Assassination Chatter and the End of Legitimacy
Legitimacy is the most elemental and elusive of political goods; a gift which only a society can give its leaders, and only the same society can take away.
To deprive a politician of legitimacy is long and serious work. A good deal of the process has always taken place behind the scenes before the evidence comes into view.
Thus, from 1994 onward, a language of generalized insult and contempt was used by Republicans about Bill Clinton in order to deprive him of the claim to be recognized as the legitimate holder of the office of president. Newt Gingrich and the Contract-with-America wing of the party were deliberate in the tactics they deployed. They coolly decided to use the word "sick" to characterize the Clintons and their policies. Instructions regarding which words of contempt to use and when to use them, went out in memorandums and were put into practice on pundit shows and talk radio. This story is told by David Brock, an insider who came to regret the part he played, in his memoir Blinded by the Right.
The delegitimation of Bill Clinton led from the sprawling fruitless Whitewater investigation to the Paula Jones suit to the interrogation of Monica Lewinsky to the impeachment of the president. On the whole this is not an episode Americans look back on with pride. When the Supreme Court in May 1997 decided that Paula Jones's lawsuit against a sitting president could go forward, because there was no reason to suppose it would interfere with his performance of his duties, the judges were oddly unanimous in their indifference to the power of legitimacy.
What Bill Clinton felt at the time is barely possible to imagine; the bitter taste the impeachment left with both Clintons, they have taken great pains to conceal.
We have seen a return this year to the politics of delegitimation by the extreme Republican right. Yet what has been most surprising is the complicity, and then the open participation in that process by the Clinton campaign. Race was always going to be an element in this year's election. But the comparison of the front runner Barack Obama to the marginal candidate Jesse Jackson on the pretext that both had won South Carolina was a shocker when people heard it come out of the mouth of Bill Clinton. Again, the talk, by Hillary Clinton and her operatives after Ohio, of "the commander in chief test" which (it was said) she and John McCain had "passed" but Obama mysteriously could not pass, was a second stroke of the same kind. There was no scientific or political content to the statement. Its significance was gestural. It was an effort to delegitimate Obama, and its truth could only be shown by its success or failure.
Hillary Clinton's recent careless-careful mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, in answer to a question about why she would stay in the Democratic race when all the numbers are against her, raised the tactics of delegitimation to a pitch as weird as anything the Clintons can have seen in the years 1997-98.
The most disturbing element of her remark was this: that it chose to treat assassination as just one more political possibility, one of the things that happen in our politics, like hecklers, lobbyists, and forced resignations. The slovenly morale and callousness of such a released fantasy is catching. So when, a few days later, the Fox News contributor Liz Trotta was asked her opinion of Senator Clinton's statement, Trotta said: "some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama...Obama. Well...both if we could!" Liz Trotta laughed as she said that. Later, she apologized, as Senator Clinton also has apologized.
Race comes easily and inevitably into discussions of Barack Obama, and never far from race is the thought of violence. It is there when you hear mentally feeble persons say, "I am afraid of this one; so afraid! something makes me afraid!" And race comes into the discussion when you hear clever people say, "He can never win the white vote; the white working class just aren't ready for him."
An unmeasurable but well-recorded condition for the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the campaign of delegitimation that preceded that terrible event. Anti-Castro Cubans hated Kennedy because he had disappointed them at the Bay of Pigs, and seemed to be a warm friend cooling. Many Southern white people hated him for his indications of solidarity with the cause of civil rights. There are other actors and reactions that might be added; but all shared the belief that Kennedy was not a legitimate leader, that he didn't deserve to be given the chance to go on governing. The hatred was especially virulent in the South. Death threats were in the air and Kennedy had been warned against taking the trip to Texas.
When a democratic society fails to honor the contract by which we elect our leaders in peace, and let them govern in peace, and show our approval or disapproval by keeping them or turning them out of office--when the incantation "He is not one of us" dips so far below sanity that we pretend the rules and decencies aren't in force any more--it is more than one person who is harmed. This loose way of talking and thinking of violence hardens us against real responsibility if the violent thing should happen. We are administering shocks to ourselves in advance so as not to be surprised by the actuality. But such preparations are in their very nature corrupt, and corrupting. And they are not less so when used against any person of dignity and estimation, on the public stage, than when they are leveled against an elected official.
