HPC Blog: New Anonymous Program for Inside the Beltway?

August 10, 2008

Power Addicts Anonymous! Is it on the way to DC? It should be.

John Edwards put it into focus when he made his shamefaced announcement Friday night about his affair with a young woman in 2006: “Over the course of several campaigns, I started to believe,” he said, “that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.”

Special is the operative word in that statement and it spells out the disorientation that exists with many in the nation’s capital who believe that they too, are special. That disorientation is the addiction to power.

I will write it again for emphasis That disorientation is the addiction to power.

It is something that is glossed over by network and cable anchors when power is discussed. Political authors, who have the latitude and longitude to go into it, rarely do. And the press, with rare exception, never touches on it, the Washington Times being that rare exception. On March 5, 2006 it editorialized:

“Washington is about power. Power is addictive, and it corrupts. Those who have power fear losing it. Legislators will often seek creative ways to silence their critics and curtail their critics’ involvement in politics...”

Yes, it is a real thing. It is a disorientation of perspective to which John Edwards alluded. It leads to very bad decisions which John Edwards made and forces politicians to do things they are often sorry they did. Psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists, like The Washington Times, know the addiction to power to be a real thing. The Times’ piece was largely of power retention, a powerful part of the addiction. But the addiction is also pervasive. It goes into areas that affected John Edwards’ private life.

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Kathleen Puckett, a founding member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Program and someone who knows something about the dark side of human nature, points, in her forthcoming book Homeland Insecurity, to the pleasure centers of the brain as the source of power addiction:

“Interactive social activities between human beings, such as sex or politics, activate the same pleasure centers in the brain that addictive chemical substances stimulate. The same brain mechanism demands continued and increasing levels of the stimulus—in this case, political power.”

Dr. Puckett went to state “ The privilege that comes along with political power provides additional sources of pleasure such as fame, social position and increased access to other addictive substances.”

Dr. Puckett might have added Dr. Henry Kissinger’s observation about Washington behavior. “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” he said. Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State for three Presidents, would know. John Edwards might well agree.

Addiction to Power in Washington is a subject on which Dr. Kathleen Puckett is expert. In addition to being a founder of the Behavioral Analysis Program of the FBI, she co-authored, with Terry D. Turchie, the distinguished former official of the FBI, the forthcoming book Homeland Insecurity, a study of twelve Washington politicians who, in satisfying their addiction to power, have unwittingly compromised national security.

John Edwards is not one of the twelve.