Category: Areas of Research

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Bush, Clinton, and the politics of sleep deprivation

Bush, Clinton, and the politics of sleep deprivation

Falling asleep involves a very real return to nature, a surrender of conscious control to the innate needs of the biological organism that is our body.  Sleeping is a time when our animal heritage is most apparent, when the basic instincts of self-maintenance and preservation take over.  A good night’s sleep helps replenish our physical, emotional, and intellectual energies in preparation for the challenges of each coming day.   

My research suggests that conservatives tend to sleep better than liberals.  More evidence is needed to substantiate this idea, but I think it makes good sense. Conservatives are more likely to value the qualities of control, personal power, and safety from outside forces.  A sound, steady, restful sleep is consistent with that kind of outlook on life.  Liberals, on the other hand, are more oriented towards openness and empathy for others, and as a result they’re more vulnerable to external disruptions and loss of personal control.  Those ideals appear to be correlated with the variable quality of their sleep. 

Our last two Presidents play out this pattern in almost comic-book form.  Throughout his two terms in office, Bill Clinton was well-known for his restless intelligence, late-night conversational manias, and blatant disregard for other people’s normal patterns of waking and sleeping.  He was, by his own admission, a functional insomniac. George W. Bush, meanwhile, has always let it be known that he’s an early-to-bed kind of guy.  Right after his 2000 election he said this would be his first historical goal: “I’m trying to set the record as the President who got to bed earliest on Inauguration Day.”  In a 2006 interview with People magazine he said that despite the stressful responsibilities of his job, he actually sleeps quite soundly: “I must tell you, I’m sleeping much better than people would assume.”  He let on that he occasionally takes sleep aids when traveling and drinks a couple of cups of coffee each morning, but other than that he’s a clean living person in both waking and sleeping: “I don’t drink alcohol.  I can remember when I used to drink, I had trouble sleeping at night.”[i] 

Pundits on both sides of the ideological divide have interpreted these sleep differences as meaningful signs of each President’s deeper nature.  Many liberals were excited by Clinton’s boundless energy, and they’re horrified by the oblivious tranquility of Bush’s sleep (fumed one internet commentator: “So he has no trouble sleeping, huh? Well, that’s just freaking wonderful.  Because of him, nearly 3000 American service members are sleeping soundly, too.  But they won’t get to wake up the next day.”[ii]).  In contrast, conservatives regarded the nocturnal hyperactivity of Clinton as a symptom of his broader lack of personal discipline, and they praise Bush for his healthy-minded good sense (Steve Chapman wrote in the National Review, “conservatives can take his devotion to sleep as a good omen.  Respecting his body’s own basic requirements suggests an appreciation of human limits that is the beginning of wisdom about governance.”[iii]).  Both interpretations are correct in identifying the connection between sleep patterns and political sensibilities.  Where they differ is in the valuation of a sound sleep.  Liberals see Bush’s excessive fondness for sleep as a sign of being morally obtuse, and conservatives regard Clinton’s erratic sleep as indicating an unstable character.   

Actually, Clinton himself has admitted to the governmental problems caused by poor sleep habits.  In a remarkable aside during a question-and-answer session that followed a 2002 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, the former President said the following:

“But one of the reasons Washington is so…you’re going to all laugh when I say this, and you’re going to think, ‘He’s like everybody else.  You know, when they get out of office they get a little dotty and a little crazy.’  But I’m telling you, one of the reasons that there is often such an acrimonious atmosphere in Washington, is that too many members of the Congress in both parties are sleep deprived.  And you just think about it….  I’m telling you that the main reason you ought to be for some kind of meaningful campaign reform is that half the people in Congress are physically exhausted all the time from trying to make their votes, learn about the issues, come home on the weekend, and spend all their time raising money.  And it clouds your judgment, and it undermines your ability to be relaxed and respectful in dealing with your adversaries.  Now, every one of you, if you’ve ever been really tired a long time—you know, I spent 30 years sleep-deprived and I got used to it—but I’m serious, you have no idea how much more physically difficult it is to be a member of Congress now than it was before you had to raise this kind of money.  And you ought to take a burden off their back and keep working until we get real campaign finance reform, so you can have people who are thinking, who have time to think about these issues and study them, and who believe they will have the opportunity to argue their position to their constituents, so they don’t have to take the most extreme possible position because that’s what it takes to get the money, and they’re not so exhausted from chasing around after the money, that they never get a decent night’s sleep.  Now, you can laugh about that, but I’m telling you, if you had all the members of Congress here and they were being honest with you, they’d tell you that I just told you one of the most important reasons that you could ever be for this.”[iv]

