William J. Bennett : Manning Drug War Barricades With a ‘Kick in the Pants’ Style

William J. Bennett is advertised as being “blunt, bluff and outspoken.” Yet during a nine-year career in official Washington, the National Drug Policy Director has rarely aimed his rhetoric at a target his boss--the President--was not delighted to see absorb the blow. If Bennett is the bull in the china shop, he steers clear of knocking over the high-ticket merchandise.

As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education, he criticized union teachers, who have had a tendency--depressing from the Republican perspective--to endorse national Democratic candidates. He defended cuts in student aid by suggesting the recipients could “divest” themselves of stereos, automobiles and beach vacations--an exclamation which, whatever its wisdom as a policy to cover the cost of higher education, may have been popular among thousands of parents aggravated by the escalating aspirations of their children.

Bennett is 47. He is a Washington kid, who attended the prestigious St. Anselm’s, then the more roughhouse Gonzaga Catholic High School. He went to Williams College rather then a Catholic university, on advice of a college counselor who told young Bennett he ought to exercise his rebellious spirit some place where it wouldn’t challenge Catholic education. He graduated in 1965, completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Texas, then spent a year teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he was active in the civil-rights movement.

After acquiring another degree at Harvard, Bennett crossed the Charles River to teach and serve as an assistant to Boston University President John R. Silber, one of his professors at Texas. Bennett was known on campus as a popular professor and the fist on Silber’s strong right arm--the man who would escort military recruiters into classrooms.

Bennett was 36 when he became president of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. His campaign against what he identified as permissiveness in humanities studies brought him to the attention of activists in the Reagan Administration--his was a scholarly voice enunciating some of the President’s own unfootnoted suspicions of higher education.

Bennett was appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981, then became education secretary in 1984, after the Reagan Administration said the department should be closed. But not for the first or last time, Bennett’s rhetoric enlarged the role he was given--and made the department impossible to shut down.

He left Washington in the fall of 1988 to write a book, give speeches and contemplate various importunings to run for office--either a Senate seat from North Carolina or directly for President. Within three months, he was back, after letting the word circulate he was available for another round of underpaid government service.

Bennett is married, has two young children and is prominently absent from official Washington social proceedings--but is nonetheless reported by friends and observers to be the finest rock-and-roll dancer in the Bush Administration.

Question: What is your current understanding as to why people take drugs that are a danger to them?

Answer: The thing you hear most often is: “Somebody told me to try it, to give me a boost and make me feel better.” That is by people’s own account. What does the analysis suggest? They (drugs) are powerful; they give an intense feeling of pleasure. Once you have taken it, you want to take it again. You never quite approach that first high, but you are always trying to. It is very deceptive; it’s a lie, and I have been struck by how many people in treatment have talked about it as a lie and have even personalized it and have said “It is the Devil. It’s Satan. It is the great deception.”. . .

And it is America--we try different things. We are experimental people; we have money; permission was given 15 or 20 years ago. This is the underbelly of liberty. . . .

When you talk to people going through treatment, what they want to get away from, as they describe it, is not the physical damage; it is what it is doing to their souls. . . . It is more material for the novelist or the poet than for the clinician.

Q: Given that understanding, how do you explain to people the logic of a Administration budget that is 70% devoted to interdiction and law enforcement, and 30% to treatment programs?

A: By first of all pointing out that there is a lot more money for everything than there was before. I will be damned if I will be criticized by any member of Congress, Republican or Democrat--it is usually Democrat--for saying insufficient funds for education and treatment when we have raised them 70% or 80%. . . . Second, the federal government has responsibilities for interdiction of drugs that no state has. We pay for all of the methods. We pay for all the work in South America, and that is expensive work.

It is not that we have failed to address treatment and education that bothers the critics. It is that we believe in law enforcement, too.

Q: Let me calculatedly use a catch phrase. What experience have you had over the past year, with both the processes of interdiction and the criminal justice system, that gives you confidence that “throwing money at the problem” on that side of it is going to improve the situation?

