Assholes (6 page)

We have so far examined people who seem to act from a deep feature of their personalities, quite aside from their particular social station or role. Perhaps more common, however, are cases in which assholery is socially induced, or at least exposed, because the person is placed in a position of power.

The statement “My boss is
such
an asshole” has become something of a cliché. All too often it has an element of truth. For many people, a position of power becomes a standing license for privileges that do not necessarily come with the job—things such as barking orders when a polite request will do, routinely being late for staff meetings because of supposedly more pressing business, knowing that being the boss means never having to say “I’m sorry,” regularly reminding all who is in power, and so on. When questions arise, the asshole boss has a ready answer, his all-purpose entitlement afforded by his instituted role: “Tough. I am the boss.” But the asshole boss needn’t be boorish or overtly abusive. There are of course famous examples of bosses who are, such as supermodel Naomi Campbell, who assaulted her housekeeper with a cell phone, or General George Patton, who slapped a wounded soldier while touring a war hospital (apparently to get him to shape up). More familiar nowadays, from film and TV, is the boss whose misguided sense of superiority taints routine dealings in the workplace, as with the condescension of Bill Lumbergh in the comedy
Office Space
, or with David Brent’s excruciating insensitivity to his employees’ feelings in the British
TV comedy
The Office
, or with the obnoxiousness and gross self-absorption of Michael Scott in the American version.

If roles can induce bad behavior, it makes sense that the minor tyrants of the workplace pale by comparison to the tyrant kings of old. Yet a true tyrant is immeasurably worse than an asshole, and in many cases the concept of an asshole will not apply. A king, after all,
has
a standing institutional entitlement to do as he pleases: he’s the king. The grotesque manipulative villainy of, say, Shakespeare’s Richard III is closer to what we now call a psychopath than to the proper asshole.

Henry VIII, king of England, does, however, seem to qualify. He broke from the pope in Rome and appointed himself head of the English Church for the worthy cause of divorcing his wife, Catherine (or, as British nationalists now put it, for “putting England first”). Despite strict conventional limits on divorce and remarriage, he managed to marry six women, divorcing two and putting two to death (with his third wife dying in childbirth). Henry was not, however, a pure tyrant; he always avoided summary-style edicts and at least gave executions a pretext of legality. He was genuinely concerned for procedure, which is precisely why he doggedly sought to have his divorce from Catherine publicly endorsed by his loyal chancellor, Sir Thomas More. More, an honest and devout Catholic, famously would not play ball. And although Henry would eventually arrange More’s execution on perjured charges of high treason, this was a last-ditch measure taken only after he persistently tried to bring More around. As Robert Bolt’s
A Man for All Seasons
portrays Henry’s plea to More, Henry the king is reduced to a mad asshole,
abruptly alternating between respectful appeals to friendship and towering rage. In one moment he thunders at the top of his lungs, “They that say she is my wife are not only liars, but traitors! Yes, traitors! That I will not brook. Treachery! It maddens me! It is a deadly canker in the body politic, and I will have it out!” A moment later he gently comments, “See? You see how you’ve maddened me. I hardly know myself.” Henry senses the sovereignty of another man’s conscience and mind and so to some extent appreciates the boundaries of respectful entreaty. He then flies through those boundaries—only to again feel their force as something beyond his powers. Henry was accustomed to getting what he wanted and felt he had every right to bully More into changing his mind. But he also respected More and wanted an honest change of mind, something even a king cannot summon by his mere command. Henry seems less like a pure tyrant and more like an asshole to the extent he at once transgresses and pays respects to a higher moral law.
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If the asshole king is something of a limiting case, the asshole boss of the workplace stands at the other end of a spectrum: his role is often fairly well defined. Between these poles stand most heads of state. We do not any longer accord unchecked power to our leaders. Yet there remains considerable latitude for interpretation
of what high office puts within one’s rightful power. The presidential asshole goes beyond what is, morally speaking, within his rights.

