George W Bush has raised narcissism to new levels with his administration. But we shouldn't forget the narcissism of the Clinton administration. Remember Rwanda:
Power was rightfully awarded the Pulitzer for her finely written and downright horrifying book "A Problem From Hell" which, in macabre detail, describes the calculated indifference of the Clinton administration when 800,000 Rwandans were being systematically butchered. The red phone rang and rang and rang again. I don't know where Hillary was then. But her husband and his entire experienced foreign policy team - from the brass in the Pentagon to the congenitally feckless Secretary of State Warren Christopher - just let it ring.
And as more than one researcher has amply documented the case, the bloody paralysis of the Clinton administration in the face of the Rwandan genocide owed not at all to a lack of information, but rather to a lack of will. A reviewer of Power's book for The New York Times, perhaps summed it up best, saying that the picture of Clinton that emerges from this reading is that of an "amoral narcissist."
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The objection that many of us have to the Clintons is exactly their amoral narcissism--a willingness to sacrifice core values as part of some kind of pseudo-rational triangulation. The problem with this approach is that it leaves the Democrats triangulating while the Republicans bargain tough--the result is a country that lurches in fits and starts ever more to the right. What is required is a more long term principled approach to politics than the Clintons are willing to deliver. This willingness to sacrifice core values in the service of expediency is demonstrated throughout the Clinton's career. Rwanda, sanctions on Iraq, gays in the military, welfare reform, NAFTA without worker protections, failure in the middle east, authorization of the Iraq war and now Clinton's Rove-like and long term destructive campaign against Obama on his ability to be commander in chief. This approach to politics produces short term political advantage for Clinton but long term problems for the country. It is a bad trade and I think we can do better. We must.
