Fantasy Politics and an Imaginary Analysis of Hillary Clinton

While browsing through my suburban public library, my eyes caught the title Hillary Rodham Clinton: On the Couch. How nice, I thought, that I could read a psychobiography of a woman I had been following closely since 1992, written a few small articles on, and who just might become our next president. The author, Alma H. Bond, PhD, is described on the cover as a “psychoanalyst and psychobiographer.” The publishing house is Bancroft Press, and the book was published in 2015.

My excitement soon turned to frustration as I discovered the book is written in the form of a series of sessions that the doctor has with Hillary, extending from August 19, 2013 to May 9, 2014. Clearly, Hillary was never on the couch of Alma Bond, who was described as having been born in February 1922, and received her PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia University, and then graduated from the post-doctoral program in psychoanalysis at the Freudian Society. The flyleaf of the volume quickly instructed me that this 94-year-old woman is also the author or co-author of

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books putting Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Onassis on the couch. The 29 books in her bibliography implied some thorough study, however her particular thanks to Wikipedia was not reassuring. The reports on the fantasy 50 minute sessions with Hillary were usually summarized in a couple of pages.

Clearly, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a subject of popular fantasies. Through the years I have found that this daughter of a suburban Chicago conservative Republican businessman has been projected upon to an amazing degree. She is despised and demeaned or loved and respected by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. For many she can do no good, for others she is a martyr to political skullduggery.

Alma Bond depicts Hillary and her relationship with Bill as the popular fantasy that Bill is a hopeless womanizer and Hillary a long suffering wife. When the reality is that when Bill wooed Hillary after she failed the Washington, DC bar exam (Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge, 2008, 92), and followed her boyfriend to Little Rock, Arkansas, the couples’ friends weren’t sure who would run for office first, but Hillary’s feminism and Yankee accent were definite negatives. After they married, Hillary settled into becoming the primary breadwinner as Bill gambled on political success. Until Hillary entered the White House as First Lady, she made more money than Bill. As Chief Executive of Arkansas, the most Bill earned was $75,000 while Hillary brought in $115,000 as partner in a law firm. There are various reports of her shouting loudly at Bill for his unfaithfulness during his governorship. Reading prosecutor Ken Starr’s voyeuristic report presenting evidence of President Clinton having 11 instances of what I call “high school sex” involving fellatio, cunnilingus, and telephone sex (whatever that is!) with Monica Lewinsky, but he presented no evidence that the affair was consummated with vaginal sex. It is my impression that Bill believed what others saw as a lie, that he had not had sex with “that woman” (Lewinski) because he did not consider what they did as sex. As his mother said back in 1992, she and her son always had a tendency to simply forget inconvenient facts—in her case that she once divorced her second husband Roger Clinton, who she later remarried. For the sake of their daughter and their common passion to change society through politics, Hillary suffered through the humiliating impeachment proceedings, just as she had suffered at the hands of her father while growing up.

While Hillary Rodham Clinton: On the Couch is based far

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more on fantasy rather than reality, I can recommend it as a source of amusement if you don’t know much about the reality of the Clintons. The book also brings the issue of political process in our era of celebrity and fantasy politics. On a day-to-day basis the actual process of governing is ignored except when the Republicans denounce almost everything Obama does or doesn’t do and Clinton wraps herself in his legacy while campaigning among his adherents, especially if they are African Americans. Fantasy abounds in the early part of the 2016 presidential election contest, especially among the Republicans. Donald Trump maintains the fantasies that Obama was not born as an American citizen, that the politicians in Washington are “stupid,” that he can build a beautiful wall between the United States and Mexico which the Mexicans will pay for, and that his comments are really not misogynistic, personally abusive, or racist. Articulate, bright, and well-educated 44-and 45-year-old first-term senators like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio think the country needs them despite the disadvantages of having an inexperienced young senator as president, as we have observed in the last seven years. Yet millions of voters show a preference for those with little experience since those who have considerable experience are subject to constant attacks for what they have and have not done.

We live in an era of celebrity culture in which appearance becomes increasingly more important than reality. Thus among the Republican presidential contenders, would-be nominees who have a real track record of governance such as Bush, Christie, Kasich, and Pataki struggled to gain traction, mostly in vain with some having already dropped out of the contest, while Carson, Cruz, Rubio, and Trump have at various times gathered far more screen time, general media attention, and been proclaimed as the front runner. This is in part because there is decreasing attention to the reality of political accomplishments and attributes of the candidates and increasing focus on who is in the limelight. In the celebrity limelight, reality doesn’t seem to make much difference, but rather who’s up and who’s down. The media also plays a game of choosing a potential nominee to intensely focus on, usually pointing out all sorts of positives about them. I call this the honeymoon “getting-to-know-you” period, which I have observed with Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Sanders, and Trump in this electoral cycle. The media then proclaims that Trump is the front-runner and is being challenged by Carson, Cruz, or Rubio. Sometimes these proclamations become self-fulfilling prophesies if the individuals capture the imagination of others. In

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most cases it appears to increasingly become a disadvantage to have a proven record of accomplishments and failures.

The debate subjects focused on by the Republican contenders have had very little to do with the governance of our country which perhaps is not surprising since their emphasis has been running against Washington rather than actually governing America. As the party out of power, they have had the luxury of less responsibility for the actual governing and coming up with well thought out policies. This tendency has been exaggerated by the congressional leader’s decision on the night of the President’s inauguration to obstruct rather than cooperate for the good of the country. For it has been so much easier for GOP leaders to pass 62 resolutions condemning the Affordable Care Act (their dreaded Obamacare) than to provide a practical and reasonable alternative despite there being promises to do just that by Congressional leaders like Paul Ryan.

Governing is complex and boring, but horse races are fun. The political horse race draws in voters who, like fans of the racetrack, become excited by the process and seek to choose a winner. The important thing is not who can effectively govern, but who looks and sounds like a winner. Donald Trump thinks he has what it takes to make “crippled America” great again (as best I remember, we’re still the “greatest” power in the world) and promises to transform the country.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton actually debate some real policies in their contest to represent the Democrats in the fall election. The democratic socialist senator from Vermont has an advantage over the more experienced former first lady of Arkansas and the USA, New York senator, and Secretary of State: He has a simple message of leveling the economic and political playing field that inspires many young people, while she speaks in the specifics of making things happen in politics. The reality of politics is that you get elected in poetry, but govern in prose.

Dr. Bond ends her fantasy psychoanalysis of Hillary with a warm hug and a dream that Clinton’s image would be on Mount Rushmore as she would “be among the greatest presidents our country has ever known” (282). The reality of this 2016 presidential race at moments seems almost as fanciful.

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