40 years on: Thomas Eagleton, mental health and a forgotten American shame

Such is the extent to which our culture, and arguably our species, loves any excuse to engage in nostalgia and attempt to learn lessons from the past that it is often hard to pass by an even mildly notable anniversary of an historical event without people reminiscing and speculating about its retrospective significance and what meaning can be taken from it by contemporaries. But perhaps we would learn more about ourselves and the society we live in if we gave more consideration the anniversaries we don’t mark and how exactly they are being remembered even when we do.

A perfect example can be taken from last summer and the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Thomas Eagleton as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the American vice-presidency. The moment passed with little notice, or observed in an offhand fashion in the rare instances that it was. Perhaps if people gave it a little more attention, it might be realised when a deeply shameful moment in political history has been neglected. In the summer of 1972, much of the coverage of the election was taken up with two major scandals that rocked the respective candidacies. The scandal for the Nixon candidacy broke in the early morning of June 17th when five well-dressed men were discovered inside Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. They were carrying recording equipment and a notebook containing a phone number for somewhere marked down as “W. House”. In time it would prove to be the first indication of an extensive “dirty tricks” operation being conducted by the Nixon Administration against its political opponents whose eventual unravelling would rock American politics and force Nixon to resign in 1974.

But much as hindsight would like to think otherwise, the Watergate burglary was not the election scandal that most interested the American chattering classes that summer. Attention was instead more focussed upon the question of how gravely the national interest would be affected by one poor man’s medical history. On July 13th the Democratic National Convention in Miami officially selected George McGovern as their presidential nominee, and chose Thomas Eagleton, senator for Missouri, as his running mate. Following on from Eagleton’s selection, rumours began to circulate among politicians and journalists of “damaging” facts about the senator. He admitted in a press conference on July 25th that he had been hospitalised three times for “nervous exhaustion” in the 1960s, where he received psychiatric counselling and electro-shock therapy. A media firestorm ensued and, in spite of polls showing that the vast majority of Americans stated that Eagleton’s medical history would not affect their vote, demands poured in from campaign donors, party leaders and some of McGovern’s own staff for Eagleton to be removed. A flood of editorials did likewise, including from the New York Times. On August 1st, Eagleton withdrew his candidacy on McGovern’s request.

So it is that, over the years, the position of vice-presidential nominee has been held by a remarkably colourful range of politicians. Aaron Burr who would go on to murder Alexander Hamilton and be tried for treason for organising a private army to overthrow the U.S. government; Elbridge Gerry who gave us the term “gerrymander”; Richard Nixon himself who was exposed as blatantly corrupt during the 1952 election; Spiro Agnew who took $100 million in bribes while governor of Maryland; Dan Quayle who didn’t know how to spell “potato”; Dick Cheney who brought Darth Vader comparisons and Sarah Palin of whom the less said about the better - all were deemed fit to run for the office of vice president. But a man who suffered from depression was not. The unflattering symbolism of the episode is clear. It demonstrated perfectly the grievous intolerance of respectable society towards people who suffered from mental illness. Its substantive impact is less immediately apparent. Things worked out well enough for Eagleton himself. He was spared the ignominy of being on the ticket for the rest of a disastrous election for the Democrats and was re-elected to serve two more terms as senator for Missouri. But the private suffering it must have caused to so many ordinary people was never reported. The anxiety it must have caused in people already on the brink of nervous exhaustion, the confidences it must have shattered in so many already laden down with desperately low self-esteem – none of that can ever be properly measured.

How have things changed? Not as much as we would like to think, in my view. True, there have been some signs of progress , in recent years, with respect to acceptance of mental illness in politics. The most outstanding example is the case of Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former Prime Minister of Norway, who temporarily stepped down from his position in 1998 after admitting to suffering a depressive episode, being subsequently elected to a second term in office. But then Norway is a good candidate for the most advanced society in the world and should not really be used to measure global standards. It certainly seems difficult to believe that a major politician, at least in the frenzied world of US politics, would not deem it a massive political risk to be open even about past mental health difficulties. With polls showing that 90% of people who suffer from mental illness say that they have felt stigmatised (and Christ knows who that other 10% are), it seems unlikely that that stigma wouldn’t feed into politics to an arguably even greater extent than the rest of day-to-day life.

