In Search of the Lost Ego:
The Secret of American
Presidential Politics
by Natalie Flemme, media analyst
If Sigmund Freud were with us still, he would be very disturbed by the American presidential election campaign. The candidates seem to be staging a revival of the quaint psychodrama which Freud thought explained our lives, but the revival has a startling deficiency.
As you know, the Freudian drama has three roles: the id, the ego, and the superego. The role of the rapacious id, the restless and relentless pleasure seeker, has been undertaken by Mr. George W. Bush. He wants things that will give him pleasure – beating up Saddam Hussein, cutting taxes for his friends – and he wants them now. Instead of considering the wisdom of his wishes he just goes ahead and realizes them. Which is why the United States is bogged down in Iraq at the same time as Mr. Bush has transformed the huge budget surplus left him by Mr. Clinton into a huge deficit.
The role of the superego has been assumed by Mr. John Kerry. The superego is the enforcer of parental commands, prohibitions, and ideals. While Mr. Bush enthusiastically charges into one venture after another, Mr. Kerry disapproves of them in a way that is distinctly maternal – George shouldn't have invaded Iraq without inviting all the other boys along; if George wanted to give away tax cuts he should have given them to everyone, not just his friends; if George had done his homework when it was assigned to him he wouldn't be missing all that flu vaccine now; and so on.
That leaves one role left to cast – the ego, that part of the psyche which balances the demands of the id and superego and then acts to achieve a goal which is most beneficial for the individual. So who's playing the ego? This is where Freud would be getting nervous, because the short answer is – no one.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry would each like you to think that he is the ego. Mr. Bush takes the simple approach of claiming that he is a better leader than Mr. Kerry while hoping that no one will notice things like those 377 missing tons of munitions or the 50 million missing doses of flu vaccine or that huge deficit. Or, for that matter, the crack team of advisors with whom he has surrounded himself – a national security director who doesn't read the national security report, a minister of defence who claimed to know the address of every WMD in Iraq then apparently lost his little black book, a secretary of state who – just what is it that Colin Powell does, anyway?
Mr. Kerry has taken the approach of proposing alternatives to Mr. Bush's policies, apparently reasoning that if Mr. Bush is a doofus then someone who says he's the opposite of Mr. Bush must present the appearance of a non-doofus. The chief quality of Mr. Kerry's alternatives, though, is not their practicability or practicality but simply their non-Bushiness.
Mr. Kerry's Iraq policy? Let's get all the other countries together and have them bail us out! His solution to high prescription drug costs? Let's buy them in Canada! You know, Canada probably doesn't have enough drugs for the United States, even if it's willing to sell them, and those countries who warned against the invasion of Iraq may be a tad reluctant to pick up the tab for the operation.
Mr. Bush's and Mr. Kerry's approaches look as if they should be ineffective, but then we must consider the position of the electorate. Faced with the absence of a candidate who might fill the role of the ego, the voters have decided to ignore that absence and persuade themselves that one of the candidates is up to the job. This is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. Faced with an uncomfortable realization, people often make themselves comfortable by deciding that the opposite of their realization is true.
So what might explain the absence of the ego from the psychodrama of the American presidential election?
The answer is Americanism. As other articles here observe, the belief that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve is deeply ingrained (to coin a phrase) in American culture and values. Dr. Phil and all the other celebrities of the American human potential movement tell us this belief is true, prominent American religious leaders tell us not only that it's true but that God says it's true, and, to get to the chief American religion, every American sports announcer tells us it's true at some time during every broadcast of every sporting event (and especially the Tour de France). You don't need no stinking ego, you just need an id.
Which is why George W. Bush, against all logic, still retains such a firm hold on the hearts and minds of many Americans. If anyone believes he can accomplish anything he puts his mind to, it is George W. Bush. No evidence of WMD in Iraq? No problem – if we just try hard enough we'll find 'em! Cutting tax revenues is likely to give the country a budget deficit? No problem – the tax cuts for the rich will invigorate the economy, because we want them to invigorate the economy! There's a possibility there may not be enough flu vaccine? No problem – if we want the flu vaccine enough it'll be there!
Mr. Kerry's response, it is important to note, is not that Mr. Bush is incapable of achieving his goals but rather that he is not trying hard enough to achieve them. In other words, Mr. Bush is unAmerican. He is betraying a central tenet of Americanism. Why, if Mr. Bush had only been as American and as hardworking as Mr. Kerry, Iraq would be a model of democracy today, every American would be savouring his or her tax cut, and there'd be flu vaccine for all! And Mr. Kerry's admonitions are maternal because Americans love their moms.
The transformation of the American presidential elections into a morality play of the type characteristic of professional wrestling probably began with Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan's version was considerably more sophisticated than his successors', though, since he was a professional actor and knew how to create interesting characters. George Bush the Elder wasn't much of an actor at all, and he was singularly incapable of creating a character which represented a strong moral position. When Bill "The Boy from Hope" Clinton appeared in the role of the self-made go-getter, bubbling over with plans to transform America "by the year 2000," George H. W. Bush was cast aside like a chewing gum wrapper. And then there was George Bush the Younger, scourge of the middle east and of same-sex couples.
Will American presidential campaigns ever get their ego back? They will at precisely the time they become truly political again. Politics is the working out of a conflict of interests, or the failure to work it out. At the moment there is little conflict of interest in American presidential politics. The cost of running an American presidential campaign is so enormous, thanks to the huge area over which it must be conducted, that any serious contender for the presidency needs to conduct his campaign from the safety of some very rich contributors' pockets. All the candidates' policies will therefore tend to be similar, and the candidates differentiate themselves not by their policies so much as by prefabricated versions of their "character."
To those of us in the rest of the world, faced with the prospect of an unending stream of American presidents elected not for their policies but for their ability to exploit their constituents' psychological peculiarities, there is only one conclusion to draw – let's keep our heads down.
Posted October 27, 2004
In Search of the Lost Ego: The Secret of American Presidential Politics © John FitzGerald, 2004
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