A glaring example is the outrageous speechifying regularly delivered before the United Nations by presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. To the chagrin of the diplomats who regularly leave the General Assembly meeting room in protest, as well as many of the citizens whom Chavez or Ahmadinejad speaks in the name of, this is strictly consistent with General Assembly rules that allocate speaking time; they do, alas, have the right to speak. But rights can be held and exercised in different ways, and the right to speak does not entitle one to flagrantly violate diplomatic protocol and norms of courtesy. Chavez and Ahmadinejad are presidential assholes because they manufacture bad reasons (e.g., their oppression by Western powers) as to why they are entitled to set those obligations aside.

Which is not to say true leadership won’t sometimes require pushing conventional boundaries. Winston Churchill had the huge ego of a man who does large things, as, for example, when he led England into a disastrous battle at Gallipoli with defiant incompetence. He later successfully rallied Britain in a brave and risky stand against the Third Reich, and not by being a gentle man. He is known for his rude quips (for instance: Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.” Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober”). He was sometimes unprincipled (he changed parties for opportunistic reasons). And he was exceedingly demanding with his staff, always putting his own needs first. Yet he also had a tremendous sense of humor and a soft side. He wept publicly when he toured the cities bombed during the war. And he inspired loyalty and affection
in almost everyone who worked for him. Churchill was boorish, but he was not quite an asshole.

American president George W. Bush was also bold, and even bolder in breaking established rules. He arguably rejected international law in the matter of prisoners of war, and he dramatically shifted the delicate balance of governmental powers toward the executive branch. Is Bush akin to Churchill? History, so far, has not been so kind. Yet Bush, the man himself, probably is not an asshole.
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There is an element of truth in the cliché that he’s a regular guy, the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with. While he is perhaps insensitive, and some would say dull (mistakenly, I would say), he is not immunized against the complaints of others; he’d hear them out over that beer. Insofar as the charge of assholism applies to the Bush administration, it is because of serious assholes such as his vice president, Dick Cheney, who often ignored Bush and simply did as he pleased. (We will return to Cheney momentarily.)

If Bush was willing to take huge risks and boldly cross bright lines, the unavoidable contrast is President Barack Obama, who has been cautious by comparison, even tame. The man is not an asshole, and indeed something of an antiasshole. For many progressives, this is a problem, as we can see from their objections: he pulls back in using the powers he clearly has;
he fails to respond to the opposition, allowing it to define the debate; he is too eager to listen, to understand, so as not to offend, to the point of being dragged away from his convictions by people stubborn in theirs; he makes preemptive concessions in approaching the bargaining table and then further concessions down the line; he favors compromised policies that absorb everyone’s concerns and do much less good than they could. In short, progressives wish Obama could behave a lot more like an asshole.
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Yet it is not clear—at least not as yet (campaign season aside)—that Obama is willing, or even able, to do that. He just may not be that kind of guy.
²¹

We might say, in short, that progressives wish Obama would be more like presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. As much as or more than anyone, Gingrich created the United States’ polarized political climate. As Speaker of the House, he ordered Republican lawmakers to stay home much of the week in order to avoid forming bipartisan relationships and a sense of common cause with Democrats, and he championed the strategy of seeking to dominate Democrats even at the expense of things both parties agree about. These are asshole moves—things an asshole would do—to the extent we think legislators are obligated to address common problems, especially where they can
agree, in which case they are not entitled to put politics first and last. Many will disagree with that moral assessment and so take a more favorable view of Gingrich’s political tactics, and indeed the use of certain tactics alone would not make Gingrich, the man, an asshole per se. Even his having an affair while his wife was in the hospital with cancer (or any of his several other affairs, in other marriages) wouldn’t
necessarily
put him in the asshole camp; he could just lack self-control. Likewise with his rude comment, about that same wife, that “she isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the president’s wife. And besides, she has cancer”; he may simply be petty, tactless, and rude. He is an asshole, however, if he does such things out of a misguided sense that he has encompassing rights to them. Or as he puts it, in his own words: “I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.”
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Still, in general, what we ultimately make of a head of state has less to do with his or her personal dispositions than with the justifiability of what he or she is trying to do. We do in fact give leaders wide latitude when, but only when, we feel clearly they are acting from a credible vision of the greater good. Where we differ over whether the vision is credible or good and how far one should go in its name, we naturally differ over who is and who is not an asshole.

