Well, by seventh grade, he probably will. And Sayers probably cared a little more than she let on. Everyone does to some degree. But the events of last week are reminders that sex, greed, ambition–all the usual suspects–don’t take us very far in understanding human motivation. The aberrant behavior of Hillary and Martha and Howell and Sammy plumb different depths. While their weaknesses vary in scope and seriousness, they share not just prodigious talent but an irrational obtuseness about themselves and the people around them, a striking level of self-deception. The problem is not clay feet; everyone’s got ’em. It’s feet that aren’t firmly planted on the ground.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, the then governor Clinton liked to tell a little story to attack the Bush economic policy. “The other day, my wife gave me a psychology book,” he’d say, month after month, each time making it sound fresh. “It says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Perhaps Hillary Clinton should have read that “book” more closely.
Her book, “Living History,” portions of which were obtained by the Associated Press last week, suggests a woman who put the “D” in denial. “I could hardly breathe,” she writes about the moment she learned on Aug. 15, 1998, that her husband had more than a platonic relationship with Monica Lewinsky. “Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, ‘What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?’ I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea’.”
A book by Washington Post reporter Peter Baker says Hillary actually found out from the president’s lawyer first. Either way, the First Lady was also the First Enabler. Her pain was genuine; the right-wing notion that she knew all along gives her too much credit for cold bloodedness. Instead, she was merely a sap–practically the last person in the country to see the truth. These blinders are understandable in a wife but could be a concern in a future president. “You know what they say,” Jay Leno joked. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 6,000 times, shame on me.”
Martha Stewart is another victim of what Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times calls “blondenfreude.” The difference: While Hillary, contrary to reputation, treats employees with affection, Martha has problems with “the little people.” A less self-deceptive person would fix this, or at least refrain from placing her fate in the hands of subordinates unlikely to lie for her. Stewart, who may well decorate a jail cell, would be getting off easier if she had simply admitted what seemed to have happened, despite her denials: that she dumped ImClone stock because of a tip. (Insider trading is harder to prove and leads to less jail time than obstruction of justice). But she couldn’t live with the slightest stain on her public (and self-) image of perfection. So she ignored the obvious–that the cover-up is worse than the crime, and that the “little people” always talk.
Howell Raines, in many ways a brilliant journalist, had his own problem with lesser mortals. First, he fooled himself into thinking that sheer talent is all that counts, neglecting the part of the job that requires at least faking respect for everyone. Another executive editor of The New York Times could have easily survived the Jayson Blair scandal. But Raines apparently learned nothing from his experience running the Washington bureau in the 1980s, where he first bullied reporters. His problem was not, as some accounts claimed, that he had a star system; all editors do. It’s that he dumped on the everyday players in the newsroom who might not be flashy but can hit singles and occasional doubles. When he got in trouble and needed them, they were busy selling him out on the Internet.
All Sammy Sosa wanted were some singles and doubles to break out of a slump. So he corked his bat to give his old hands more speed coming around on the pitch. As a Cubs fan, I’m heartbroken, but I find it hard to believe his story about using the corked bat only for batting practice. Like Martha Stewart, he thought irrationally that he’d never be caught. But like Hillary Clinton (another Cubs fan), his greatest deception was of himself. He actually thought that even though he’s headed for the Hall of Fame with more than 500 uncorked homers (I still believe!), he’s somehow not good enough.
Some deception contains no self-deception. When President Bush says the United States had to go to war because of an “imminent threat” from Iraq, or claims that the “average” tax cut is more than $1,000 a year (he knows that the relevant figure, the median cut, is much lower), he is deceiving us, not himself. But the most interesting lies are the ones we tell to ourselves.
