Salon Newsreal | The politics of paranoia

A L S O__T O D A Y

Grace under pressure
By Charles Taylor
With his back to the wall, President Clinton finds his voice and passes the character test

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THE HENRY
HYDE AFFAIR
Hyde lied, says former lover
By David Talbot
"Long-term relationship" ended at least two and a half years after Hyde claimed it did, charges Cherie Soskin
Editorial
Salon's declaration of independence
Political firestorm erupts against Salon
By Harry Jaffe
Republicans charge that White House was behind story and call for FBI investigation
"This hypocrite broke up my family"
By David Talbot
The secret affair of Henry Hyde, the man who will sit in judgment on President Clinton
Editorial
Why we ran the Henry Hyde story
- - - - - - -
The full text of The Starr Report and The White House Rebuttal

T A B L E+T A L K
Does anybody really want to see the president impeached? Join the debate in the Politics area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
A man for all seasons
By Jeff Stein
Russia's former KGB chief dishes the truth about new Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov
(09/21/98)
Loyal to the end
By Jessica Seigel
Susan McDougal, on trial in California on non-Whitewater offenses, feels vindicated
(09/18/98)
Lives of the Republicans, Part Two
By David Neiwert
The strange case of Helen Chenoweth shows that playing the sex card against the Democrats as a political strategy can be, in Idaho parlance, as "dumb as a mud fence"
(09/16/98)
White House adjusts its game plan
By Jonathan Broder
White House switches tactics
(09/14/98)
Where's Whitewater?
By Jonathan Broder
The independent counsel seems to have forgotten something on his way to the impeachment party
(09/11/98)
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THE POLITICS OF PARANOIA | PAGE 1, 2
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While Clinton's personal morality is unlikely to win many friends on any part of the political spectrum, it's the far right alone that since the 1992 election has been unceasingly obsessed with the Clinton family's sexual politics as a literal danger to the fabric of the country: Clinton "turned the White House into a playpen of sexual freedom," Dick Armey declared to the Christian Coalition's convention last week. This is an obsession rooted not in Clinton's relentless dogging around but in Hillary Rodham Clinton's feminism, in both Clintons' support for abortion rights, in the early presence of gay rights in the Clinton platform. It is sexual politics, not sex, that lies behind the prosecution of President Clinton. This is why the right sees no contradiction in attacking Clinton's morals (Clinton "doesn't deserve forgiveness," Pat Robertson said last week) while embracing adulterers Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth and Dan Burton.
The various elements of Starr's report that have left experienced lawyers scratching their heads -- the seemingly gratuitous fixation on sexual narrative, the leaps in logic amid an overwhelming mass of obsessive detail -- are familiar to American historians from bestselling anti-Catholic tracts of the early 19th century, from the Victorian-era anti-smut campaigns of Anthony Comstock (who perceived a direct link between pornography, contraception and political corruption) and from several waves of red scares.
It's particularly rewarding to read Starr's report alongside an essay written in 1963 by the great American historian Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter set out to define once and for all what he called in the essay's title "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's take on the quintessential witch-hunting "paranoid spokesman" immediately conjures Starr's pietistic invocation of "truth" and his relentless inquisition: "He is always manning the barricades of civilization. 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 out to the finish."
