Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Paranoid Prince: Carl Paladino and Two of America's Darkest Political Traditions

Carl Paladino is many things, but going away is not one of them. First of all he's said he isn't going away. And secondly, nothing about his personality that we've seen in public suggests that he'd go away, even if he hadn't already said he wouldn't.

So, no, as much as we might like, Carl Paladino isn't going away. As a present and potentially future political power, Paladino warrants further consideration despite his crushing loss. His defeat at the hands of Andrew Cuomo was so crushing that it's easy to forget his rout of Rick Lazio to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the first place.

Carl Paladino, I argue, can be understood in part as belonging to two dark American political traditions. Referencing these two traditions is not the only appropriate way to understand Paladino, but they are a way to do so.

One of these traditions is described by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince, one of the most famous books about politics ever written (and deservedly so). Among many other observations, much of Machiavelli's work can be seen as describing politics as a kind of fetishized violence. Politics, as Machiavelli described it, is the imposition of one's whims on the unwilling. Politics is rape.

The other tradition is what Historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style.” The political paranoid tends to see his political enemies as part of a great conspiracy, against the paranoid and against the paranoid's way of life, which typically is seen by the paranoid as representative in some way of the best American traditions and values.

Neither of these traditions are exclusive to America, of course, but we'll mostly be considering them in their American forms.

The Would-Be Prince: Machiavelli and Paladino

In 1513, Niccollo Machiavlli wrote The Prince as in essence a job interview for a gig as a political consultant or adviser. In this work, Machiavelli more or less by accident changed the face of political analysis, and arguably at once made himself into the first modern political scientist and the first modern political consultant, both at once.

The term “Machiavellian” has become something of a political slur, implying a total, amoral ruthlessness. However, legitimate interpretations of Machiavelli do not stop at the famous formulation of “the ends justifies the means.” Machiavelli is much more complex than that, and can alternately be described as either “better” or “worse” than his famous restatement. Better in the sense that there's some evidence that Machiavelli's real ambition was to find a kind of patriot-king to unify Italy and lead it out of a dark spot in its history. Worse in the sense that, if the ends justify the means, that assumes there's some objective moral criteria by which both can be judged. Whereas Machiavelli might suggest that no such moral objectivity exists, and that all we really have is the ends and the means.

As political scientist Hanna Pitkin put it:

Machiavelli's thought is as problematic as politics itself, presenting a different face to each observer. Thus, he is also one of the most misunderstood political theorists, or at any rate the most subject to conflicting interpretations. Some see him as a tough-minded advocate of raison d'etat, others as a romantic who idealized Ancient Rome; some see him as a passionate patriot, others as a cynic; some as a detached, objective observer, others as a teacher of evil; some as a republican, others as worshiping strong leaders and military might. (Hanna Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman, 1984, page 3)


Pitkin is right even if one only reads The Prince, and neglects his second most famous work, The Discourses on Livy, or his various lesser-known works. If you read those, the picture grows ever-more complex and ambiguous. Machiavelli understood his subject matter well, and arguably the ambiguities in his thought reflect the ambiguities of politics.

Today, I would like to highlight an aspect of Machiavelli that isn't written about as often as other aspects are, and that is his emphasis on politics as fetishized violence, as sexual aggression. Pitkin's book touches on this. She writes about Machiavelli as an advocate of masculine autonomy, as incorporating the various contradictions of masculinity.

One element of masculinity Machiavelli surely does not neglect in The Prince is that of sexually aggressive violence; of politics as a violent imposition of will on another. I have always seen the violence Machiavelli writes about in The Prince as something more than a sad consequence of pursuing politics as the situation requires. Every time I read The Prince, and I've read it a lot, I cannot escape the feeling that there is something fetishized about Machiavelli's violence. Something that suggests maybe the violence itself is a kind of end, as much as it is a means. To be crude about it I can rarely help but wonder if Machiavelli's Prince isn't getting off on the horrors he has to perform.

