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| Dick CheneyÂ’s Nonexistent Dementia |
| 2007-03-16 |
| By Charles Krauthammer ``What is wrong with Dick Cheney?'' asks Michelle Cottle in the inaugural issue of the newly relaunched New Republic. She then spends the next 2,000 words marshaling evidence suggesting that his cardiac disease has left him demented and mentally disordered. The charming part of this not-to-be-missed article (titled "Heart of Darkness," no less) is that it is framed as an exercise in compassion. Since she knows that the only way for her New Republic readers to understand Cheney is that he is evil — ``next time you see Cheney behaving oddly, don't automatically assume that he's a bad man,'' she advises — surely the generous thing for a liberal to do is write him off as simply nuts. In the wonderland of liberalism, Cottle is trying to make the case for Cheney by offering him the insanity defense. She doesn't seem to understand that showing how circulatory problems can affect the brain proves nothing unless you first show the existence of a psychiatric disorder. Yet Cottle offers nothing in Cheney's presenting symptoms or behavior to justify a psychiatric diagnosis of any kind, let alone dementia. What behavior does she cite as evidence of Cheney's looniness? (a) Using a four-letter word in an exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy. Good God, by that standard, I should have been committed long ago and the entire borough of Brooklyn quarantined. (b) “Shoot a man in the face and not bother to call your boss 'til the next day?'' Another way of putting that is this: After a hunting accident, Cheney tried to get things in order before going public. Not the best decision, as I wrote at the time, but perfectly understandable. And if that is deranged, what do you say about a young Teddy Kennedy being far less forthcoming about something far more serious — how he came to leave a dead woman at the bottom of a pond? I am passing no judgment. I am simply pointing out how surpassingly stupid it is to attribute such behavior to mental illness. (c) Longtime associate Brent Scowcroft quoted as saying, “Dick Cheney I don't know anymore.'' Well. After 9/11, Cheney adopted a view about fighting jihadism, America's new existential enemy, that differed radically from the “realist'' foreign policy approach that he had shared a decade earlier with Scowcroft. That's a psychiatric symptom? By that standard, Saul of Tarsus, Arthur Vandenberg, Irving Kristol, Ronald Reagan — to pick at random from a thousand such cases of men undergoing profound change of worldview — are psychiatric cases. Indeed, by that standard, Andrew Sullivan is stark raving mad. (OK, perhaps not the best of counterexamples.) I too know Dick Cheney. And I know something about the effects of physical illness on mental functioning. In my younger days, writing in the Archives of General Psychiatry, I identified a psychiatric syndrome (“Secondary Mania,” the title of the paper) that was associated entirely with organic (i.e. underlying physical) disorders. The British medical journal Lancet found this discovery notable enough to devote an editorial to it shortly afterward and to alert clinicians to look for its presenting symptoms. And as a former chief resident of the psychiatric consultation service of the Massachusetts General Hospital — my house staff was called in to diagnose and treat medical in-patients (many of them post-op, many with cardiac disease) who had developed psychiatric symptoms — I know something about organically caused dementias. And I know pseudoscientific rubbish when I see it. I was at first inclined to pass off Cottle's piece as a weird put-on — when people become particularly deranged about this administration, it's hard to tell — but her earnest and lengthy piling on of medical research about dementia and cardiovascular disease suggests that she is quite serious. And supremely silly. Such silliness has a pedigree, mind you. It is in the great tradition of the 1964 poll of psychiatrists that found Barry Goldwater clinically paranoid. Goldwater having become over the years the liberals' favorite conservative (because of his libertarianism), nary a word is heard today about him being mentally ill or about that shameful election-year misuse of medical authority by the psychiatrists who answered the poll. The disease they saw in Goldwater was, in fact, deviation from liberalism, which remains today so incomprehensible to some that it must be explained by resort to arterial plaques and cardiac ejection fractions. If there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning — Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #15 thx for the info - I was born in '59. Goldwater is an unknown to me. Too new for history, too old for "poltical science 101" when I was in college |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-03-16 23:03 |
| #14 It was before your time, bigjim, but look at the hysteria that ran rampant in 1964. All the crap that is done to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, was done to Goldwater. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2007-03-16 22:57 |
| #13 Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course). And since Ms. Cottle wants to be 'compassionate', she thinks Cheney is ill, not evil. What other explanation could there be? That's why she wrote what to you and me appears to be total tripe. I doubt that compassion has anything to do with it. It is difficult to define anything as evil if there is no absolute standard of right and wrong, and the entire liberal project seems to have degenerated to eliminating all standards. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2007-03-16 22:47 |
| #12 #2 It's true, I can never remember journalists and liberals behaving so badly in my lifetime. I'm in my mid 30's and these last 5 years have been the weirdest in my life. They hated Reagan as much or even more. Thought he was too dumb to breath, a cowboy, etc. BTW, my strong impression is that Winston Churchill WAS bipolar Sir Winston referred to his depressive phases as his "black dog", didn't he? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-03-16 17:56 |
| #11 BTW, my strong impression is that Winston Churchill WAS bipolar. Didnt mean he should have been locked up. Far from it, his manic phases may well have saved western civilization. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 16:38 |
