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HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE HILLARY SCORNED
04/15/2008
Since the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency, experts in human behavior have discussed the psychopathology of the 43rd president. From his alcoholism, to his religious conversion and flight into sobriety, to his oedipal complex and feelings of inferiority, to the insanity which drove him to wage an illegal war, speculations about the causes of his failings and stubbornness have been numerous.
Many psychological experts did the same with his predecessor, Bill Clinton, presenting psychological reasons for his womanizing and self-destructive behavior. In a previous article, I talked about some of Bill Clinton's psychological baggage, and why it would be a mistake to elect Hillary and allow Bill's pathology back into the White House.
But it is also important to recognize Hillary Clinton's psychopathology, which explains her current irrational behavior, most notably her refusal to drop out of the race for the democratic nomination and her vicious attacks on a fellow Democrat, even though she is losing and has almost no chance of catching up in pledged delegates.
My thoughts about what is driving Hillary come from my thirty years of experience as a practicing psychotherapist and marriage counselor. Hillary reminds me of a type of client whose spouse has fallen out of love with them and fallen in love with someone else, usually someone younger or more attractive in looks or behavior.
Marriage counselors are all too familiar with the scenario of one spouse falling in love with someone new, and while we may be dismayed to see this happen, especially when young children are going to be affected by marital turmoil and ultimately divorce, what is even more troubling is seeing the rejected spouse behave in the most irrational and destructive of ways.
As marriage counselors, we have the tools to help many couples repair the rifts that have separated them. But hopefully we are also skilled enough to understand when our efforts will not help save a marriage. Because the truth is that not all marriages can be saved, even when both people are good and decent people, and even though they once truly loved each other.
When the marriage is no longer viable, the faithful spouse, the one who has not fallen in love with someone else, must simply face reality, grieve the loss of the partnership, lifestyle and love he or she once shared with the spouse, and accept the inevitable. To continue to hold on when there is no hope, to act out of desperation, to even punish the spouse who wants to leave, is always counterproductive and hurtful to both spouses as well as to the children.
Yet there are a few spouses who will not let go. They become vindictive. They scream and shout at the spouse who wants to leave. They call their in-laws and relatives and plead their case, begging the relatives to intercede and help save the marriage. They threaten to take the children away, to cause harm to the new lover, to wage an all out battle in court. They pay surprise visits to the new lover and embarrass themselves with an emotional outburst. They bad mouth their spouse to the children, and to couples with whom they once socialized. They gather supporters to their side who join them in bashing the spouse who has become their enemy, and find that their spouse has his own supporters, some of them former friends. In the most extreme cases, they attack and cause physical damage to the former spouse, punishing him or her or hoping to make the former spouse less acceptable to other lovers so they might be forced to return to the marriage.
Rejection is a bitter pill some cannot swallow and so they fight against reality, hoping that one of the many desperate moves they make might change things. Of course, it rarely does. Occasionally, a bitter spouse will use a ploy to get the spouse back: a fake pregnancy or a real one, a medical problem, financial concerns, an emergency of one kind or another. Sometimes the ploy works temporarily. The spouse returns out of fear or obligation, only to feel tricked or trapped, staying in the marriage with great feelings of resentment, or finding a way to eventually leave.
Usually, the bitter spouses end up hurting their children, alienating their couple friends and in-laws, and making utter fools of themselves. And they don't get their spouses back.
This is exactly what I see Hillary doing. Hillary has a history of being rejected very publicly by an unfaithful spouse. It is understandable that she might have a strong and unreasonable reaction to the possibility that the voters, with whom she desperately wants a healing relationship, might also reject her. The wound that she has carried because of Bill's infidelity has not healed and she simply cannot believe it might happen again with the voters.
At the beginning of this campaign, when Hillary was "inevitable," she thought she had the love of the Democratic electorate. In many ways, they would offer her the opportunity to move past the humiliation she felt during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That kind of humiliation is hard enough to bear when only one's family sees it. But in Hillary's case, the entire nation saw it, and saw her as victim, as scorned spouse. Being elected President by the nation would remove that bitter taste and replace the humiliation with triumph, in much the same way that a divorced woman, whose husband had left her for another, finally triumphs by marrying a wealthy man, or opening a lucrative business and earning the respect of her peers. By becoming the 44th president, and the first woman to achieve that honor, Hillary's humiliation would finally and very publicly be overcome.