Doubtlessly, the rawest example of what I'm talking about is this oft-neglected quote, used by Pitkin for the title of her book:

Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid when she approaches. And always, like a woman, she favors the young, because they are less scrupulous, and fiercer, and command her with greater audacity. (Machiavelli, The Prince, end of Chapter 25)


I am informed that the more literal translations of this passage actually make the rape image rawer and more horrifying, “beaten and roughly handled” becoming “it is necessary to beat her down, and strike her down.” The closer we get, in other words, to Machiavelli's original words in his own language, the more politics is like rape, the greater the sick horror of the image.

And, indeed, even in the present day, when politics ends with shattered careers and shattered lives rather than a broadsword through the heart or breaking on the wheel or rack, there is an element of fetishized violence in politics, an element of the violent imposition of will of one upon another. Some politicians find it convenient to not compromise, not deliberate, but rather to attempt to steamroll over their enemies, because they see their enemies as true enemies, not as colleagues and honorable opponents.

There is surely an element of fetishized violence in every politician. However, those such as Eliot Spitzer who are so open and public about it are to be feared, because it shows that they likely aren't capable of the other elements of politics, especially democratic politics: deliberation, compromise, negotiation. If the politics they pursue in public is one of violent imposition of will, imagine what they are capable of doing in private. It is scarcely possible to imagine that in private, they deliberate and compromise. It is one thing to compromise after a strongly-worded ideological or policy debate. That's hard, but it's doable. When the imposition of will itself becomes the important thing, however, compromise and deliberation would seem to be nearly impossible.

Carl Paladino can fairly be said to have made his prowess a centerpiece of his campaign. He hard-balled nearly everything. Perhaps the most ridiculous example of this was a bizarre E-Mail exchange with some random fellow who sent him a rude E-Mail about the gay marriage issue. Then, of course, there's the E-Mails that first brought him to prominence (take care with that link by the way, it's "not safe for work"), which included sexually violent images alongside the racist ones. (And, I'm sorry, but a horse having sex with a human woman is violent by definition, even if she wanted it with every fiber of her being.) He threatened to take a baseball bat to Albany, he referred to a sitting United States Senator as a “little girl”
(an obvious attempt to belittle her). He showed us an even-darker side of his violent politics of imposition in an incident involving Fred Dicker of the New York Post (I almost mis-typed and referred to Dicker as a “reporter”). Cal Paladino put his sexual prowess on such display that he in essence, as I have argued here, begged to make it a political issue. And when he succeeded, he then whined.

I haven't even gotten into one quarter of the obviously sexualized moves Paladino made before and during this campaign, for example I haven't cited his numerous exhortations to Andrew Cuomo to debate “like a man.”

These moves will continue for as long as Paladino is in politics, and as I stated he isn't going away. The only question will be whether or not anyone listens anymore.

Machiavelli's aggressive, hyper-sexual politics, as emulated by Carl Paladino, can be seen in stark contrast to the ideal model of how politics in the United States, and by extension in New York State, is supposed to work. That model, best described by James Madison, is a politics of deliberation, compromise, pluralism, and institutions, a politics of laws and informal rules, not men, not personalities. James Madison knew very well that there would be personalities, Princes, in politics. The Madisonian system is designed to both channel and restrain a Machiavellian Prince's ambitions (see Federalist Papers numbers 10 and 51). Madison still feared that sometimes the “mild voice of reason” would be drowned out by a Prince's passions (Federalist Papers number 42). He was right to so fear.

In an American context, you can see this aspect of Machiavelli's politics, the violent and fetishized imposition of will, in the presence of such figures as Newt Gingrich, Carl Paladino, and Eliot Spitzer. These people look at the institutional constraints on them, and laugh and scoff, and decide they will do what they want. Typically, the system constrains them, forces Machiavelli's Prince into a Madisonian hole. Sometimes they are destroyed by the constraint, sometimes they are smart enough to work within Madison's system and get what they want anyway. It all depends on the Prince and his political skill. Either way, however, the intimate relationship between politics and sex is played out on the political battlefield.

