Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Powerful Men
As we head into week two of the Pence-Dining-Schedule scandal, I have started seeing a number of people in my Facebook feed making comments along the following lines: does Pence think that every woman wants to have sex with him?
Well, for starters, I’m fairly sure the answer is no, but I have to presume these women are not familiar with the dynamics of powerful men — that they thought Kissinger was making some kind of a joke when he said “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” He wasn’t. People with power — with actual power — over other people are playing with an extraordinarily powerful drug, one that works not only on the user, but on the people around him, too.
Perhaps I know this because I grew up on military bases, around Command and General Staff officers. These are people who have actual power. Actual “we will send people to kill and die” power, but they also have more minor powers — “you, get me coffee.” And both these powers are important because in the middle of World War III you do not the Assistant Adjutant General of the 3rd Armored Division wasting time getting coffee rather than running the headquarters.
Thus, military officers are taught early on that they exude power, and need to be careful how they do it. This is known to cause confusion with civilian support staff. “Where is the daily report?” sounds like a question to a civilian secretary. To a military secretary it is a gentle rebuke that the report was not included when it was supposed to be. I have seen and heard naval officers — especially the commanders of ships — note that they can’t even speak idly in front of their officers, because something as whimsical as “wouldn’t it be grand to eat lunch on the deck instead of the wardroom” will be taken not as small talk, but as an order.
Norman Schwarzkopf records in his autobiography the story of his first day at “charm school” after getting his first star. First he and the other new Brigadier Generals were reamed out by the Army Chief of Staff about all the ways they could abuse their power, specifically including using it to meddle with their female subordinates or their officers’ wives. Then he was given a somewhat less strenuous, though more thorough, lecture by the Inspector General detailing every abuse and misappropriation that the IG corps had busted in the past year. It was quite extensive — and mostly had to do with “moral turpitude.” That is, the polite way to say “sex with subordinates’ wives, or just sex with subordinates.”
He wondered how officers, all of whom had presumably got variations on the same speech, and who knew the IGs could give Mounties lessons on always getting their man, did it anyway. A third general — more of a mentor than a teacher at charm school — provided the answer: “it is amazing, once I became a Brigadier, how much my sense of humor improved. Now, when I tell a joke, everyone laughs.”
This is the oft misunderstood meaning of Lord Acton’s “power corrupts.” Power is quite a drug. People want to like, and be liked by, powerful people. Yes, stars on a general’s shoulder make them sexier. But on the same note, the adoration -even feigned adoration -shown to powerful people also convinces the powerful that it isn’t their stars making them sexier, but that they actually are superior to mortal men — sexier, funnier, and better.
And I can tell you Congress works very similarly. I remember my first encounter with the “order phrased as a polite request.” One of the other staffers — obviously senior to the lowly intern, even the long-term intern — handed me a document to bring to the Member. I placed it in the folder of things I was preparing to carry up, and continued assembling the packet of briefing materials. “Sorry, I’ll be clearer,” he said. “That is more important than whatever you are doing. Carry it up now.” I also remember the first time I walked with the Member across the street. I met him at the car, asked his security detail if there was anything I needed to carry, and they said no. I then walked with him and his security detail back to the Capitol Building. Where they all walked past the security checkpoint, but I had to show my ID, run my keys through the x-ray scanner, and step through the metal detector. Meanwhile, the member is very politely standing on the other side of the checkpoint waiting for me, just carrying on a normal conversation, and I was ridiculously embarrassed. (I later learned that the proper thing to do is leave everything in your office except your ID — thank goodness this was in the days before you had to x-ray your shoes…)
The Members are highly isolated from everyone — the staff saw him maybe 3 days a week. The rest of the time he was in the district or going to meetings that we couldn’t follow. Not even the Chief of Staff or his Personal Secretary accompanied him all the time.
Isolation, power — when the Member does interact with their senior advisers and staff, even the slightest wish is a command. The amazing thing is how few of them develop god-complexes. It is very hard to find a person who can tell the Member “no.” And then, comes the hard work. Days of long nights wrangling votes, long and exhausting hours going from meeting to floor to meeting to floor, short of sleep, when you do sleep you do it in your office, surrounded by people who are dedicated to the cause. And then, late at night on the last day, at the last minute of the last hour, the bill passes, and all that work pays off. The only people who truly understand everything are standing there, in that room.
When the vote came in, and we’d finally passed the major bill for the summer session, my immediate boss grabbed me and a woman in the office, and we climbed out on the roof of the House, and he smoked a cigar, and we dangled our legs over the Capitol Steps and looked in awe at the Washington Monument. This involved us wiggling through a window in the secure records room between the interior and exterior domes of the building. In a suit. For those of you who know me, this is fairly out of character.
And an isolated member, with extreme power and a god-complex, surrounded by people who rarely interact with him, can never say no to him, structure their lives around his convenience…
Look, all I’m saying is that campaigns are known to end with the volunteers engaging in unwise victory-or-consolation hookups, and they don’t have that kind of pressure on them.