The nemesis envisioned by Hofstadter's archetypal witch-hunter bears a striking resemblance to the Clinton of Starr's "referral": "The enemy is clearly delineated: He is the perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman, sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. The sexual freedom often attributed to him, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and freely express unacceptable aspects of their own minds."
Over the last few weeks Washington wags have pointed out that the very social conservatives who promulgated the Communications Decency Act rushed to publish Starr's sex-drenched report on the Internet. All this seeming hypocrisy -- even the possible collusion between Jones' lawyers and Starr's conspiracy-hunting prosecution team -- would have made perfect sense to Hofstadter: "A fundamental paradox of the paranoid style is imitation of the enemy ... The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation."
Or as another historian, David Brion Davis of Yale University, wrote of 19th century nativists, "By censuring the subversive for alleged licentiousness, he engaged in sexual fantasies." (Years ago, a friend of mine joined a marginal quasi-Marxist political sect. Members stayed up all night copying and re-copying documents, telling and re-telling their leader's utterly fictitious autobiography until they became convinced that they were the vanguard in an imminent revolution. From a certain perspective, Starr and his legal team -- in their years of isolated work, their shared commitment to a fairly extreme model of social conservatism, their telling and re-telling of Clinton's sins until the conspiracy seems self-evident to them -- may have come to resemble such a self-ratifying secret society.)
All this would amount to idle speculation about Starr's character except for how -- following the classic pattern -- his bizarre report has collided with election-year opportunism by less fanatical Republicans. While survey after survey shows the public suspicious of Starr and anxious to lay the Lewinsky scandal to rest, the media continues its all-Monica-all-the-time obsession, and Democrats, ignoring their own pollsters, retreat into family-values defensiveness. The very language of law and politics has overnight been distorted and debased for partisan and paranoid ends, beginning with the Starr report's loose construction of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power and extending through the overheated language that has now overtaken Congress. The president, like so-called unfriendly witnesses called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy era, is subjected to a degradation ritual that will end only when Clinton acquiesces to an acceptable confessional script.
Of course Clinton, unlike those blacklist victims, holds all the resources of the presidency, and is no selfless social reformer. In both presidency and personal life, he's a putz. And unlike McCarthyism -- which spread irrational fear throughout the country and cost thousands of teachers, actors, defense workers and professors their jobs -- this remains a crisis of the elite, pitting well-funded conservatives against a popular president in the high-wire arena of the electronic media.
But it remains a dangerous moment. In the short run, Starr and Capitol Hill Republicans seem intent on pursuing a legal putsch, forcing forward impeachment even though in poll after poll they enjoy the support of no more than a third of citizens. But the longer-term fallout from the precedents being set this week -- the irresponsible and partisan release of grand jury evidence, the very notion of FBI investigation of political reporting, the redefinition of high crimes and misdemeanors, the criminalization of the president's legal appeals -- may be far worse.
The past week -- beginning with the Starr report and extending through Friday's House Judiciary Committee vote to release Starr's grand jury records -- represents our generation's triumph of the paranoid style. Historically, it is just such moments -- the intersection of a conspiracy-obsessed personality like Kenneth Starr's with a divided and opportunistic political establishment -- that have proven most destructive to American civil liberties and democratic life.
SALON | Sept. 22, 1998
Bruce Shapiro, a columnist at the Nation, is a regular contributor to Salon.