The only thing that made Carl Paladino less successful than the other examples I have presented was, to be crude about it, that he couldn't keep it in his pants. Ever. Paladino apparently, for whatever reason, had to be hyper-aggressive all the time. He made his fetishized, violent anger the sole focus of his campaign, the only thing he had going for him. When he attempted to lose it, to avoid making himself look totally ridiculous, he came across as weak and ineffectual. In the gubernatorial debate, for example, Paladino's failures were so obvious that even he had to acknowledge them, though he ridiculously blamed his poor performance on the format. (Which of course was his idea to begin with.) Another example would be Paladino's last-minute, rambling video, recorded in a diner.

Neither the debate nor the diner video allowed Paladino much opportunity to show off his swaggering, aggressive sexuality. Lacking that, he had virtually nothing, and came across badly.

To be Machiavellian in the sense of being ruthless is one thing. Andrew Cuomo is surely Machiavellian in that sense, I know of no one who would dispute that. Paladino's brand of Machiavellianism, however, is something different entirely. Cuomo's Machiavellianism is, if handled properly, the kind that gets things done. Paladino's is chiefly conducive to self-aggrandizement.

There is another American political tradition to which Paladino belongs.

The Paranoid Style

Historian Richard Hofstadter may well have produced the best and most relevant works of academic history ever written. In 1965's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, he, I am sad to say, captured much of the present political era, perhaps more of our present era than the one he wrote during.

American politics, Hofstadter wrote, “has served again and again as as an arena for uncommonly angry minds,” some of which are prone to “qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness [sic], and conspiratorial fantasy.” (Paranoid Style, page 3.) Hofstadter outlined many examples of the paranoid style in American politics. These examples raged from a few now-unknown people who complained that the fluoridation of the water supply was an attempt to institute socialism; to other now-unknown people who complained that a bill introduced in Congress to ban gun sales through the mail was an attempt to institute socialism; to the Black Panthers; to Joseph McCarthy. Outside of an American context, it's led, Hofstadter told us, to such diverse figures as Hitler and Stalin.

Fortunately, at least at the time Hofstadter wrote, the paranoid style was not preferred on American shores by majorities, merely by minorities. In an American context, the paranoid style in Hofstadter's day was and is now primarily, but not exclusively (as the Black Panthers case shows) found on the right. (Paranoid Style, pages 5-10.)

Hofstadter was careful to state that political paranoids were not necessarily paranoid in the psychological or clinical sense. The political paranoid, in the sense of a political actor using the paranoid style, is I suspect rarely, if ever, actually mentally ill. The paranoid style is, after all, a style above all else. The political paranoid is a political persona some present, the same way that Machiavelli's sexual aggression is a persona, and the heroic “white knight” is a persona.

The political paranoid often forgets the distinction between saying that there have been conspiracies in history, and that history is, itself, a conspiracy. The political paranoid holds that there is a vast and sinister conspiracy, somehow both gigantic and subtle, to undermine and destroy our way of life. This conspiracy is a primary, or the primary, force in historical events. Only an all-out-crusade can stop this conspiracy. The end is always just around the corner, and time is forever running out. The crusade against the conspiracy is as-military in nature as it is political in the traditional sense. There can be no compromise, no negotiation, none of the traditional stuff of politics. The enemy is usually personified in some way. The personified enemy is portrayed as moral-less, both politically and sexually. The latter, Hofstadter pointed out to us, has been of particular and surprising importance to political paranoids. It seems to be important to them that their enemies have no sexual morality. The renegade from the enemy, an informant figure, typically is featured prominently. The arguments of the paranoid have a peculiar mix of verifiable and unverifiable proof, with wild extrapolations being made from what is verified to what is not, and in many cases cannot be, verified. (Paranoid Style, pages 29-38.)

