“Is it possible that Bill Clinton secretly or unconsciously is sabotaging Hillary’s campaign?” asks new media pundit Thomas Lifson, adding that after all, nobody “has access to the private thoughts of the man…”

This is true, but private thoughts are not the criteria by which people are, or should be, judged. The only empirical evidence we have of the interior life of any person lies solely in his or her behavior. And when it comes to behavior, Bill Clinton has told us for decades, and is telling us now, everything we need to know about him and his motives.

Without repeating many of the issues I’ve already written about the former president – his misguided policies, which compromised our national security; his cringe-producing, lip-biting public appearances; and the treasonous speeches he’s given against the current administration, on foreign soil and often to our enemies – my intention here is to affirm Lifson’s suspicions.

During his eight years as president, Bubba told us repeatedly that:

•  Lying to the American public was perfectly okay
• Serial adultery was none of our business
• Deeply embarrassing his wife, child, mother, and country was “a private matter”
• Placing his entire cabinet in the untenable role of supporting his lies was his imperial privilegeImpeachment for perjury and being disbarred were mistakes of our country’s century’s-old legal system
• The few journalists who wrote about his innumerable flaws and failed policies were “unfair”
• Violating the sanctity of the White House’s Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky was okay
• Misusing the Lincoln bedroom for campaign cash was okay
• Selling our most precious national-security secrets to our enemies for cold hard campaign cash was also perfectly okay

All of these behaviors benefited one person and one person only – Bill Clinton. Who acts like this? Who thinks like this? What kind of person believes that anything he does or says or wants or needs trumps common decency and, in Clinton’s case, national security?
Narcissists do! And malignant narcissists like Bill Clinton lead the pack.

What Is Narcissism?

According to the DSM-IV, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association, narcissism is described as both a personality and character disorder, with the following symptoms:

• A pervasive pattern of grandiosity
• Self-centered, egotistical behavior
• An exaggerated sense of self-importance
• A lack of empathy
• Exploitative interpersonal relationships
• Taking advantage of others to achieve one’s own ends
• The need to be seen as special and unique and the expectation of special treatment
• The need for excessive admiration, adulation, attention, affirmation, deference, and praise
• The impulse to strike out in rage
• A sense of entitlement
• Lying without conscience
• Always blaming others
• Ignoring or denigrating the accomplishments of others
• Envy of others

Over the course of Clinton’s lengthy political career, hundreds if not thousands of authors, journalists, commentators worldwide, and also victims, have documented or testified under oath to all of the above, leaving no doubt about the ex-president’s voracious appetite for attention, insatiable lust for the spotlight, spectacular exploitation of everyone from his family to his underlings to his girlfriends, as well as his liberal replacement of facts and truth for whopper lies, to cite just a few examples,

But Clinton is no ordinary narcissist. I believe he is of the malignant variety, which explains why he is working to make his wife president while, at the same time, insuring that she never ascends to that position.

What Is Malignant Narcissism?

This term was coined by psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg about 35 years ago and adds to the above list paranoia, a pervasive disregard for others, as well as deceit and manipulation. It is a condition that psychoanalyst George H. Pollock has described as “pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, [and displaying] demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.”

While most people suppose that such pathology is easy to recognize and therefore avoid, quite the contrary is true of pathological narcissists, many of whom occupy positions of great prominence – in politics, medicine, the law, academia, the arts, Hollywood, industry, law enforcement, even the clergy.

In fact, narcissists of both the ordinary and malignant variety are very close to – and sometimes identical to – psychopaths. They specialize in mimicking human emotions and portraying themselves as the very opposite of what they really are. And they often “appear” to be “normal,” even when they’re telling bald-faced lies, acting emotionally infantile, and inflicting unspeakable pain on those who they claim to care for.

Ironically, they are hopelessly dependent upon the very people they have such contempt for, and so they gratify their unquenchable emotional needs by affecting a faux personality that is so charming on the outside that it eclipses the toxicity within.

With their natural-born charisma, this species inevitably attracts fawning acolytes who – lacking the narcissists’ glow or power – are willing to subordinate themselves and remain, in essence, both the narcissist’s hapless cheerleaders and their scarred victims. As long as they remain in the narcissist’s thrall, everything is fine.

But since narcissists, in their own minds, must always remain superior to everyone – vis-à-vis their delusions of grandeur – they strive continually to make everyone around them feel insignificant, which is fueled by their pathological envy.

When A Malignant Narcissist Meets His Prey

In the early 1970s, then-homely-and-probably-dateless Hillary met charismatic-but-innately-narcissistic Bill at Yale Law School. He wasn’t looking for beautiful (he had plenty of those, with dozens to follow) but rather a brainy leftist who could help him fulfill his mission in life, i.e., to be important. He spun his web and she was willingly, thrillingly ensnared.

And so the Wellesley-educated woman whose feminist psyche was forged by Gloria Steinem’s battle cry – “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” – abandoned her own grand plans for fame and fortune, married Bill, and moved to Arkansas, where she proceeded to prove that malignant narcissists will always have their Kool-Aid-drinking followers.

Hillary didn’t do much in either Arkansas, where she failed at reforming the state’s abysmal education system, or as First Lady in the White House, where she failed at reforming our nation’s healthcare system. But in both places, she did succeed in covering up and/or denying her husband’s serial infidelities.

All this would lead most people to believe that Hillary is a complete patsy and idiot, who sold out all of her feminist ideals to serve a fish on a bicycle! Then again, you can’t sneeze at the privileged perks she enjoyed as a governor’s wife or the immense luxuries she enjoyed as First Lady.

