The Freudian Slip: Is Hillary a Sociopath?
Dr. Robert Hare, a pioneer in forensic psychology, tells us that many sociopaths are successful, even celebrated. I don’t propose to diagnose Hillary Clinton by diary, but more modestly, to examine one characteristic Dr. Hare finds sociopaths have in common. From CEO to small-time swindler, the sociopath lies.
Hillary lies, repeatedly and recklessly.
She lies when she doesn’t need to. And she lies as much for self-aggrandizement as for political gain.
Sociopaths, driven by an unnatural appetite to get what they want NOW–a t.v. set or the presidency– can’t suffer the paience it takes to craft a careful lie. And their narcissism, coupled with a complete lack of morality,enables them to advance the most outrageous lies. Lies that make you shake your head in disbelief. Lies that end up on “Meet the Press.”
What me worry Hillary. By the time she’s busted, the lie has done its work. Confronted, she’s cool as a sociopath:”So, I made a mistake.” Or the devil made me do it. I voted for the Iraq war because Bush bamboozled me.
In her run against Obama, Hillary has lied to show she’s got the right stuff to be Commander-in-Chief. Before the Bosnian Bruhaha, she lied to pump up her senatorial role and to finesse positions she once held that could lose her the nomination. In turn, her lies substantiate two sides of the beautifully constructed Election 08 Hillary: courageous but caring. No one is as tough. No one cares as much. In Hillary’s lies, Clara Barton meets Audie Murphy.
Lies to show she’s got CIC and foreign policy cred claim she
- “landed under sniper fire” in Bosnia.
- “helped bring peace to Ireland”
- “negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into Kosovo”
The historical record, various eye-witnesses, and contemporaneous sources prove all three claims false “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Further, Hillary has taken the lion’s share of credit for SCHIP. Orrin Hatch, with the disclaimer that he likes her, felt honor-bound to answer this claim honestly: “…does she deserve credit for SCHIP? No–Teddy does, but she does’nt.”
It is clear from HRC’s First Lady records, recently released by The National Archives and President Clinton’s Library, as well as numerous eye-witness and Press reports that whatever her private thoughts, HRC waved the pom-poms for NAFTA with gusto. Ironically, on the eve of the Ohio and Texas primaries, Hillary raised doubts about Obama’s NAFTA stance with a timely but premature AP report. She succeeded in shifting the contest’s outcome. Days after AP was contradicted by its own sources, she continued to hector her rival with yesterday’s news until the clock ran out. Though no longer news, Canadian sources, strangely, now point to Clinton as the NAFTA waffler.
Hillary’s experience does give her the edge when it comes to manipulating the interface of MSM and the American public. She knows that both are rapid cyclers. She knows that what’s headlines one day is yesterday’s onions the next.
Surely, when she cast her vote to authorize Bush to skirt global consensus and wage a unilateral war against Iraq, she knew she’d have to do damage control on it one day. But like Scarlett O’hara, she’d think about it tomorrow. I’m talking about her vote on the war in Iraq.
Let’s not mince words. I’m talking about her vote FOR the war in Iraq.
Hillary voted for war in 2002 with her eye on the prize. Within days of the 9/11 attack of WTC, she knew if she was ever to have a shot at the U.S. presidency, she’d have to beat the drums for war. As Manhattan lay still burning, Hillary, the former war protester, formed a strategic political stance that would kill two birds with one stone.
More next diary: From the ashes of 9/11, a new Hillary rises
She seems like a pretty typical politician so, shifting positions as the wind blows. What is remarkable, in her case, is that she was so careless in her lies – she must have known that video and other documentary evidence was there to disprove her claims. The truly skillful liar does so by suggestion, but never actually saying demonstrable untruths.
In this she is disconcertingly similar to Cheny/Bush – who repeat clear and obvious falsehoods ad nauseam in the hope that doing so will make them appear true – to all except those they can dismiss as partisans or extremists.