The West Wing at least, which was widely praised for its realism, thought it was a perfectly believable story for a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the fictional 2006 election to fail to become the nominee because of revelations that his wife had been hospitalised for clinical depression. But perhaps we might also simply look at how the Thomas Eagleton controversy is remembered. As in many instances of discrimination, comparative hypotheticals make the point especially compellingly. The most obvious one is to imagine the certain non-existence of any controversy had Eagleton ever been hospitalised for any other medical condition. But we might also bring things a little closer to home, and ask ourselves how differently we might remember the incident, forty years on, had Eagleton been forced to withdraw for being black, or Jewish, or gay. Is it not likely that, if that were the case, people would now look back on the events with an absolutely mortifying embarrassment and self-recrimination?

As it is, the episode is primarily remembered as a quiz-worthy peculiarity in the electoral record books , as indication of McGovern’s lack of judgment in not properly vetting Eagleton in the first place, and a causal factor in the Democrats’ ultimate crushing defeat. Until Americans, the American media and indeed all of us start looking back on the incident with genuine remorse, it will not be possible to say that values have really moved on in the slightest.

There are some glimmers of light in the sorry Eagleton saga. For one thing, there is the precocious enlightenment that was demonstrated by the American public at large, for all it was worth at the time. While apparently not wise enough to avoid re-electing Richard Nixon, they nonetheless testified in majorities often in the seventies that they did not care about Eagleton’s medical history. And George McGovern at least, whose own wife and daughter themselves suffered from depression, has subsequently said that he regrets his decision to abandon Eagleton. “If had it to do over again, I’d have kept him,” he said in 2006. “I didn’t know anything about mental illness. Nobody did.”

There is hope, then, but we need to be honest about how very far there is still to go. A good first step would be the acknowledgment of how truly disgraceful the Eagleton saga really was.

Europe after Lisbon

The Lisbon Treaty has now been in operation for a over six months; since 1 December 2009. Such has been the length and complexity of this tunnel from which we are emerging, that we may be forgiven for blinking a little as we emerge from it. The question arises, however, what now for the EU having finally got what it wanted and not immediately concerned with sorting out its institutional machinery?

The first question to ask what difference does this holy grail of institutional reform make? Unfortunately much of it is simply promise and potential, and quite elusive promise at that. It remains, in many respects, a befuddling and murky bureaucracy of an institution; a metaphor for which was ironically perfectly provided by the indecipherable text of the treaty itself. There are indeed a few changes. Incremental increases in the power of parliament and the openness of the Council of Ministers and the legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights are much to be welcomed. Equally auspicious, in my view, are the increases in the power of majority voting at the expense of national vetoes. Then, of course, there the superficial for which of which you will forgive my scepticism; the long-term President of the European Council and High Representative for Foreign Affairs. In terms of an analysis of the overall significance of the passing of this treaty and its above features it is of course far too early to say anything of substance.

What we can assess, however, is the impact it has made on the consciousness of the actors involved and the influential chattering classes. This has, it must be said, been a much expected and highly underwhelming whimper. The selection Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton as the public face for the institution was a dispiritingly EU-esque choice that emphasised the persistence of old, tired tendencies more than any kind of break from the past. It was a compromise in which hopes for anything visionary were swallowed up by squabbling and the vanity of national governments eager to appear to be getting
The second Barroso Commission’s appointments were greeted by a response that was, for the most part, meaninglessly parochial. Take Ireland, for example; Máire Geoghegan-Quinn has been given the relatively insignificant post of Research and Innovation, but the media’s response the Commission was an absolute fixation on her and disregard for everyone else. What exactly the public good of this focus was is beyond me. Parliament, in its ratification of the Commission, proved its use by kicking up a fuss over a number of weak appointments but in the end limited itself to its now customary one-kill limit with the withdrawal of Rumiana Jeleva of Bulgaria. In the meantime the Europeans muddled their way through Copenhagen in December without forcing much action from the US, China or anyone else despite the best of intentions.

This is not the way in which a healthy political system operates, and Lisbon clearly solves nothing in this regard. The question, however, is how we react to this fact. There are two basic alternatives; two ways in which we can interpret the both difficulties of the last eight years and the achievements which we have finally now made.