Except, of course, when it is abundantly clear that there is no such sense of greater cause. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is therefore our paradigmatic asshole of public life, and for good reason: the Italian public good was never at the top of his concerns. Showing that it is not at the top of his concerns is one of his top concerns (he called himself a “part-time prime minister”). We for years heard lurid tales of parties and underage prostitutes; of embezzlement, fraud, and judges bribed; of laws passed to protect him from prosecution and promote his business ventures, usually followed by a Berlusconi charm offensive. Berlusconi was not ashamed and clearly felt entitled to all of this, despite the fact that many Italians reviled him and felt deeply ashamed of the spectacle. It is not that rationalizations are offered but they are flimsy ones; no attempt at rationalization is even made. That seems to be Berlusconi’s point: he pillages Italian public life for private gain, out in the open, not because it is right but because he can.

Berlusconi’s best line of defense is to spread blame. How did he survive for so long? Aside from having loyal deputies, the answer, it seems, is that enough of the Italian public supported him, let him get away with it, and even encouraged him to go on. All he did, one might add, is to masterfully follow a long tradition of rule Italian style, as received from Mussolini’s bombastic fascism; from the Machiavellian, Mafia-connected machinations of seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti (also known as “Beelzebub”); and from Massimiliano Cencelli’s carefully crafted “manual” for dividing up political spoils. Berlusconi might thus lay solemn claim to have inherited rightful fascist dictatorial powers and then ask, with a flashing smile: Is it not good to be the king? The trouble with this argument is that Italy is now a democracy, which itself makes Berlusconi not
royalty but corrupt.
²³
His royalty is at most the royalty enjoyed by assholes of a special royal kind.
²⁴

Although the argument from culture won’t help Berlusconi, it nevertheless does contain a general insight: the asshole in power is
shaped
by his position and its culture as much as he shapes it. Much as with our ordinary asshole boss, assholes may wind up in power, not simply because assholes are especially prone to seek it out but because the position induces a creeping sense of entitlement in those who come to occupy the role. It is said that power corrupts. We may add that it brings out the inner asshole, by deadening one’s capacities of empathy and understanding, telling one there is no need to listen, and beckoning one into egocentricism and easy rationalization of ever-widening privileges. The asshole boss simply settles into a firm sense that “I’m the boss,” which gradually becomes a firm sense that “I’m the man” in traffic, at the post office, and at his child’s soccer game.
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We should therefore be skeptical of journalist Jon Ronson’s striking claim that psychopaths are rare in society but relatively common in the corporate boardroom.
²⁶
More likely, the boardroom is flush with assholes. Corporate culture spawns them.

A boardroom asshole is not to be confused with the quite welcome “shit” or SOB (“shits on boards”), who goes for the decisive objection, who can’t hide a strong opinion, and who might have just hurt someone’s feelings but, all told, helps the group meet its goals.
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And we should admit that there probably are a few corporate psychopaths, such as “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, who relished mass layoffs and the rewards heaped upon him by investors, seemingly with no concern for the resulting human toll and perhaps with delight in the exercise of power. The mark of the psychopath, as we will understand him, is to have forsworn, or perhaps never fully acquired, the use of moral concepts (perhaps because of childhood abuse).
²⁸
The psychopath merely
feigns
moral action, usually to create the trust needed to effectively manipulate others. The asshole, by contrast, traffics
in and is moved by moral justification—except that moral justification, for him, leads to an entrenched sense of special entitlement. He gets upset precisely because he feels entitled to special advantage, especially, he’ll say, in light of the good he does. Thus Steve Jobs’s knowledge of how much people love his gadgets could potentially explain why he felt entitled to park in handicapped spaces, skimp on philanthropic giving,
²⁹
and intentionally hurt his associates. As Jobs’s best friend, Jony Ive, explains, “when he’s very frustrated … his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him.”
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