Thoughts Project, at which Barbara had served as executive director, and for the Independent Women's Forum...
...This, at the behest of a man who, after being subpoenaed to the Starr grand jury, wrapped himself in the First Amendment and said: "I never imagined that in America I would be hauled before a federal grand jury to answer questions about my conversations with members of the media...
...A: Yes...
...Clinton's hand-in-hand strolls with the president are explained not by "her faith in his denials, it's those enemies that keep her going...
...News 6 World Report columnist Gloria Borger, Hillary Clinton long resisted letDANIEL E. TROY, a Washington lawyer, is an associate scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Clinton and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal insisted that he attack Kenneth Starr, as he did to disastrous effect...
...That a high government official could and would use the judicial process in this way should unnerve anyone concerned with civil liberties...
...The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms...
...Howard Kurtz reports in Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine that Blumenthal, while still a writer for the New Yorker, proposed that the White House counsel's office write a report highlighting Schmidt's ostensibly unfair coverage...
...In Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork argues that "modern liberals, being in charge of the institutions they once attacked, have no need to break heads and only an occasional need to break laws...
...The threat recalls Hofstadter's statement that, in the paranoid style of politics, "what is felt to be needed to defeat [the conspiracy] is not the usual methods of give-and-take, but an all-out crusade...
...They do, however, have a need to lie, and do so abundantly, since many Americans do not like their agenda...
Vol. 31 • October 1998 • No. 10