| #10 "Ms. Cottle is calling Mr. Cheney mentally ill without calling for him to be locked up, because right now she can't do the latter. There's still too much blowback. Let things go as she might wish, however, and in time the psychiatric facilities will be just as full as they were in Brezhnev's Soviet Union." Might wish. Excellent. She might wish it. She also might wish to have Jews lined up and shot. Or she might wish for a manned mission to Saturn. If someone speculates whether someone in politics has a low IQ, does that mean they want them sterilized, a la eugenics? If you speculate if someone is gay, does that imply you support them being hanged, like in some muslim countries? I know people who im quite sure are diagnosible according to the DSM IV (and of course seeing at the estimable book includes depression, and even, IIUC, dysthimia, as categories of mental illness, I fail to see that its such a huge deal being mentally ill) That doesnt mean I want them locked up. As for Ms Cottle being a leftist, she clearly thinks Cheneys policies are miserable. Does that put her on a spectrum to Stalinism? No more so than liking Cheney puts one on a spectrum to Nazism. Hell, someone with views like my own is probably on a spectrum in BOTH directions. So I cant see how her being a "leftist" is relevant, if shes not a communist. Garden variety liberals and even socialists are not historically more in favor of psychiatry as a tool of repression ttan are conservatives (they may use it more as a tool of propaganda, as Kraut points out - but thats hardly the same thing, and is probably just taking advantage of many Pdocs being liberals - just as say, taking a poll of Marines, or economists, could be used against liberals) Obviously some libertarians are even more opposed to "coercive psychiatry" than are either liberals or most conservatives, but IMHO they go to far. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 16:35 |
| #9 LH, I wouldn 't (and didn't) call Ms. Cottle a communist. She's a leftist. That seems rather obvious. As to old Joe McCarthy and the HUAC, there's a difference between calling someone 'crazy' (an epithet) and 'mentally ill' (a diagnosis with sinister implications). Heck, I call lots of folks 'crazy' even if I can't find a description of them in the DSM-IV ;-) Ms. Cottle is calling Mr. Cheney mentally ill without calling for him to be locked up, because right now she can't do the latter. There's still too much blowback. Let things go as she might wish, however, and in time the psychiatric facilities will be just as full as they were in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2007-03-16 15:28 |
| #8 BTW, steve, you will note that in #3 i did not defend Cottle. I took issue with #4, which seemed to imply that Cottle would stop saying stuff like this if only the muslims attacked Russia. Note - X used rhetorical strategy A, and Y used rhetorical strategy A, does not mean Y is a friend of X. Even if Cottle was equivalent to the Commies in what shes saying about Cheney (and note, shes only speculating, not calling for him to be confined to a mental hospital - we are still free to speculate about our leaders mental states in this country) it would NOT imply that she has any special concern for Russia (if Russia were actually Communist, which it is not) If that WERE a logical form of argument, you could argue that since the Nazis attacked their opponents as Communists, everyone here attacking Ms Cottele is a Nazi. That would be just as absurd, IMO. But it does raise the question of why its so despicable of Ms Cottle to say a public official is mentally ill on thin grounds, when its OK to call Ms Cottle a Communist on equally thin grounds. Does Ms Cottle beleive in the abolition of private property? In the lead role of a proletarian party? In dialectical materialism? Does anyone here know, or even care? Or is that anyone who thinks Cheney is "bad", or perhaps not "bad" but mentally ill, is a commie? Thats a pretty expansive definition of commie. More so, perhaps, than Ms Cottels definition of "mentally ill" |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 13:21 |
| #7 "Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course)." And its only the left that does this? Only the "moonbats", the "loonies" etc? Heck, its not only done to lefties, its done to someone as conservative as John McCain whos regularly called "crazy". Not to mention all the crazy and evil furriners. If we had to eliminate every reference to someone as crazy or evil, this here website would have a lot less content. And no, I dont know of anything as "serious" as the Cottle piece in the other direction, but then i havent looked. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 13:11 |
| #6 Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course). And since Ms. Cottle wants to be 'compassionate', she thinks Cheney is ill, not evil. What other explanation could there be? That's why she wrote what to you and me appears to be total tripe. She's serious. She believes this. This isn't just rattling the conservative cage, or red meat to both her readers. She believes this. That's one good reason why the hard Left is dangerous. If you think your opponents are evil, you kill them. If you think they're mentally ill, you lock them up. That's where Ms. Cottle is going with this. Enjoy your cell, |
| Posted by: Steve White 2007-03-16 11:24 |
| #5 of course since cottle isnt a communists, and AFAIK is not a Putin fan, its hardly relevant to this. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 09:27 |
| #4 Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds made a very apt off-the-cuff remark last week. He said we need to have the Muslims seriously attack Russia (Beslan wasn't enough). If they did that, all the Communists in the U.S. would get on board supporting the WoT just like they did the last time Russia was seriously attacked--in 1941. If the Commies all got on board, this would be "the next good war," just like WWII was "the last good war." I know it was TIC but a lot of truth is said in jest. |
| Posted by: Mac 2007-03-16 09:23 |
| #3 quick notes 1. note Kraut is a trained psychiatrist, IIUC 2. This isnt the old TNR. Peretz sold it, though he still writes a column. Its no longer the voice of hawkish liberalism. Im not sure what, aside from a somewhat more contrarian style, differentiates it from say the Atlantic Monthly. At some point the Iraq war will be history, and the nadir of the liberal hawks will pass, and there will be a need for a liberal hawkish voice again. But it wont be found in TNR again, I suspect. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-03-16 09:19 |
| #2 It's true, I can never remember journalists and liberals behaving so badly in my lifetime. I'm in my mid 30's and these last 5 years have been the weirdest in my life. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2007-03-16 08:34 |
| #1 f there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning — Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant. Ouch! That Hammer hits hard! |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-03-16 06:57 |