-Caveat Lector-
Three Statists
by DON MATHEWS
[Posted August 11, 1999]
No doubt the typical proponent of freedom and free enterprise,
being of good manners and peaceful disposition, would sooner put
his head in a bucket of rats than read All Too Human by George
Stephanopoulos, Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich and Behind
the Oval Office by Dick Morris. These books are chronicles by
three government men of their years with the Clinton presidency,
American democracys celebration of the abject. Why would a
friend of liberty want to get more of this sorry episode by
reading these books?
One good reason: Know Your Enemy.
Stephanopoulos, Reich, and Morris are statists. But each is a
statist of a different type. Their chronicles offer an
opportunity to plumb three classic varieties of the statist mind.
George Stephanopoulos was a top aide to Bill Clinton between 1992
and 1996. The Stephanopoulos-type statist has a history and a
tradition that is as old as the state itself. In todays America
he has the esteemed title of senior advisor to the president. He
is a celebrity, envied and fawned over by the political class. A
political operative and round-the-clock propagandist, this brand
of statist makes his living by doing what it takes to enrich the
power of his monarch, his dictator or his president. He is an
elite stooge.
Stephanopoulos tells us in All Too Human that the pistons of
[his] character are restrained idealism and raw ambition. What
he has raw ambition for is government power. He loves being near
it, being part of it and wielding it, for its own sake and for
the celebrity that it brings. He rationalizes his ambition for
power with this restrained idealism: Because I believe in
original sin, because I know that Im capable of craving a cold
beer in a village of starving kids, because I understand that
selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion, I
believe we need government -- a government that forces us to care
for the common good even when we dont feel like it, a government
that helps channel our better instincts and check our bad ones.
People who have a lust for the power to impose their will on
others are rare in society. Invariably, they wind up in prison or
in government. Stephanopoulos chose the government route. Without
a doubt, Stephanopoulos has a desire to serve the common good,
and he believes in the power of politics to help people. But
All Too Human reveals that Stephanopoulos hooked up with
government not from a desire to help people but from a desire for
power, the kind of power that only politics and government can
offer. It is egoism, not altruism, that drives the political
stooge.
Power corrupts, and the people most corrupted by power are the
people who want it most. As the stooge ascends in the ranks and
gets closer to power, his character changes. He grows even more
infatuated with himself. The stooge who makes it to the ranks of
the ruling elite takes on a different character altogether.
Assisting the head of state govern over the masses, he sees
himself as inherently different from them. He sees himself as
genuinely elite, and he sees the masses as instruments of his
will. Exercising power in the name of the state, he sees the
state as an extension of himself. He works to expand the power of
the state because in doing so he expands his own power and
affirms his vision of himself, and he is burdened by no scruples
in attacking any opposition that threatens his power.
All Too Human is the story Stephanopoulos tells about an elite
stooge corrupted by power. It is a story not about Bill Clinton,
but about himself.
Robert B. Reich, the Secretary of Labor during Clintons first
term, is a familiar type of statist. He is the social engineer,
ever ready with government intrusions to heal our hurting nation.
And, Reich tells us in Locked in the Cabinet, our nation is
hurting bad. We are fast becoming two cultures--one of affluence
and contentment, the other of insecurity and cynicism. Most
Americans are worried about their jobs, their wages, their
futures, their kids futures--worried that the American Dream of
upward mobility may be just a dream. The middle class has
become an anxious class. (His italics.) Sweatshops are back in
America. Thats a daunting heap of crisis and woe for even the
most determined social engineer. And Reich is one determined
social engineer. Theres so goddamn much to be done, he writes.
(Again, his italics; I guess statists have a thing for italics).
Academic-bureaucrat Reich is a determined social engineer because
he cares about the economically anxious and overwrought--the
pawns of capitalism, the proletariat and the army of the
unemployed. We know he cares about these people because he tells
us so on every other page of his book. Sometimes he tells us
several times on the same page. And if one cares--truly
cares--there is no option