In one small sense I do have sympathy for Hilary. I suspect she was a very significant influence on Bill and thus made a major contribution to his Presidency – and often, its more positive aspects. However she was rarely the lead player and thus has little by way of concrete achievement to show for her efforts.
In this she shares the fate of many supportive spouses – who feel much of the pain, provide considerable support and guidance – but get almost none of the credit. You really can’t base a political campaign on what your husband did – hence the self-aggrandizement.
However it would be wrong to attribute this to per personality. It is more a case of political necessity – she had to play up her political “experience” relative to to Obama’s inexperience – an argument which is losing its force the longer the campaign goes on – and Obama still makes no major mistakes – and indeed rises to the occasion when the Wright controversy creates the first real crisis of his campaign.
Mr. Schnittger,
First, thanks for reading The Freudian Slip and for replying to it. I also sympathize with the plight of the accomplished and intelligent woman
who ends up blunting her own ambitions to helpmate her husband’s. Certainly, both Clintons feel it’s Hillary’s turn.
However, I believe that the nature of Hillary’s lies and her response when they are discovered (along with other behaviors) does indicate, if not full-blown sociopathy, at the least, a character disorder.
Yes, most politicians stretch the truth; many ordinary job-seekers re-frame specifics in the resume. In daily life, we “spice things up.” We do so to tell a good story. We milk our experiences for maximum effect.
Hillary’s fabrications though are distinguished by a) grandiosity
b) bold-facedness c) lack of foresight and repetition, not only of an individual lie,but of the act of lying itself. Finally, it is telling that when Hillary is confronted with her lies, she’s suprisingly nonchalant.
Hillary’s lies are so grandiose that in retrospect they are ridiculous. She depends upon her personality, reputation, stature and a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of her supporters to put them over.
She doesn’t hesitate to lie about her role in events played out on the world stage, television news cameras rolling, a cast of thousands assembled at the border. Given those 35 years of experience and her high-profile, she has to know that the historical record could come back to bite her. But here again, the sociopathic liar doesn’t care.
She doesn’t care because she believes her audience is no match for her skills at manipulating them. She doesn’t care because she doesn’t have the time to. The need for self-aggrandizement and drama is so urgent. The hunger to attain the desired goal fierce, unrelenting. The hunger overwhelms caution. Fear of discovery and its consequences are muted for the thrill of short-term gains.
As well, the chronic and severe liar isn’t worried about how the lie will affect others. Hillary’s Bosnian lie has offended military brass and service veterans alike. It has drawn unwelcome publicity. Moreover, it has re-opened Hillary’s long-standing credibility problem. Not to worry.
Hillary depends on her supporters’ unwavering loyalty, money, power, and past experience to ward off the worst of consequences–jail. So far she has managed. Lying is easy if you are well-practiced at it, have no moral compunctions about its affect on others, and have a very high threshold for stimulation.
Confronted with her Bosnian lie she said “So, I made a mistake.” Garden variety liars worry a great deal more
about what will happen if the boss doesn’t fall for the phone cough than Hiillary worries about Lord Trimble, or George Mitchell, or Orrin Hatch, or the evening news contradicting her whoppers.
Typically, people see this brand of lying writ large as crazy. How could she lie about a thing like that? Why did they have to kill that guy? He handed over his wallet and all they got was a lousy five dollars? and so on.
That’s my case. Hillary is “crazy.” Whether her brand of crazy is a mere character disorder or a pathology I leave to forensic psychologists. Someday, she just might meet up with one. Stay tuned.
Emma
I don’t think we are really disagreeing on this – except perhaps about how commonplace her behaviour in politics, and particularly on the Republican side.
And that is the problem with Hilary. The argument for her was always mainly that she was a women and she was the candidate with the best chance of preventing a continuation of Bush/Cheney style rule. Compared to them she is still a significant improvement.
But there is a new game in town which has set a new standard for how to confront real problems honestly. Obama set that standard with his Wright speech, and he deserves to win because of it.
When Hilary says she “made a mistake” it is not that she realises she lied, but that she did so in a manner which allowed discovery and refutation. Politics as the art of the deniable deception is not new, and will not go away with Obama, but Americans can do better than this, and they know it.
