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The Clinton Scandal and Attacking Iraq

Washington, Jackson, Buchanan, Cleveland, Wilson, Harding, FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Bush, Clinton-compulsive womanizers. mistress collectors, fathers of illegitimate children, prostitute regulars, sex addicts. Why do Americans so often choose as our leaders such macho personalities, constantly humiliating their wives with their sexual affairs, rather than choosing people who can really love their spouses and not betray them?

It is no coincidence that of the 12 presidents listed above who were womanizers all but 2 also commanded major military ventures-assuming Clinton will eventually bomb Iraq as he is threatening-while the 29 other American presidents were far more peaceful. Might modern nations sometimes unconsciously choose their leaders like New Guinea tribes choose their Big Men-for their ability to conquer both women and enemies?

Americans are currently quite enthusiastic about Clinton's threats to bomb Iraq. According to Ramsey Clark's book, The Children Are Dying: The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq, Clinton's embargo already has killed one million Iraqi children-as many children as were killed in the Holocaust-even though it hasn't deterred Saddam from his military preparations. Nor will massive bombing of Iraq now deter Saddam from anything; it will just contribute further to our genocide of children.

The macho conquest personalities of our leaders do not really surprise us, of course, since we are so often warned of them before electing them. That Bill Clinton-whose mother left him at birth for two years and who had a violent, alcoholic father-might have been a sex addict was suspected while he was still a candidate. Since he was the Democratic front-runner after admitting infidility on 60 Minutes, perhaps his infidelities only made him more qualified to be president in our minds. The media had already widely reproduced his sexually explicit telephone conversations with Gennifer Flowers, and since the voice on her tapes was unmistakably his, we all knew it was him telling her to "hang tough..if everybody's on record denying it, you've got no problem." So when Monica Lewinsky reportedly now says she was told "there were only two people in the room and if both of you say nothing happened, nothing happened," we shouldn't be surprised that Clinton might suggest lying to cover up his affairs.

As a professional psychohistorian, I began my file on "Clinton's Sexual Addiction" during the Flowers revelations, and as the file grew thick with evidence I wasn't surprised when he was quoted in the Lewinsky tapes as saying he had affairs with "hundreds" of women. Even though Lewinsky may exaggerate, she isn't clinically psychotic nor obviously delusional, so the tapes probably don't just contain hallucinations. I have been particularly struck while collecting my evidence on his sex addiction by how Clinton's continuous humiliation of his wife seemed to express his unconscious anger toward his mother and restage the betrayal he must have felt by her early abandonment of him-except that through his affairs he became the betrayer and his wife was the betrayed. Clinical studies of sex addicts find they aren't just "expressing their drives" so much as combating inner feelings of maternal abandonment, impotence and self-fragmentation through their repeated conquests of women. That so many American men are now expressing in their jokes a thinly-veiled admiration of Clinton's conquests only shows how dysfunctional many men still are. If he eventually falls from office, this equally could be interpreted as his being a sacrificial scapegoat for our sinful wishes.

That nations choose their leaders because of their personal emotional dysfunctions seems an odd notion. Of course, other nations often choose leaders-like Hitler or Saddam-who have serious emotional problems, starting suicidal wars that end by costing the nation the lives of millions. But not us. Yet a good case could be made that America chose JFK because of his hawkish macho personality, beginning with his claiming a wholly illusory "missile gap" with the Russians. It should not then have surprised us then when he then led the Cuban invasion and even risked incinerating millions of Americans by Russian missiles through his Cuban embargo saying, "If Krushchev wants to rub my nose in the dirt, it's all over." With Kennedy, there was an intimate emotional link between his sexual addiction-requiring continuous conquests of mistresses and prostitutes-and his equally macho cold war actions.

That we use leaders as containers for our sexual and aggressive fantasies is responsible for many of our political problems, and could now lead to a useless bombing of the Iraqi people for Saddam's "rubbing our nose in the dirt." Should our bombs hit his anthrax plants, only American troops-not Iraqi civilians-are innoculated against anthrax. That our personal problems could lead to our setting off a plague in the Middle East which could kill more millions means that Bill Clinton may not be the only sacrificial victim in this deadly emotional drama.

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