The first, very tempting choice is to do what most runners do at the end of a particularly gruelling marathon: collapse with exhaustion and relief. This very much seems to be the sentiment among many people involved with Europe. There is the sense that the EU has achieved the structural reform necessary for the foreseeable future; a satisfaction that the most glaring bureaucratic inefficiencies have been ironed out and that people can now get on with there job. If we pursue that then the ugly absence of outcome, vision and popular participation which we have witnessed both over the last eight years and over the most recent couple of months will continue and probably only worsen with time.

But there is an alternative. While most athletes may fall down and think about the race no more, anyone with a hope of competing properly in the long-term will also take time to assess their race strategy, worry at a time very much outside their seasonal best, and prepare to run the next race better. The next chapter in EU development has to begin in the wake of this ugly but very salutary episode that is the last eight years. The EU cannot possibly afford to continue along the route it is on; either so out of touch with the European people or so unable to cope with the challenges of a globalised economy and society. However tired we may be from the saga which is now drawing to a close, progress towards the next steps of democratic and institutional reform must begin immediately.

The problem we face, however, is that it is hard to know where this next step will come from. We are in a kind of a Catch-22 situation. The European public is so detached and disaffected with the EU that it is unlikely to make any real attempts at forcing reform itself. Meanwhile, the elites in Brussels will not make moves to reform things since they have seen the degree to which it is difficult to get a disaffected public to accept even the most mild-mannered reform. In other words, the public won’t engage to force reform and will reject any attempts at reform because it is so disaffected with the unreformed system.
The only answer which I can see to this problem is a two-pronged uphill assault at the institutional and cultural obstacles which we face. First, there should be a concerted effort at cross-border engagement at the level of public discourse. By this means we can, very slowly, begin to overcome the parochial myopia which dictates much public thinking at the moment, and, through this communication, begin to come to a communal way of thinking that sees the value of the EU as a whole and not for individual member-states. In the meantime, the long fight for greater transnational democracy, including a directly elected President of the Council, must continue and will hopefully facilitate this cultural engagement.

The problem with American Conservatism

Any claim that a widely acknowledged ideology, cherished by millions of people, is ‘intellectually dead’ should not be taken lightly even by a very fierce critic. Anyone who makes such an argument rightly opens himself or herself up to criticism and even ridicule as intolerant or totalitarian. Indeed, in the case of many ideologies with which I disagree (such as libertarianism, liberalism, Marxism and the more moderate form of ‘Conservatism’ which I outline below, among others) I would feel very presumptuous in making the claim. For reasons which I shall outline below, however, I believe that the argument can at least be made that a certain form of Conservatism is at least vulnerable to such an accusation.

Let me be very clear as to what I mean when I say Conservatism. I do not mean Conservatism in the more vague, more socially progressive, moderate and European sense; which I shall call Christian Democracy to avoid confusion. This is the ideology adopted by elements of the CDU-CSU in Germany and Gaullists in France. It is also held instinctively by many ordinary people. This perspective is not particularly intellectually clear and contains many laudable values; such as individual responsibility and the dangers of excessively rapid change. It also offers a welcome relief to some of the blind spots in liberalism, with which it overlaps significantly (Edmund Burke, after all, was a Whig). In particular, where liberalism tends to become obsessed with the abstract and unreal conceptions of progress and individual freedom; Christian Democracy reminds of the virtues of social. Socialism does this as well, but Christian Democracy avoids Socialism’s unrealistic dismissals of hierarchy and the fixation on ‘progress’ which it shares with liberalism.

But a new form of Conservatism, which has scandalously adopted the term as its own, has been on the rise. In many respects we may say that it is synonymous with ‘neo-Conservatism’ ,but many who dismiss the ill-reputed ‘neo-‘ share essentially the same ideology. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a despicable and utterly facile ideology. It takes the worst in human instinct and turns it into a doctrine; it emphasises the faults in Christian Democratic conservatism and chooses the worst in the liberal ideology which Christian Democrats have traditionally resisted. It takes the hierarchical and oppressive aspects of the social and discards all the sympathy and fellowship which it also offers. It takes the brutality of individualism while disregarding the freedom one should gain compensation.

