SACRAMENTO, CA -- President Clinton has announced that he wants to expand treatment for the mentally ill. Looking back at a career of tabloid fodder interspersed with modest accomplishments, perhaps he has abandoned hope that those of sound mind will give him a glowing review in the history books. Maybe he thinks that someone slightly unhinged but grateful for free tranquilizers will now be up to the task. Certainly the move has more to do with politics than health, and it unfolded in classic beltway style.

The President confirms an ironclad Washington rule: the longer they stay in office, the more politicians of all
parties are inclined to expand the numbers of those needing government largesse. The medical model of human behavior, which dominates our ruling class, plays into that dynamic.

This view rejects the concept of right and wrong, in which people are independent agents with a free will
and able to make moral decisions. Instead the medical model offers a concept of illness and health in which
people are helpless to control themselves. For example, reformed cocaine addicts do not choose to start
indulging again. Rather, they get sick and "suffer a relapse." All sorts of ghastly crimes are attributed to
mysterious mental illnesses and syndromes that come over people at any time and relieve them of
responsibility for their actions.

In the beau ideal of the medical model, society is a vast mental ward in which all citizens suffer some degree of mental or emotional illness, with the whole operation presided over by wise, highly-paid mental-health professionals, many of them employed by the state. The President, who wants to force insurers to cover mental illness, knows that government jobs and favors are at stake here. Big government advocates love ideas that create ever more victims.

In its coverage, National Public Radio confirmed that government-run media tend to become public-relations
agencies for government policies. "It’s about time" was the unspoken subtext of NPR’s worshipful segment, which cited horror stories and ignored any contrary opinion on mental-health parity. But there was also a
tactically political side to it.

NPR mentioned Senator Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern’s 1972 running mate until it was revealed that
Eagleton had spent time in a mental institution during the 1960s. The peace-loving, compassionate McGovern
promptly dropped him for Sergeant Shriver but lost anyway to Richard Nixon. Now it emerges that Tipper
Gore, wife of Al Gore, received treatment for mental illness during the early 90s.

Being married to an ambitious man who claims to have invented the internet and writes environmental
pornography surely has its stressful times. Tipper wouldn’t discuss the details but used NPR to pronounce
herself happy and cured. So let’s be done with that right now. We wouldn’t want it to create problems
during a presidential campaign, would we?

NPR neglected to mention that during the late 1980s, prior to her bout of mental illness, Mrs. Gore led a
group of Washington wives in a crusade against music lyrics she regarded as obscene. Senator John Danforth
even held hearings, with Frank Zappa and Twisted Sister testifying. C-SPAN ran it live, without the statist
advertising typical of NPR. Now that was one crazy show.

-- K. Lloyd Billingsley