But clearly, underneath her decades-long subservience to Bill’s needs, wants, expectations, desires, and demands, Hillary still maintained the notion that she could have her own day in the limelight. With Bill’s time in office finally over, her days of serving him were too. Indeed, she ran for a senate seat in New York, and won a second term in 2006.

Right after this victory, she decided to run for the presidency. Little did she know that the one person she counted on to support her – just as she had supported him – would be her worst enemy!

And yet, Hillary is as much to blame for her crashing campaign as anyone. That is because she willingly entered a folie à deux – a madness shared by two – which is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which the beliefs of one person (read, Bill) is transmitted to another (read, Hillary).

The Sabotage Factor

From Iowa to New Hampshire and from print to electronic media, Bill has made himself  – surprise, surprise! – the centerpiece of Hillary’s campaign. As writer Jonah Goldberg has noted: “Bill Clinton has been stumping for his wife [by] framing the election as a referendum on his tenure as president” (my italics added).

Over the past many months, Bill has done the following to sabotage Hillary’s aspirations. This is the short list:

• Hogged the spotlight, talking about his “accomplishments” in office
• Lied about his stance on the Iraq War
• Lied about Hillary sending him out with George H.W. Bush to undo the “damage” of the current administration
• Lied, as she did, about how “deeply involved in the Irish peace process” she was. “How odd,” Clinton expert Dick Morris recently wrote, “that Hillary forgot to mention her pivotal role in Ireland just four years ago, when she wrote her $8 million memoir, Living History. There, she told a very different story.”
• Whined about less-than-adulatory media coverage
• Spouted his negative opinions about his wife’s competition
• Blurted out his utterances in Tourette’s-like fashion, all of which continue to take up entire news cycles about why he said this-or-that or what he meant
• Invented the myth that Hillary is “the agent of change”

The net result is that Bill, true to his insatiable narcissistic desires, remains the center of attention, and that Hillary’s is relegated to the one thing she really has “experience” in, i.e., cleaning up his messes.

Of course, Bill knows the effect of his behavior. Narcissists are nothing if not astute students of…themselves! He knows that embarrassing his wife, forcing her into defensive positions, and burnishing her now-lusterless image as a broom-toting hausfrau will injure her campaign, perhaps irreparably.

That is the irony! He wants to be president again but can’t, and he’s damned if she’ll be!

As Hillary’s poll numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire devolve, Bill – convinced the election is all about him – has become increasingly unhinged and increasingly viewed as an albatross around wifey’s neck. In fact this arch-symbol of encumbrance and burden was used not once but twice last week in the titles of articles written by Victor Davis Hanson and David Limbaugh.

In referring to Bill’s attempt to stem Hillary’s plummeting poll numbers, Hanson, in “The Clinton Albatross,” writes:

But Bill’s not exactly a fireman. He may instead throw gasoline on the fire. First, his vote-getting abilities are suspect. He never won 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election. Second, [he] often comes across as a narcissist. He talks the longest and loudest about himself. It is almost impossible for first-person Bill to praise Hillary without adding, “When I was president” or “I had a vision.” Third, Bill cannot always distinguish truth from fiction. [And his] tendency to dwell on – and fudge – his own past earns splashy headlines but takes attention away from his wife.

If Bill keeps this sloppiness up, some might almost wonder whether he really wants his wife to win – and thereby have her overshadow his own presidency by being both the first woman president and the Clinton who did not suffer impeachment due to self-inflicted scandal.

In Limbaugh’s article, “Hillary’s Spousal Albatross,” the popular columnist writes:

It would be bad enough if only cynical sexists accused [Hillary] of glomming on to Bill for power. But there will be no Hillary presidency apart from Bill. He can’t stay out of her business. He can’t stand it if someone else has center stage, especially his wife, who he will have put in office. Even if he wouldn’t vie for direct power – which is unlikely, considering he’s already lobbying for it – …it’s inconceivable he wouldn’t always be trying to grab the headlines.

And without using the albatross metaphor, Wesley Pruden, editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, referring to the now-sorry state of Hillary’s campaign, said:

Hillary and Bubba can only wonder how things came to such a sorry pass for a president who was inevitable. No one had ever imagined Bubba as the gallant Lancelot, riding to the aid of a lady in distress since his instinct is to put the ladies in distress…

If suddenly Hillary is not having any fun, Bubba, liberated at last from irrelevancy on the velvet sidelines, is once more in the center ring, even if in a supporting role. When he appears with Hillary, the loud applause is for him, not her.

Unintended Consequences

According to an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, the “unintended consequences” of Bill Clinton’s entrance – I say intrusion – into Hillary’s campaign have been:

• She looks weak depending on her husband… by hiding behind [him] she kindles doubts about whether she has the starch to be a strong president on her own.
• Hillary reminds us of the worst of the Clinton years. Their dysfunctional marriage, his parsing of the language to dodge and weave through controversy, his tendency to get down and dirty in fighting opponents are all unattractive and do him – and her – no good.

Indeed, Hillary has played the victim card to death. Yes, her putative constituents – as she sees them – are all “victims” of the capitalist system she detests, and a few gullible of them may even vote for her.

But I trust that most voters will recognize that Hillary is an essentially weak woman, incapable of resisting the charms of the malignant narcissists on the world stage, who will make mincemeat of her, just as her husband has always done and continues to do.

Source: The New Media Journal