A: Well, I have no more confidence that simply throwing money at it will do any good. A wise expenditure of money, I think, will do some good. . . .

What still is not understood, and I guess I have to take some responsibility for not making this plain enough, is the relationship between law enforcement and treatment. Many people in treatment would not be there had they not been arrested. Coercion is one of the most effective things we can use to get them into treatment.

Q: Do you have a problem with what is sometimes called “treatment on demand.”

A: Oh sure. Yes, it suggests that the determination of what treatment and when should be left to the person on drugs, the person who demands it. And that is all wrong. That person has made terrible mistakes. That person is not to be relied on for either determining when he should have treatment, or the kind of treatment he has . . . because people on drugs, again, will have a bad experience, they will crash; they will want treatment; they will demand it. They will sign up to some list, they will go in for two days, they will say “I’m fine” and they will go back out on the street.

Q: We interviewed Dr. Michael Smith of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx last summer. He said one of the tragedies of not having treatment on demand available was that he felt that somebody who was an addict walked in and needed to feel something. And if all he could give them was a letter saying “We will get in contact with you when we have a space available,” they risk losing that person.

A: Well, again, if one could snap one’s fingers and create 80,000 professional treatment experts overnight, one might be inclined to do it. But one can’t. Now in the rhetoric of treatment on demand, what people are trying to do is shift the blame from where it belongs--on people who are using drugs--to the government’s unwillingness to provide more treatment. A) Government is not unwilling to provide more treatment, (but it) can’t do it overnight. B) People who want to help themselves can.

Q: Are people to blame for their own drug problems?

A: Yes. If you take personal responsibility out, you are finished, and treatment is finished, too. All good treatment programs emphasize personal responsibility.

Q: But isn’t there a difference between emphasizing personal responsibility, and blaming someone if they haven’t yet assembled the qualities necessary to --

A: You don’t have to kick them around and blame them and shout at them. But you do have to get them to accept that they are responsible for what they did, that they can’t blame anyone else. . . . No, they cannot be allowed to point fingers at the system, the government, their mother or their environment. And if they do, you are just delaying their recovery.

Q: You recently assessed the progress made on the struggle against drugs in the District of Columbia as “spotty.”

A: That’s correct.

Q: Now in the District of Columbia, as opposed to, say, Los Angeles or Chicago, the federal government has the power of the purse and ultimate responsibilities it doesn’t enjoy in other municipalities. Why hasn’t there been more progress?

A: Well, we laid it out in our report. A number of things have been done, and a few things remain to be done. . . . It is going to take time--more time than a lot of people think, more time than some people are prepared to give me or anyone else in this job.

Q: More time than what you thought a year ago?

A: No. No, I said a year ago, it is going to be very hard to make progress.

Q: How many people on your professional staff are black?

A: I don’t count by race. I resent the question, frankly.

Q: The New York Review of Books says that of the 65 people who are at work here on your professional staff, six are black.

A: The New York Review of Books counts by race; I don’t. I had this fight before at the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) and at the Department of Education, and both times told whoever it was--EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)--to go to hell.

Q: Well, I don’t raise the question on the basis of whether there is an EEOC guideline that ought to be observed. . . . You don’t believe that it has any legitimate bearing on the kind of perspective your office is bringing to --

A: That is not a black-and-white issue. This is a colorblind issue. I am very pleased to see the strong black support of President Bush and particularly President Bush’s initiative on drugs. You know, a lot of black Americans approve of what we are doing. If you were to say “white liberals,” I think I would agree that probably most white liberals are critical. . . . But we have support, according to the New York Times, 46%, 49%--very high rating among blacks on our drug policy.

The other thing is now I talk to black people. I didn’t keep count, but I go into the city, 43 of them, and I go into communities, and essentially what they tell me is “Do what you are doing.” Except they are little more bullish on law enforcement than I am.