She has also repeatedly lied about her role in shilling for NAFTA while First Lady, and then lying about it in Ohio that she had been against it from the beginning. That is an absolute lie. She was one of the Clinton Administration’s out front flacks pushing NAFTA and strategizing about how to defeat the objections of labor, farm, human rights, and environmental groups opposed to NAFTA. Just like Clinton’s lies about her vote to authorize Bush to invade Iraq. She can’t tell the truth about that either. Her vote for war was a blatant political calculation. She thought, like the idiot Bush and his neo-cons, that the war would be a cake walk and she wanted to be on the “winning” side. No wonder she thinks Bush didn’t execute it right. But the real issue is that there were hundreds of thousands of us who new the Iraq ivasion was the war wrong for the wrong reason in the wrong place and would end up exactly like it has. Whether or not she is a sociopath doesn’t matter. She is, as some Republican whom I’m sure I can’t stand said, a “congenital liar.”
Phronesis:
It was William Saffire:
“Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady (Hillary Rodham Clinton) – a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation – is a congenital liar.” (1/8/96 NYT editorial)
Thanks for refreshing our memory on the “tissue of lies.” That her vote for the war was purely self-serving is what makes it so morally rephrehensible to me.
Emma
Thanks.
Senator Clinton’s overt lying is increasingly troubling. I felt excited by the prospect of a female candidate for our nation’s highest office, but in my excitement over that, I have been increasingly disturbed by the behavior of this woman candidate.
As a woman myself, who has worked for years, developed my own career path and established my reputation, while raising a child and sustaining a relationship with my spouse, I cannot imagine engaging in the kind of lies and mischaracterizations she has engaged in. This isn’t the kind of “fighting” I consider appropriate, strong, or even healthy for anyone. In fact it is difficult to believe anything she says now, due to the lies, and the staginess of it all.
The most recent lies were so egregious as to defy any explanation, and her dismissal of concerns and the odd arrogance with which she did so seems character disordered.
To exaggerate and lie about being “under fire” while 4000 military personnel have actually faced mortal threat and died; to lie about events when over 30,000 soldiers have lost limbs, brain function, psychological health, and they and their families have lost their dreams, is chillingly lacking in emotional health and moral functioning.
It is consistent with the lack of depth that caused her to ignore and dismiss a significant report prior to committing her “with conviction” support for the invasion of Iraq. For her, it certainly appears that the consequences of her actions to others are less important than the outcome to her personal ambition. That is perhaps celebrity politics, but it is NOT public service or any genuine leadership.
I hope other Hillary supporters will exercise some critical thinking . . . I have heard quite a few of my staunch Hillary supporter friends beginning to ask themselves if this behavior is really “just politics”.
Why should we accept behavior from a person who is applying for the biggest job in our nation, that the rest of us would be fired for, or would shudder to enact ourselves? She is not competent for the job, and she doesn’t seem like a healthy woman.
I’m glad you commented–you have put the case well–whatever the diagnosis(and these classifications are just that) the pattern is not healthy and it goes beyond the typical political CYA.
I find these “egregious” fabrications disturbing. I’m actualy glad some supporters are questioning Senator Clinton’s character. This kind of lying, over the top, unneccessary, self-serving, and easily detected in the long run, has to be symptomatic of a deeper crack at the core.
I agree with you on her vote. I think that’s the one I simply can’t get past. She was hedging her bets.
Keep talking to your friends, please. I used to defend the Clintons vociferously. I didn’t do my homework because I didn’t want to give credence to “the opposition.”
I have learned. Emma
Like you emma, I find Hillary’s grandiose lies disturbing, going beyond political lies all politicians tell. Knowing they could so easily disproved and were is also disturbing, either she knew she was lying on a grand scale or she really believes in her own mind these lies are the truth? No matter how you look at this it continues to come up as not quite rational and bordering on some sort problem including her almost insolently shrugging off the one lie with so I made a mistake.(and one of the few times she admits to a ‘mistake’)