William James wrote of the hope of democracy after the Civil War:
"The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such nations have no need of wars to save them."
The original meaning of the phrase "We shall overcome" is too often forgotten. The words didn't mean: "We--black and white people--will win equal rights for black people." They meant rather: "We--human beings--will overcome our savage impulse to settle our differences by violence. In both domestic and foreign arenas of dispute, we will overcome our endless reliance on short-violent-cuts to success."
The acceptance of political violence, apparent in the recent casual chatter of assassination, shows a despair of overcoming that is as monstrous in its way as the acts of violent men themselves.
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So how come Darth Cheney can't be sued?
I prefer delegitimization, not delegitmation.
An interesting analysis about "the politics of delegitimation ". Using name calling in an effort to strike at a candidates legitimacy goes back to the time of Jefferson.
But the first modern day version, 'that 'seemingly innocent' & 'thoroughly deniable' choice of a word or image' employing the power of suggestion & embedded persuasive techniques was first practiced by Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan in their 'southern' strategy of division.
While the power of suggestion has been around since the 1700's it really came into its own as a better understood & powerful technique during the late 60 and 70's. Lawyers & businesses widely embraced it & the whole concept of subliminal messaging took advertising, legal arguments & politics into a whole new realm. But the Republican's were not alone. The Clinton's as far back as their run for the State House in Arkansas were already masters of this game, it was fully evident in their White House & it has been fully evident in this campaign, predating Iowa.
The Clinton's are politically brilliant. They knew if Obama ever got a jump he would be the most difficult to beat because of the mood of the country and his obvious appeal.
Certainly striking at Obama's 'legitimacy' has been a powerful Clinton message but the most troubling for me has been the corresponding message that 'he' and 'they' somehow stole this election from the Clinton's & the country!
That invites and promotes downright scary consequences.
Clinton's non-apology only covered regrets "if" we were bothered by hearing about Bobby. She did not even give us conditional regrets on raising indirectly the Obama assassination possibility.
She lives every day with the secret service protecting her from assassination, this is not the sort of thing she forgets about.
To see documentation that she raised the assassination issue just 4 days after the March poll showing the country was concerned about it, see zFacts.com.
Just as a politician can be deprived of legitimacy, a politician can legitimize the heretofore unacceptable. Hillary Clinton accomplished this first with racism, by claiming as a benefit to her campaign the racism of undereducated, poor whites in the Appalachian states. The message says is a value-neutral political position. I believe her three (and counting) references linking the killing of RFK to her possible success in June is an attempt to do the same thing for the demise of Barack Obama's candidacy. When in doubt, totally obliterate.
For proof of the import of her statements, look no further than the immediate and visceral negative reaction of millions, and her assiduous failure to apologize to Obama and identify harm to HIM as wrong. She's cited the Kennedy assassinations as a national tragedy, but is silent on the same actions against Obama. Having tied Obama's death with her victory--almost as happenstance, as Mr. Bromwich points out--she owes him no less, assuming her intent was not what I've conjectured. If it was, we'll never hear boo from her.
She could restore some decency to her putrid push for the White House by stating unequivocally that, if anything should happen to Obama, she'd discontinue running and would not accept the nomination for president or VP. THAT might help offset the great harm she has caused. If nothing else, it would disprove my conclusion, and change the minds millions about her intent.
Mentally unstable people do sick things. Like, wishing their rivals were killed, or killing them, themselves.
The Clintons are clearly in desperate need of therapy for their narcissism. They've allowed their personality disorder to completely overtake them, and are now forcing the rest of the Democratic Party to indulge their every whim with taunts and threats and tantrums.
The party poobahs should end the psychodrama now -- for the good of everyone involved.
Hillary, I suppose, has deadly thoughts about obama and herself.....it's the opposite side of the coin.
But seriously, violents begets violence.....and this fear monginering tactics by liz trotter aka liz trotzky and hillary clinton is very dangerous. there's already a movement to have liz trotzky arrested for treason. if she were a 'hard working white woman' she could have been in lockdown by now.
Arrest Liz Trotzky.