As described by Hofstadter, the paranoid style of his day, in America, consisted of the following claims: There is a long-standing conspiracy to undermine capitalism, bring the economy under the control of the federal government, and pave the way for socialism or communism, and high levels of government have been infiltrated by communists. The communists infiltrators in government are supported by a vast network of communist agents throughout the country. Unlike some perpetrators of the paranoid style, American political paranoids often seem to de-emphasize distant, unseen enemies such as the Illuminati, Jews, and the Roman Catholic Church, in favor of then-more-recent, public figures such as Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (Paranoid Style, pages 23-29.)

There is very little that Hofstadter has described that is not seen in Glenn Beck today. Indeed, Glenn Beck's 2009 book Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, the cover of which features Beck in a Soviet military uniform, can be seen as a veritable tribute to the paranoid style, were it not clearly intended to be taken as serious political commentary.

The paranoid style among the contemporary right isn't limited to Glenn Beck; Newt Gingrich has been practicing it for awhile. Note these passages from Gingrich's 1995 book To Renew America:

Since 1965, however, there has been a calculated effort by cultural elites to discredit this civilization [American civilization] and replace it with a culture of irresponsibility that is incompatible with American freedoms as we have known them. (To Renew America, page 7)


In the mid-1960s, this long-held consensus [on American values] began to founder. The counterculture began to repudiate middle-class values . . . “Situational ethics” and “deconstructionism” –the belief that there are no general rules of behavior– began to supplant the centuries-old struggle to establish universal standards of right and wrong.

All this has led to a collapse in our own ability to teach ethical behavior to our own people. Traditional history has been replaced by the notion that every group is entitled to its own version of the past. (To Renew America, page 30)


It is sad indeed if a centuries-old moral consensus had, by 1994, collapsed as a result of a conspiracy that had begun as recently as 1965. Sadder-still is the irony that, to the degree to which Gingrich is correct, the true beneficiaries of deconstructionism have been the American right, as I have outlined here. What else does Glenn Beck do, after all, if not attempt to create his own version of history in the manner suggested by Hofstadter?

Moreover, at least one conservative thinker, Leo Strauss (a teacher and inspiration for many on the contemporary right), seems to date the decay of American values earlier than Gingrich did.

Does this nation [the United States] in its maturity still cherish the faith in which it was conceived and raised? Does it still hold these 'truths to be self-evident?' (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 1.)


Strauss went on to suggest that the decay of American values, indeed the questioning of the very notion of values, can be traced back to Nazi Germany, and that the idea's import to America was in essence a form of Nazi political revenge on America.

It would not be the first time that a nation, defeated on the battlefield and as it were annihilated as a political being, has deprived its conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the yoke of its own thought. (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 2.)


The contemporary rejection of natural rights leads to nihilism – nay, it is identical with nihilism. (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 5.)


Strauss wrote these words in 1953, a full 12 years before the date Gingrich gave for the start of the conspiracy. The American right has been practicing the paranoid style for a very long time, and the degree of consistency has been remarkable.

Carl Paladino is in this political tradition too, along with the tradition of Machiavelli's political-sexual aggression.

For the first example, we return to Carl Paladino's last-minute campaign appeal, recorded in a diner, a place of "normal" Americana if ever there was one. At about the 7 minute, 38 second mark of that video, Paladino begins to stray from a message of tax cuts, spending cute, and economic development into the following conspiratorial fantasy, wherein he incorporates an impressive variety of events which someone else might think are, more or less, unrelated. Andrew Cuomo is corrupt, he does not understand honor (presumably the way normal people like Paladino do), and is connected with a corrupt political conspiracy that includes AEG and "Obamacare."