So, yeah — lots of women, in that moment, want to have sex with the Member. At that moment, some of the guys may well want to, also. And everyone working there understands how this happens. And only a great fool, or a very well educated ignoramus, doesn’t think putting up guards for everyone’s protection is a good idea.
But of course, we are, in fact, governed by fools and well educated ignoramuses. And so the freakout enters into the second week.
Published in General
Thank you for your OP, Sabrdance. I hadn’t thought of the temptations in that way, and how even modest men may be overcome by the trappings of power. It puts the burden of responsibility to make sure they are behaving properly on them, because there are too many people (especially foolish women) blinded by the stars and medals. I can understand the attraction, but I tend to let my personal values keep me focused. I think Mike Pence is wise to act as he did, although he might have been better off keeping his commitment to himself. It’s going to be a long four years.
Why, for pity’s sake? It is a reasonable commitment. Do we stay silent for fear of giving SJWs a handle? If we do, we give in to their whims. Note too, this interview was in 2002. This was assumed reasonable back then. How do we guess what will be politically incorrect in fifteen years?
A better approach seems to me to push back with a quick “What’s your problem? Get up grumpy this morning? Or did you miss your vinegar ration today?
I think the country has had enough of tip-toeing around the hypersensitivities of people determined to take offense at the slightest excuse.
Seawriter
I completely agree with your description here. Aside from the optics for someone who wants to be meddlesome expanding “alone time” with the VP to a scandal (am i remembering such accusations made against Cain in regard to a lobbyist that he spent time with??) …. even persons who support the VP, but who are warped by the closeness to power, can cause major problems. I have seen this “power dynamic” play out with small town football coaches (hey…that IS power in a small southern town) to local judges etc. I can only imagine what it is like a heartbeat away from the presidency. I am fully supportive of VP Pence and his wife’s personal commitments. As Obi Wan said in episode IV, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villiany…than in DC. I appreciate the efforts the Pences are making personally to avoid a time wasting and distracting scandal.
-DP
You’re right, Seawriter. I guess it’s a shame to give the reaction any response.
Great post, Sabredance, especially about the distorting effect that power has on the behavior of people around you, and the way that (fake? Not quite…) feedback acts on your sense of self. Without a really solid grounding—family and faith, basically—it would be hard not to begin to believe that you really are something special. And since believing in your own specialness is just another term for supreme self-confidence, I’d imagine there’s a feedback loop in which self-confidence=success=power=attractiveness=self-confidence=success… etc. etc.
One addition: by the time you’ve become the vice-President, lots of people are deriving their power from their proximity to you. This gives them a vested interest in protecting you from the negative consequences of your bad behavior. This is how one can explain Bill… but also Hillary.
Good for you @Seawriter. I have refused to pander to the whiners for decades. I’m NEVER cruel, but I tell it like it is. After a while people realize I can take it as much as I can deal it and everybody is freed up to take care of business.
The whole Pence thing reminds me of a great scene from Eight Men Out…
“You don’t have to apologize for being honest.”
In DC, rectitude isn’t a virtue. It’s almost a character flaw.
Being an unusually good liar and a successful cheat are markers of distinction.
In the flowering of my youth I and some dozen other young lieutenants were told that we were to don our mess dress uniforms and be escorts for the young ladies competing in the “Miss Citrus Heights Pageant.” Off we went to do our duty, scoffing but with secret hopes of encountering admiring beauties. Upon arrival, the fussy woman in charge looked us over and sent me and one other reject to go sit out the festivities in a corridor. I hadn’t made the cut you see, and that was when I was at my best.
Some 25 years later my flower was well to wilted, but I was a new colonel and in that little bubble of an air base I was astonished at how my charm and wit seemed to have suddenly blossomed to such positive effects. Although mama didn’t raise no fool, the deception may have worked had that old bird in Citrus Heights not set me straight early on.
All true, not exposing yourself to temptation is a good policy. There is probably another factor in making that policy.
While I’m sure his wife trusts him, he wouldn’t want to give her any unnecessary reason to test that trust. It’s part of how he expresses his love for her even if she has absolute confidence he would never stray.
Other than level of crudeness, I fail to see any difference between this Post and what civilian Donald Trump said on the now infamous audio tape that was made of him. Trump was talking about how there are certain types of women who throw themselves at men with power. It doesn’t matter if it is wealthy men, Military officers, Members of Congress, Rock Stars, Sports figures. Dorky little Tiger Woods was getting all he could handle every night and he had his choice each night. Ugly Gene Simmons – thousands of women. Ditto Wilt Chamberlain. Read about what 65-year-old fart Wilbur Mills did. I could sit here and list men all night, and with a little research, could probably come up with a good list of women, too.
I thank you, Sabrdance, for a clear picture from the inside. We all sit here on the outside criticizing, yet we have no idea, and will never understand, how the sausage is made inside the walls of power. Just today I sent a Tweet to someone up there asking them what the heck they were doing Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday that was so important that they had to put the Gorsuch vote off to Friday.
I can imagine that there is a ton of sausage-making going on between now and Friday. Thanks again.
Wonderful and honest post. The freak out over Pence being protective of his marriage has been one of the strangest and stupid things that have come down the pike in a long while.
