Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant

Charles Krauthammer, psychiatrist and political columnist, analyzes a bizarre article written by Michelle Cottle, "Heart of Darkness."

Appearing in the revamped New Republic, she attempts to answer the burning question, "What is wrong with Dick Cheney?"

Krauthammer does a great job of dissecting Cottle's theory and exposing her idiocy. He depicts her goofy premise as being so far over the edge that one can only respond with laughter. The problem is the woman is serious. She argues that Cheney's heart disease has "left him demented and mentally disordered," and she means it.

Krauthammer writes:

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 Cottle 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 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.

...[A]s a former chief resident of the psychiatric consultation service at Massachusetts General Hospital -- my house staff and I were called in to diagnose and treat medical inpatients (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.... 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.

Cottle wants to blame Cheney's history of heart problems for what she considers to be his current state of mental illness.

How crazy is that?

Don't hate Cheney. He's not evil. He's sick.

I suppose you have to give Cottle a little bit of credit for making a case that Cheney shouldn't be demonized by the Left for behavior rooted in a physical condition. Because Cheney is sick, she believes he deserves to be cut at least some slack by her comrades; but good grief, Cottle comes off as the utterly unstable one.

As Krauthammer points out, the underlying assumption is that Cheney's behavior is certifiably nuts. Her starting point is that the Vice President is mentally ill.

Cottle doesn't discuss the legitimacy of differing political opinions between liberals and conservatives. She doesn't even consider the possibility that anyone in their right mind could share Dick Cheney's views.

If Cheney thinks the way he does because of his heart issues, how does Cottle account for the millions of Americans who agree with him on political matters?

Are they all suffering from dementia, too?

It's beyond silly.

It's funny, but also scary, to think that there are libs capable of actually buying into such a lamebrained theory.