Q: This is a bit of a personal question, but it has been part of the public record that has been examined. May I ask, are you still smoking?

A: I am not smoking and no more personal questions.

Q: Did that experience (quitting smoking) give you greater insight or feeling into the difficulty of quitting an addiction?

A: Yes, sure. No, it is hard, sure it is hard. But so what? What does one assume from that? Should I draw from that conclusion that it is hard to get off drugs? Sure, it is hard to get off drugs. Everybody knows that.

Q: You are a man of self-esteem, and respected in the community, and yet it was still difficult to bring yourself to stop.

A: Well, Dr. (Herbert) Kleber (Yale psychiatrist and Bennett’s deputy director), tells me that nicotine addiction is harder than any of the others, it is still the hardest.

Q: Did it give you any greater feeling for people who were --

A: I have tons of feeling for people. It is not my style to stand up and emote and say “I have tremendous sympathy for people.” My job is to act in ways that will help them. . . .

More people on drugs need a kick in the pants than a bleeding-heart drug czar, and people in treatment will tell you that.

Q: Do you think that Jesse Jackson, for example, is contributing a great deal on this subject?

A: I don’t think he is contributing a great deal. I think he could. I think he could probably do more than just anybody in the country, given his abilities and his rhetorical powers in certain parts of the country and in certain communities where he is revered, I think he could make a tremendous contribution.

Q: What is Jackson not doing?

A: What is he doing? . . . He gives the occasional speech. . . . He had the opportunity to step into this and come up with a plan like the rest of us, if he would run for mayor. He passed, he walked away, went to the rhetorical sidelines. He is very good on that sideline, but it would be good to have him in the game, too. . . .

Q: What is your analysis of why, in this most blessed of societies, a significant number of Americans are not only using dangerous drugs, but drinking excessively, smoking to their detriment, narcoticizing themselves against this society we live in?

A: Oh, I don’t have any profound notions about that. Overall, I think American society is probably the healthiest society in the world. There are a lot of people who engage in self-destructive behavior, hurting themselves physically, hurting themselves mentally. But Justice Holmes said it is a free society. You have a right to go to hell if you want to, up to a point. You can’t bring other people with you. . . .

I think the sense that you want to have is that, you know, your cities become safer. It is not regarded as threatening to every, or almost every, child in America. That it doesn’t eat up 30%-40% of municipal resources. To say we will be a drug-free America, there will be no drugs, is of course idle. What is an acceptable number? I don’t know what an acceptable number is. What you do is keep it from spreading and then just keep pressuring.

Q: Is there such a thing as an acceptable number?

A: In public policy, I guess there isn’t. Morally, there isn’t. But in reality there is. You have to agree that there is some number where we are just going to have to live with, because there is probably not anything we can do about some number of people. No matter what you do, or what kind of treatment or education or sanctions, they are going to do drugs anyway until they die.

This is a very hard business. Sober reality is very stark, unhappy things. This is not a happy job. People say, “Do you enjoy your work?” “Enjoy” is the wrong word. The work is damn well worth doing, it is certainly engaging. Enjoy? A lot of carnage.

Q: On the one hand, it seems as if the past year has increased your knowledge of the way in which people who are addicted to drugs suffer, and are victimized. And on the other hand, what you say is that they need a kick in the pants.

A: (A) lot of it is, which is what good treatment is.

Q: Is that how you want to be judged, as the man who has given the kick in the pants to people in need of help?

A: When deserved! These people are in hell, and you are getting a kick in the pants, all I’m saying is that they need to straighten their lives up. . . .

I can go with and sort of emote all over them, but I don’t think that does them any good. This is what they do to themselves; a lot of people on drugs get together and they all feel sorry for themselves, just like a lot of alcoholics getting together. It’s sort of like some of my family functions, when I was growing up, all these Irishmen getting together, all emoting all over, crying, feeling sorry for themselves, making excuses for each other. Come on, get on with your life!