Site Presented By
Friday, Nov 21, 2008
Clinton's failure to meet our subconscious expectations means he will have to resign.
Sep 4, 1998 | If President Clinton ends up having to resign -- which is what I expect -- it will not be because he is an immoral or evil person, but because the American public is still not prepared, psychologically, to accept that our president is a mere mortal.
One probable, and ironic, legacy of Clinton will be that future presidents will be granted more latitude in personal sexual behavior, just as politicians can today get divorced or admit having smoked marijuana. This development will be welcome -- it's long past time for us to cease projecting our subconscious needs for a larger-than-life leader onto the fallible human beings our democratic process propels into the office of president. But for the moment, the cognitive dissonance between our little-discussed expectations of the presidency and Clinton's behavior may well lead to an Al Gore presidency within the next year. If so, the proximate cause will be Democratic leaders asking the president to step down in the face of larger-than-expected congressional losses and/or a weakening economy. But the real causes will go far deeper.
Did you ever have a nightmare where you were humiliated before everyone you knew, a nightmare in which everyone was either disgusted by or laughing at you? And do you remember how horrible you felt when you awakened? Now imagine poor Bill Clinton. He is in the middle of a living nightmare of humiliation beyond anything most of us can imagine. He is embarrassed not just before his family, friends, co-workers and everyone he knows, but the entire world -- and the entire world for all time to come, to boot. And, unlike the rest of us, he can't wake up. He will inhabit this nightmare all the rest of his days.
"Poor Bill Clinton." It is this dimension of Monicagate that is unique in the history of the presidency. We have had scoundrels, rogues, liars and people who committed great violence in the job before. But never have we had so hapless a president. "The Emperor With No Clothes" was supposed to be a fairy tale, not the literal description of a president whose private parts have actually become a subject of public discussion.
From this perspective, Clinton's mistake is not that he had sex in the Oval Office or lied. It is something far more serious: He got caught. Presidents can be forgiven anything so long as they seem powerful enough to protect us. But a president who is so weak or foolish as to get caught is something that our psyches are just not prepared for.
It is amazing how little public discussion there has been about the role the presidency plays in our psyches and lives, which is the real issue underlying the Clinton scandal. It is true, as many have suggested, that CEOs, college professors and military officers could lose their jobs for denying and then having to admit having adulterous sex with someone young enough to be their child. But for no one other than a president could this become a national obsession, dominate the media for months on end and threaten to paralyze both the executive and legislative branches of government.
Let us begin with the basics: A president is different from every other American, all 250 million of them. This has partly to do with power: The president is the only person we entrust with the authority to use nuclear weapons. That is, we voluntarily grant the president, and only the president, the right to kill us and all life on earth.
Get Salon in your mailbox!