Government corruption is just rampant. My opponent's been the chief prosecutor of a state for three years, a state that has the most corrupt government in America, and now he wants to be a Governor. I don't understand those things. I don't understand why he doesn't respect honor. Honor. You make a promise, you keep the promise. He said at the debate anybody that does anything wrong will go to jail. But at the same time he cut a deal with Hevesi to allow Hevesi to walk! He cut a deal so he could make a political announcement to advance his own political career, so he could say he convicted Hevesi, who he knows won't be sentenced until after, after election day, and he made a deal that the man doesn't have to go to jail. A public official is held to a higher standard, and if we don't put them in jail, we're not sending the right message out for every other public official. And you saw what happened with Aqueduct. Aqueduct. That stunk six months ago. And who's involved. Sampson. Smith. Our Governor's secretary . . . 'Cos in the end, the people today are un-grounded. They don't trust the government. The government is corrupt, the government doesn't do their work, the government gives 'em the worst possible lives in the world, there's nothing on the horizon except it getting worse, Obamacare's gonna lay a million, five hundred thousand new people onto the taxpayers, of the State of New York. My opponent won't speak to the issue. That's what he's afraid of. But the people, they want a government that's gonna cut back on its size.


In the context of a political campaign, with vitriol on the one hand and rational fears of government corruption and incompetence on the other, these remarks weren't necessarily taken as paranoid in the political sense. They were surely not given the same level of scrutiny that Hillary Clinton's oft-quoted "vast right wing conspiracy" remark was given. (And, it should be noted, when talking about New York State's politics, all bets are off and sometimes conspiratorial fantasies can seem true. Or, at least, truer than they probably are.)

Now that a little distance has passed however, granted not much distance, I can hope that Paladino's remarks will be seen in light of the paranoid style, because that's the light in which they make the most sense.

Paladino's use of the paranoid style wasn't limited to election eve. Note his blaming of the now-infamous release of his pornographic E-Mails on Andrew Cuomo's people hacking his computer. The cute thing about that accusation is that when you send an E-Mail, messages by definition leave your computer, and thus no one needs to hack someone your computer to get it. It's already left your computer, because you deliberately sent it out.

Despite his own non-mainstream tastes in pornography and his close association with Roger Stone, a self-described “libertine,” Paladino follows the paranoid style even to the point of questioning his opponents' morality, their connection to the culture's commonly held moral values. (Including, but not limited to, matters of sexual morality.) Here, some will recall, he stated the following about Governor David Paterson.

I'm telling you that Paterson is not your friend. Paterson is, Paterson's a drug addict, he's been a drug addict his entire life.


Paterson has not just used drugs, which presumably any number of otherwise-normal people may experiment with, but he's an "addict." Addicts deviate from our values in a way mere users may not. And, in this video, Paladino made the following now-famous remark:

For weeks the media has badgered me about affairs because, unlike a career politician, I was honest enough to acknowledge she was my daughter when I announced my candidacy. “Are you having an affair now?” “How many have you had?” “When was your daughter conceived?” What I meant to express in my anger was simply this: Does the media ask Andrew such questions? Andrew's prowess is legendary! No! This campaign must be about bigger issues, not affairs or divorces.


Paladino admits his own affairs, but Andrew's, which he to this day has presented neither proof nor even specific allegations about, are “legendary.”

Finally, note the following outburst to the Buffalo City Council, recorded in the Summer of 2010.

Our city has the renown of being known as the second poorest city in America. We worked very very hard to get there, to have that distinction. We've done everything just the opposite of the way things should be done. And now we're, we're drifting over into a socialistic environment. The people that wanna bring to us a community benefit agreement. What is it? ACORN? Sam Hoyt and Sheldon Silver giving us the same old stuff?


The conspirators identified, as is the nature of the conspiracy. The specter of socialism, this time not a world away but very, very close at hand. And, Paladino states, it's been a long time in coming. Luckily, he is there to save Buffalo, and then New York State after that, if only the conspiracy would allow him.