A great post indeed. HRC and her camp have been sending not so very subtle messages about Obama's race since SC. They should have been strongly called on it then. There is no denying that intelligent discussions surrounding the issue of race should be a part of the public discourse but not when such discussions are used to divide. HRC and her camp got away with it and they have been pushing the envelop ever since. No one can put a stop to this madness but we the people. It is high time that we let our collective voices be heard proclaiming that a house divided against itself cannot stand. HRC must go!
It shouldn't be surprising. You need look no further than Hillary's long-time strategist and PR guru, the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, to suss out where the Clintons' loyalties lie.
And how did we miss, all these years, the Clinton corporate trojan horse, the DLC, while they corrupted the Democratic party and nearly destroyed the two-party system? Of course, the fact that their corporate owners also own the national media has been of some assistance in protecting us from the reality of the corporate takeover of our government - so ably assisted by those good old bleeding-heart populists Bill and Hillary.
The Clintons have always been Republicans. They have simply come all the way out of the closet.
"Nearly destroyed the two-party system"? The system as we Americans know it was broken before the Clintons. It's been broken ever since our country has been held hostage by the no-choice options of Red or Blue. It's the dumbing down of American politics into color-coded decisions, with no real difference between any candidate other than how much money one corporation paid to one candidate instead of the other.
To try and suggest that this was orchestrated by Bill and Hillary Clinton is paranoia and disconnect from reality so severe that I'd strongly recommend psychiatric assistance for your difficulty.
Say what you will, but the specter of assassination is real, for any politician. To deny that it exists is natural, though, since considering it would be to consider the possibility of death, which most people never do. Any candidate on the trail tomorrow could be hit by a car, be a victim of an exploding gas main, in the wrong place during a freak flood or tornado, anything. Death is always possibly, and saying that out loud and acknowledging it isn't deligitimizing anything, other than willful ignorance of reality and mortality.
Well said.
The DLC is the bane of a truly Democratic National Party.
What an absolute oxymoron: "Democratic LEADERSHIP Council"...who died and elected them the herder of cats?
"To deprive a politician of legitimacy is long and serious work."
Kevin Spacey would agree with you I am sure.
VGP - Very Good Posting. Keep on posting, David. You bring truth to people.
Thank you for this eloquent post!
thank you for telling the truth god bless
Thank you Mr. Bromwich, for saying the truth and for articulating it so well. I still cannot get over how Hillary Clinton and Liza Trotta can get away with this atrocity.
they "get away with it" just like Mike Huckabee because white america and the media are too quick to give this woman and her like minded lackeys the benefit of the doubt at every turn. call me angry black man if you want, but at least i have a college education and smart enough to know that talk of this sort would never even be thought about had he not been a black candidate and everyone here knows it but most are too cowardly to admit it. does anyone here honestly believe that had the candidate's name been Biden, Dodd or Edwards any of this kind of mean spirited "kitchen sink" attacks would take place? this woman makes me sick and to think i like many other african american held the clinton's in high regard but their not so covert brand of race baiting and disrespect to the HARD WORKING AMERICANS OF EVERY COLOR is beyond shameful. yet there is still a great deal of people that would still stand behind her. there's a mirror being held up and most of america doesn't even have the guts to look into it honestly...
Why is it that most of you Liberals are willing to give the Clinton's a pass by using the term "right-wing" tactics, etc.
Nixon got busted and Reagan never got it in full swing, but the Clinton's, oh-man, they made FULL-USE of this kind of B.S. politics from AK to DC.
The Rove's of the right-wing, learned from them!
You're absolutely right. No ideology has full claim to immoral behavior.
Mr. Bromwich, that was so beautifully written and expressed. Free of angry verbage, you also state the grievances of the Clinton campaign's casual referencing of a tragedy such as RFK's assassination in California. It does seem as if the Clintons have learned nothing from the slime ball tactics thrown at them by the GOP and right in those years that he made the presidency twice. They are using the same scorched earth tactics on Obama. I think there are several traits that are being seen in both Hillary and Bill these days. They are not really all that 'cool' about race and I am sure the black vote is lost to them forever. And she, especially, seems ruthless in her race for the White House, leaving no stone un-turned in her path.
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