Modern Conservatism in this sense has developed its heartland in American Republicanism, with disastrous consequences, but it is worryingly encroaching upon Europe. In many respects it fits better the sentiment from which Conservative feeling arises. Conservatism is an instinct which we all have; a suspicion of change mixed with a selfish wariness of , disregard for and sense of superiority over others. These emotions are an inevitable part of the human character. What is remarkable, however, is that rather than simply failing to discourage these rather unwelcome emotions, an intellectual discipline has been developed to justify it.

In recent times, intellectuals such as Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Allan Bloom have rowed in to provide theoretical arguments for what, in essence, is simply ignorance and bad behaviour. The arguments which they bring in, as outlined below, are essentially fallacies built from truisms. The respect which they are accorded is a testament to the self-serving manner in which an intellectual establishment may be directed.

The first argument which intellectual conservatives make is that Plato and Aristotle were rather clever; hence we should base our moral principles on what they said and dismiss the charlatans who have come in their wake in the last, oh I don’t know, two thousand years. Leaving aside the fact that Plato and Aristotle have been considerably overemphasised in Greek philosophy due to the survival of their works (at the expense equally interesting and to some extent more attractive thinkers like Democritus), no one disputes the first part of this argument. When I say I disagree with Plato I am not saying that I am smarter than him; I am simply saying that we have are a lot of other clever thinkers and quite a lot of post-Platonic experience of the world to work from. Intellectual Conservatives genuinely seem to have failed to appreciate this, even building an entire form of education in philosophy at the University of Chicago on the grounds that ‘Plato was clever, so there!’

Secondly; that values other than liberty and progress are important; hence arguments based on liberty and progress are wrong. Himmelfarb genuinely uses this argument in her critique of J.S. Mill’s On Liberty. ‘What about all the other things in life, like justice and tradition?’ she asks at one point. Well its not an either/or situation; Mill was simply saying that liberty was essential in society; not that it is all that’s needed. When I say ‘Chocolate ice cream is very nice’ the correct refutation of that is not ‘But vanilla tastes pretty good, why are you degrading vanilla’ as i have said nothing about vanilla. If you want to refute me you need to show me why I am misguided in liking chocolate.

Thirdly; that change can have bad consequences; hence we should protect the status quo. You may seem a pattern emerging here; take what is obvious to absolutely everyone, act like it is a remarkable revelation and use it to argue for something which does not follow at all. Of course change can be dangerous, that is why we should be careful about what we change, but that does not say anything in it favour of the way things are now. And yes, perhaps as Burke says, change can be gradual and organic; but that does not mean we cannot do some good by encouraging it, while being mindful of its bad side-effects.

Fourthly; that people are responsible for their own actions, hence that we should not help them. Well, yes, even the most ardent socialist would admit to individual responsibility. But just because people’s actions have consequences for them as individuals does not mean we should turn that into a doctrine for how we behave towards people. If actions have consequence that will be faced, but when someone falls into a frozen lake from walking on thin ice I personally would take it as imperative to get them out as quickly as possible; not to wait a minute or two to make sure they have learnt their lesson.

Fifthly; that values which have been held for a long time were held for a reason, hence we should keep them. Well, no kidding! Of course there was a reason, no one does anything without a reason. We’re simply saying that we might have better reasons now for doing things differently.

Sixthly; that religion has served a function in society; so we should believe in God. This is a particularly ridiculous subset of number five. I happen to believe that might have something to do with God’s existence, and then when we have come across evidence that we are doing something wrong we should not keep doing it for fear that it has worked for us up to now. Leo Strauss, however, knows better.

Finally, it uses grotesque historical oversimplifications. Their are many of these; for example their selective use and interpretation of various revolutions. Another is the interpretation of the Weimar republic provided by thinkers such as Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom. Hitler came to power, the argument goes, because of the liberal decadence of Weimar culture which ushered it in. The problem with this is that Hitler came to power through the support of the rural Conservative German heartland and that decadent Berlin was the last bastion against him.

It will be argued that the above presentation of Conservative ideas in itself an oversimplification. Of course it is! My argument in many senses has been crude and unfair. But this is done partly deliberately in order to make a point., since much as what Conservatism uses to protect itself are pretentious over-elaborations of the absurdly crude ideas whose basic skeleton is outlined above. I think we may conclude from this analysis that Conservatism, at least in its American sense, is a set of emotions that builds from much of what is bad in us rather than something presenting a coherent rational ideology.