Hillary, however, was not prepared for Barack Obama. When this young, brilliant, and attractive candidate first stepped forward, she probably wasn't too worried. She had a team of strategists, a lot of money, and a much longer relationship with the electorate. But as the electorate began their affair with him, threatening to divorce her, she became enraged and brutal and just like a jilted spouse who refuses to give up the marriage, Hillary will not concede defeat.
Instead, like a deranged ex-wife, she is bad mouthing Obama to anyone who will listen, twisting his words and making him look as unattractive as she can. She is becoming vindictive, calling the relatives (superdelegates) and warning them that he can't be trusted, begging for them to intercede to save her candidacy. She is threatening to take the fight all the way to the convention and smearing him so that she can prove he is unelectable. She is trying to get her spouse (the voters) back by criticizing their love of Obama, by telling them they are wrong, by insisting she is the only choice. She is making a fool of herself.
It will not work. It never does. She will not likely win this nomination and save her marriage with the voters. The math doesn't work. But if by some miracle, she convinces the relatives to intercede or the voters to come back, it will not be a good marriage. When love is dead, it is dead. And a majority of voters in the country do not love Hillary anymore. Her recent tactics are further alienating many of them. And, as sad as it is to say, if Obama were not black, and Hillary could not count on the latent racism of some voters in the rust belt, this contest would have been over long ago.
Truthfully, though, the majority of the electorate has never been wildly enthusiastic about Hillary. Many Democrats (including me for a while) were willing to support her out of a sense of loyalty or obligation, or even out of respect for her intelligence and competence. But many have moved on to a new relationship and there is no turning back. She may convince them to come back temporarily in Pennsylvania. She may even get the relatives to intercede to save the marriage. But it will not last. The voters will not appreciate her desperate tactics and will not turn out in November in sufficient numbers to make Hillary the next president.
Like many spouses who have been rejected by their husbands (or wives), Hillary will ultimately have to face reality. She will either face the reality that the voters are divorcing her now, or she will see a temporary return of the voters who will simply divorce her later. Should she instead begin the grieving process and accept her loss, she could leave with grace and dignity, and go on to build a new life and set a new goal for herself. But if she continues to give McCain all the ammunition he needs to defeat Obama in November, and ultimately damages those she claims to love (the voters) by causing them to endure four more years of Republican disaster, she will suffer even more. She and the voters will not just have a divorce, they will have a bitter and nasty divorce that may end her career in politics, and she will have to be content to spend the rest of her life as an elite multimillionaire with a philandering real husband.
For the past sixteen years we have had psychologically wounded and destructive presidents in the White House. For the first eight, we had a man who could not be faithful to his wife, and who caused great damage to himself, his family and his country. Whether he had an "addiction" or not does not matter. He abused his office, lied under oath, and tarnished the office of the presidency. Because of his emotional baggage, he should never have been elevated to the office he held.
Partly because of Bill Clinton's morally indefensible behavior, the people turned in 2000 to another flawed man. George W. Bush convinced the voters that he would restore dignity to the White House, and the people, sickened by the behavior of the sitting president, were somehow fooled by a candidate who had never really resolved an oedipal complex, who felt inferior to and so sought to outdo daddy, and so made a mess of almost everything he touched.
We do not need another psychological mess in the White House. That is what Hillary Clinton is: a psychological mess. She must win in order to erase her humiliation, and everyone can now observe how her behavior, like that of a jilted spouse who cannot tolerate the pain of rejection, is undignified and unhinged.
We women who would like to see a woman finally win the presidency can find a better candidate than this one. No matter how smart, how accomplished, and how hard working she might be, she is severely emotionally scarred and is using this campaign to heal herself. And her need is so urgent and so desperate that she will do anything to achieve her goal - lie, distort, exaggerate, smear, and attack - even if it destroys a fellow democrat, ignores the will of the people, and tears the party and the country apart. This is not the kind of president we need.
We can wait a little longer for the first woman president. What we need now is a rational, sane, and emotionally balanced president.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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