A Public Drama to Resolve Private Dilemmas

The comparison is inevitable. Two presidents in our lifetime facing impeachment, while there was only one other such in our history of over 200 years. Is it a sign of our times, the complexity of living? Or is the quality of character on the decline?

There are similarities and differences in the two historical periods, and overlap between them. It is necessary to keep these clear in the service of our future. What will we extract from these events to guide us into the next millennium? Are there human beings who can provide the leadership we need, overcome temptations and avoid the perils?

The total subject for understanding in both of these situations is not a man in each case, but a relationship, one between a leader at the top of the pyramid and those who elect and support him at the base, giving the whole its stability. In between, at various levels, are staff, Congress and the media, with reciprocal influences up and down.

In the cases of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both lied. “Cover-up” was the word used with Nixon, not the wrongdoing at Watergate. What Clinton did is also being subjugated to what he did about it--lying, denying, urging others to cover it up as well. Both deceived the American public. Both have been accused of obstructing justice.

But Nixon and Clinton have two different character structures, almost opposite ones. And they have two different histories of the relationships with their respective supporting bases.

Many years ago, an infamous “analysis” of Barry Goldwater from afar embarrassed the psychiatric profession and led it to avoid the political arena since then. This, however, has deprived the American people of a method to understand national emotional experiences in depth.

Looking not at the private lives of either Nixon or Clinton but only at their actions in the public domain, the two leaders present different psychological makeups. Nixon was cold, aloof, suspicious, isolated; Clinton is cuddly, touchy, kissy, embracing. Without the 25 years of hatred Nixon elicited pre-Watergate, primarily for his method of treatment of opponents, he might have weathered the storm of his one illegal transgression. Clinton is disliked for opposite reasons, by people uncomfortable with his spontaneous hug and suspicious of excessive expressions of intimacy. His fall from grace came from uncontrolled urges.

Underneath the areas in common, Clinton’s troubles and Nixon’s a quarter century ago are far apart. The jam Clinton is in is from emotional conflict, a compromise behavior between instincts, sexual drives and moral principles. His behavior was juvenile, immediate pleasure, then guilt and remorse.

Nixon’s were from a different kind of compromise, of integrity rather than of instinctual drives. Clinton’s was private, inward, on a path toward emotional illness. Nixon’s outward, on a line toward asocial behavior and crime. Clinton’s conflicts, in psychoanalytic jargon, are between ego and id, while Nixon’s are between his ego and superego. Both are responsible for what they did in action.

Both men disappointed their public, who look to their elected models for ways of resolving their universal inner conflicts and expect their leaders to set examples. While the electorate also identifies with their flaws and goes a long way toward being tolerant, there is in each case a line in the sand. This line may be crossed more often in our modern age because of instant communication, an explosion of information and correspondingly a lesser chance of denial or repression. We know too much now and have to face up more to what we think and feel.

The people supported Nixon until the smoking gun, which he himself provided. Nixon was elected by the second greatest landslide in history five months after Watergate and three months after the break-in was revealed as emanating from the White House.

Yet, in spite of a large group of dedicated “Nixon haters,” and more than a majority of the people being favorable to Clinton’s presidency, I believe that a more widespread--though less intense--dislike exists toward Clinton than it did toward Nixon.

This is because, with this sexual “misdemeanor,” as with similar behavior by previous presidents, people are unconsciously more identified with the behavior of their leaders and wish not to be exposed and disturbed.

Their identification with Nixon was of a different sort. People identify on an unconscious level with lying, deceit and self-serving behavior. A mayor is elected after serving in jail. That “everyone cheats” is true enough to be believed.

Clinton’s sexual behavior is even more fused into everyday life, but it is more repressed and defended against. Clinton’s sexual ways involve shame as well as guilt. His uncontrolled acts spread these feelings to others, expose sexual fantasies in all and force people to confront their fantasies. He embarrasses people, and turns them off.

Nixon would have survived had his cover-up remained unproved, but with his lie outed, people had no choice. With Clinton, the cover-up and its motivation are more acceptable in the unconscious than Nixon’s. Sexual acts, as sexual fantasies outside the permissible, are relegated to inner thoughts, away from outer perception, mostly even outside one’s own consciousness. With regard to Clinton’s secrecy concerning his affair with Monica Lewinsky, people do not usually go around exposing their consensual, illicit sexual partners. Discretion--i.e., lying in this case--is the accepted mode, for the sake of all concerned. Paradoxically, it is here considered even honorable to conceal.

That is why Ken Starr’s relentless pursuit to expose Clinton’s lies is looked at ambivalently. However lurid the interest, most people would rather not have known. Yet this is only a partial conscious wish; from the unconscious comes a pull of fascination. Starr catered to this and elicited an orgy of voyeurism. But everywhere this is accompanied and followed by a reaction of disgust. In this case, people would have accepted a continued cover-up. But politics conspired with what people consciously consider “right” to bring this president to this point.

The people today confront two behavioral entities: One--Nixon--who committed a crime (and never admitted to it) that was unacceptable to the group conscience. The other--Clinton--who engaged in a type of protective distortion (which he has admitted to many times) condoned unconsciously by the compromising superego, however much conscious ethics condemns it. Deep down, however broad the conscious criticism, there is more identification with the problems of Clinton. To that extent, people want to help him as they would have wished to be helped in the same way.

The public is the ultimate jury. The people, who will do the electing, get what they want, as they have in a repeated series of agonizing crises and public trials in recent years. Each public drama is a litmus test of the public mind. In the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas conflict and the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson rape trials, it is safe to say that the collective public unconsciously favored the decision that was actually rendered in each case.

With Rodney King and O.J. Simpson, two trials were required for each because the public--and each individual in it--was a house divided within itself. The first decision in each case did what was thought necessary in the face of public opinion, but a second go at it was required to do what was right. In the King case, there was a crucial miscalculation, which led to riots. In Simpson, both sides of the conflict in the collective mind were satisfied in sequence, and violence was avoided.

Just as the unconscious played its role in this series of dramatic public events, in the present crisis, the public view is being polled as a guide to action. First the Starr staff and now Congress are listening to the public for its mandate and direction. What does the public want? How far will it go? How does it wish to resolve its own aroused conflicts?