Interesting and informative – thank you good sir.
They may not be gods but they sure as heck are treated like super-beings of some sort. I was posted to a Mil
itaryGroup and a Congressman wanted to take a look at the program that I was working. Obviously, I was assigned to be his escort, tour guide, event planner, translator, valet, butler, redcap, bodyguard, slave, pretty much everything except his concubine in a French maid’s outfit (more on that later).So I am told to go the the Embassy’s cashier and pick up his per diem (in cash of course) and hand it over to His Royalness at the airport where I go to meet him. I’m counting the per diem and it is A LOT more than it should have been. I’ trying to sort this out because I’ve signed for it and “the little people” in the military end up in jail or worse for anything involving the mishandling of money. After some length and a bunch of “I dunnos,” I discover what must be a well guarded secret; and that secret is that Congressman get per diem plus when they travel. I forget how much the plus up was but my guess is around 100 bucks per day extra. Apparently they need this extra cash to offset their added expenses of wining, dining, and gifting Embassy VIPs and foreign dignitaries.
continued
Funny thing, I don’t think my Congressman spent a penny during the entire visit because wherever he went everyone else was brown nosing him like there was no tomorrow. Don’t think that I ever saw him pull out his wallet. No wonder our public servants love to go on CoDels so much!
Billy Graham has the same rule, and won’t even be in a car alone with a woman not of his family.
This is a hugely important observation you’ve made, Kate.
The decision to do this was wise on graham’s part. Even if his being alone with another woman was completely innocent, he was aware that appearances matter, and how truth can be distorted. And – he is a man, and certainly aware of his own temptations.
A dear friend of mine served as a youth pastor when he was a young man. He always left his office door open for any meeting involving a woman or any of his teen-aged female students. And he always made sure his own secretary/assistant was as old as his own mother. A lot of churches have seen their pastoral leaders fall from grace because they weren’t so wise as my friend was.
I was going through the comments after reading the OP and about 2 comments before this I was thinking exactly this.
And the post itself is great.
I’m pretty sure this is why some people like to impose ObamaCare on people and force their will on the Little Sisters of the Poor. There can be an erotic stimulation that comes from wielding power over other people. I am not familiar with the scientific literature on the topic, and don’t even know whether there is any scientific literature on the topic. But examples get mentioned here and there in historical anecdotes.
I agree. You are alone at dinner with a woman talking about her issues and she says “What?” So you lean in a little closer and speak more clearly. At that moment the photographer takes the picture from outside the window.
The next day, the picture is on the front page of the New York Times.
I think Mike Pence’s statement proved he is a very smart man. I think the Leftists know this too, but when have they ever cared about the repercussions of skewing a story?
And this was exactly why I never made a big deal about Trump’s comments -and why I said the people who swore up and down that they’d never seen such behavior must be in very rarified locker rooms. And much the same reason Pence doesn’t go to dinner with women not his wife is why I try to stay out of the locker room. But I’m fully aware they exist. As for our cousins on the left, I still can’t decide whether it is more likely that they are just completely unaware of the way the world works, or instead viciously dishonest. Or just embrace the healing power of “and.” Call it maliciously dishonest.
Oh, also -that Pence has the sense to set these limits speaks volumes of his character. Trump’s indulgence, not so much. But this isn’t shocking to anyone who is honestly paying attention.
I wonder if any women find themselves in the position of the men. Do you think there are any powerful women who worry about people talking if they are meeting alone with men?
I have nothing to add. Well said.
There is actually agreement with Kissinger’s statement from liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who said feminists criticized her for noting “If a man has money or power it is an aphrodisiac to women, but if a woman has money or power it is lethal in the bedroom.”
I never drink without my wife. And I would never dream of going out for a private dinner with a woman who is not my wife. Which makes me sensible.
The latter.
I mentioned in a comment on another post: discipline up front. If you go to a one-on-one dinner that is splendiforous, and consume three bottles of wine, anything could happen (my social setting in the other comment was a little more earthy). So, don’t go out with a woman not your wife; if you do, ensure you have sane(r) and sober(er) wingmen to keep you from making bad decisions. Anyone–male or female–who protests, “oh, I’d never fall to that temptation” doesn’t understand human nature and is courting disaster.
Also, to reinforce Sabrdance’s point, I have dozens of old volumes of the ubiquitous Army hardback green notebook. The last pages of which I always saved for tick marks on the number of times during a briefing to a GO/FO, I’d hear the exact phrase, “Yes, sir, you’re absolutely right.” Pages and pages of tick marks, starting from the back and working forward. Even the SAMS Jedi Knight ringer, brought in to specifically dissuade a General from adopting a faulty course of action, would start off his presentation–after the GO’s stated intent to follow the flawed COA–with “yes, sir, you’re absolutely right, but…”
Going to every meeting, audience, and planning session and hearing “yes, sir, you’re absolutely right” has to generate an effect after a while.
Best recent example of a male with zero(or possibly negative) physical sex appeal using his position of power to actually persuade/(pay… through a no show job ..which actually starts to make a little more sense) sexually appealing women to engage in with sex with him.
Sexiest Man Alive = Roger Ailes