It is very difficult, at least for me, to listen to or read Carl Paladino without the lingering figure of Joseph McCarthy coming up in the corner of my eye. Note McCarthy's rant on Edward Murrow's television program and how it incorporates many elements of the paranoid style which we now see are also reflected in Carl Paladino, and others on the American right. In particular note the use of the accusation presented as fact.

Conclusion

Carl Paladino, New York's paranoid would-be Prince, is not going away. His personality alone probably dictates that much, but more importantly he's not going away because he represents two long-standing tradition in American politics. Those of his ilk have, in fact, obtained prominent roles in the Republican party, and their post-modern, paranoid rants have become mainstream. This is no longer the stuff of secret meetings or Internet message boards. Glenn Beck makes millions of dollars, Sarah Palin is considered a serious presidential candidate, and Carl Paladino defeated the mainstream Rick Lazio to become the official candidate of the Republican party to be Governor of the State of New York.

At the end of the day, as has been shown, in this article and by political experience, Paladino has little if anything save for the paranoid style fused with a fetishized politics of imposition.

It is not to America's, or New York's, credit that he was taken seriously at all, let alone that he's very unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The State Senate Democrats: Dysfunction Defined

I read today of the deep campaign debt the New York State Senate Democratic Conference have found themselves in, and the many problems they have had raising money.

How could this happen, I thought....Every Majority Conference can rake in money, surely, and even a Minority Conference can rake in money if they're smart.

Then, the obvious occurred to me: The Senate Democrats have almost literally nothing to raise money on.

Assuming a lack of flat-out, quid pro quo corruption in the process, legislative conferences bring in money by pointing to their agenda, to their accomplishments, and sometimes to the legislative process itself.

As to agenda, I can't even remember what the Senate Democrats' agenda was, outside of a few matters which were specifically NOT enacted into law, gay marriage or “marriage equity” being the primary example. I'm trying to remember more, and I can't. And for present purposes, understanding the Senate Democrats' fund-raising issues, the fact that I can't remember what the Senate Democrats' agenda was is more important than is the content of that agenda.

As to accomplishments? Same. This Legislative Session is notable chiefly for things that were specifically NOT enacted into law. Gay marriage wasn't enacted. A property tax cap wasn't enacted. Corrections to the ill-considered Spitzer-era political ethics reform were enacted, but the corrections were about as ill-considered as the original bill was, and were vetoed by Governor Paterson. In a unique twist, the Senate tried an override vote on ethics, and it failed.

As to the legislative process, the Senate Democrats managed to straddle multiple dichotomies of dysfunction. Until the 2009-2010 New York State Legislative Session, I didn't know a legislative process could be both inefficient and corrupt, both secretive and messy, and both violent and ineffective. It is fitting that, at the close of 2010 the potential limbo of 2011 looms so large that it's squeezed out fixing the current budget. The Session began, and now ends, in limbo.

Why are the Senate Democrats having trouble raising money? Because they have substantial negatives and few, if any, positives. They did nothing with the Majority, which they barely managed to hold during 2 years and seem likely to lose in the immediate future. Any positives they had were easily drowned out by laughable dysfunction.

What, exactly, would the Senate Democrats raise money on? Their agenda was forgettable; their accomplishments negligible; and their process combined ethics that would make both Joe Bruno and Eliot Spitzer blush and the efficiency of a kindergarten class.

To say Albany is dysfunctional is a cliche. What it usually means is "the process did not produce results I approve of. However, after years of Albany being called dysfunctional, finally we have a good, working definition of that term. Political dysfunction is the worst of both worlds: A bad process, and bad (or no) policy. The State Senate, in the Democratic Conference's hands, was a messy, unhealthy sausage factory that made bad-tasting sausage nobody wanted to buy.

Now here's another thing: Isn't it sad that the process has gotten bad enough that whether or not a legislative conference brings in money can be taken as a good measure of their success, or lack thereof?

-The Albany Exile