A L S O__T O D A Y Grace under pressure By Charles Taylor With his back to the wall, President Clinton finds his voice and passes the character test THE HENRY HYDE AFFAIR Hyde lied, says former lover By David Talbot "Long-term relationship" ended at least two and a half years after Hyde claimed it did, charges Cherie Soskin Editorial Salon's declaration of independence Political firestorm erupts against Salon By Harry Jaffe Republicans charge that White House was behind story and call for FBI investigation "This hypocrite broke up my family" By David Talbot The secret affair of Henry Hyde, the man who will sit in judgment on President Clinton Editorial Why we ran the Henry Hyde story - - - - - - - The full text of The Starr Report and The White House Rebuttal T A B L E+T A L K Does anybody really want to see the president impeached? Join the debate in the Politics area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y A man for all seasons By Jeff Stein Russia's former KGB chief dishes the truth about new Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov (09/21/98) Loyal to the end By Jessica Seigel Susan McDougal, on trial in California on non-Whitewater offenses, feels vindicated (09/18/98) Lives of the Republicans, Part Two By David Neiwert The strange case of Helen Chenoweth shows that playing the sex card against the Democrats as a political strategy can be, in Idaho parlance, as "dumb as a mud fence" (09/16/98) White House adjusts its game plan By Jonathan Broder White House switches tactics (09/14/98) Where's Whitewater? By Jonathan Broder The independent counsel seems to have forgotten something on his way to the impeachment party (09/11/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		THE POLITICS OF PARANOIA \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - While Clinton's personal morality is unlikely to win many friends on any part of the political spectrum, it's the far right alone that since the 1992 election has been unceasingly obsessed with the Clinton family's sexual politics as a literal danger to the fabric of the country: Clinton "turned the White House into a playpen of sexual freedom," Dick Armey declared to the Christian Coalition's convention last week. This is an obsession rooted not in Clinton's relentless dogging around but in Hillary Rodham Clinton's feminism, in both Clintons' support for abortion rights, in the early presence of gay rights in the Clinton platform. It is sexual politics, not sex, that lies behind the prosecution of President Clinton. This is why the right sees no contradiction in attacking Clinton's morals (Clinton "doesn't deserve forgiveness," Pat Robertson said last week) while embracing adulterers Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth and Dan Burton. The various elements of Starr's report that have left experienced lawyers scratching their heads -- the seemingly gratuitous fixation on sexual narrative, the leaps in logic amid an overwhelming mass of obsessive detail -- are familiar to American historians from bestselling anti-Catholic tracts of the early 19th century, from the Victorian-era anti-smut campaigns of Anthony Comstock (who perceived a direct link between pornography, contraception and political corruption) and from several waves of red scares. It's particularly rewarding to read Starr's report alongside an essay written in 1963 by the great American historian Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter set out to define once and for all what he called in the essay's title "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's take on the quintessential witch-hunting "paranoid spokesman" immediately conjures Starr's pietistic invocation of "truth" and his relentless inquisition: "He is always manning the barricades of civilization. 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 out to the finish." The nemesis envisioned by Hofstadter's archetypal witch-hunter bears a striking resemblance to the Clinton of Starr's "referral": "The enemy is clearly delineated: He is the perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman, sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. The sexual freedom often attributed to him, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and freely express unacceptable aspects of their own minds." Over the last few weeks Washington wags have pointed out that the very social conservatives who promulgated the Communications Decency Act rushed to publish Starr's sex-drenched report on the Internet. All this seeming hypocrisy -- even the possible collusion between Jones' lawyers and Starr's conspiracy-hunting prosecution team -- would have made perfect sense to Hofstadter: "A fundamental paradox of the paranoid style is imitation of the enemy ... The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation." Or as another historian, David Brion Davis of Yale University, wrote of 19th century nativists, "By censuring the subversive for alleged licentiousness, he engaged in sexual fantasies." (Years ago, a friend of mine joined a marginal quasi-Marxist political sect. Members stayed up all night copying and re-copying documents, telling and re-telling their leader's utterly fictitious autobiography until they became convinced that they were the vanguard in an imminent revolution. From a certain perspective, Starr and his legal team -- in their years of isolated work, their shared commitment to a fairly extreme model of social conservatism, their telling and re-telling of Clinton's sins until the conspiracy seems self-evident to them -- may have come to resemble such a self-ratifying secret society.) All this would amount to idle speculation about Starr's character except for how -- following the classic pattern -- his bizarre report has collided with election-year opportunism by less fanatical Republicans. While survey after survey shows the public suspicious of Starr and anxious to lay the Lewinsky scandal to rest, the media continues its all-Monica-all-the-time obsession, and Democrats, ignoring their own pollsters, retreat into family-values defensiveness. The very language of law and politics has overnight been distorted and debased for partisan and paranoid ends, beginning with the Starr report's loose construction of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power and extending through the overheated language that has now overtaken Congress. The president, like so-called unfriendly witnesses called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy era, is subjected to a degradation ritual that will end only when Clinton acquiesces to an acceptable confessional script. Of course Clinton, unlike those blacklist victims, holds all the resources of the presidency, and is no selfless social reformer. In both presidency and personal life, he's a putz. And unlike McCarthyism -- which spread irrational fear throughout the country and cost thousands of teachers, actors, defense workers and professors their jobs -- this remains a crisis of the elite, pitting well-funded conservatives against a popular president in the high-wire arena of the electronic media. But it remains a dangerous moment. In the short run, Starr and Capitol Hill Republicans seem intent on pursuing a legal putsch, forcing forward impeachment even though in poll after poll they enjoy the support of no more than a third of citizens. But the longer-term fallout from the precedents being set this week -- the irresponsible and partisan release of grand jury evidence, the very notion of FBI investigation of political reporting, the redefinition of high crimes and misdemeanors, the criminalization of the president's legal appeals -- may be far worse. The past week -- beginning with the Starr report and extending through Friday's House Judiciary Committee vote to release Starr's grand jury records -- represents our generation's triumph of the paranoid style. Historically, it is just such moments -- the intersection of a conspiracy-obsessed personality like Kenneth Starr's with a divided and opportunistic political establishment -- that have proven most destructive to American civil liberties and democratic life. SALON \| Sept. 22, 1998 Bruce Shapiro, a columnist at the Nation, is a regular contributor to Salon.