Whatever you think of his pitch for campaign finance reform, Clinton is offering an intriguing signal of liberal willingness to value sleep as a necessity for healthy political functioning.  He speaks of sleep deprivation as an open secret in Washington life, a problem that everyone recognizes and suffers yet feels helpless to change. Why shouldn’t conservatives agree with him?  After all, their hero Ronald Reagan was famously (though perhaps not accurately; link to conversation with Martin Anderson) insistent on having the opportunity to enjoy an afternoon nap each day. 

Looking beyond Washington to the nation as a whole, much more attention should be paid to the fact that millions of Americans suffer problems with the length and quality of their sleep.  In terms of the basic requirements for human health, this is equivalent to saying that millions of Americans don’t have adequate food, water, or air.   Sleep is just as essential to our survival, yet it’s rarely recognized as such.  If we take seriously the strong scientific evidence that sleep is crucial to our mental and physical well-being, then we have to ask some difficult questions.  What is the collective damage caused by the sleep-depriving pressures of contemporary American life?  How many accidents, injuries, fights, mistakes, misunderstandings, and screw-ups are caused by people who are stumbling through the day in an exhausted, semi-conscious fog?  Of all our basic physical needs, why is sleep the one we seem most willing to sacrifice, the one we regularly disrupt and deny in favor of other interests?  Do we really want a future where we’ll have to take a pill to stay awake and another one to go to sleep?  We’re in danger of becoming a society of sleep anorexics, fooling ourselves into thinking it’s perfectly normal to starve our body of what it needs, pretending that no one else notices the harmful, emaciating effects.

I see no reason why conservatives and liberals shouldn’t agree that improving sleep hygiene should be a public health priority.  Any number of easy, low-cost measures (e.g., early education about sleep and health, more flexible employment and school schedules, stronger noise ordinances, work-place nap rooms, etc.) could produce rapid and tangible benefits in people’s well-being. The problems caused by sleeplessness involve more than just higher frequencies of accidents, injuries, and illnesses.  I’d go further and say that inadequate sleep represents a subtle but genuine threat to our psychological ability to function as responsible citizens in a democracy.  Our form of government depends on—was created in the name of—free-thinking individuals capable of making their own decisions about their lives.  A political system like ours presupposes a high degree of maturity, self-awareness, and wisdom on the part of the citizens, and we risk weakening those vital qualities when we deny our biological need for long, steady, restful sleep.



 

[i]  Reported by ABC News, December 14, 2006.
[ii]  Email commentary to the ABC News report of December 14, 2006.
[iii] Steve Chapman, “Sweet Dreams, W.: A little presidential pillow talk – George W. Bush’s love for good night’s sleep,” National Review, February 19, 2001.
[iv] Speech given January 29, 2002.
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American Dreamers: Let’s Focus on the Focus Group

Here is some information about the dreamers who made up the focus group for the research in my book American Dreamers.

The 10 members of the “dreamers focus group”

Elizabeth is a fifty-eight year old hospital technician from Kentucky who has overcome the challenges posed by two divorces, several alcoholic family members, breast cancer and chemotherapy, and a number of other serious medical conditions requiring surgery.  She considers herself a “survivor.”  For many years she has been energetically involved in the activities of her local Disciples of Christ Church community.  Elizabeth’s a registered Democrat who says she’s very liberal in her political beliefs, although she favors more freedom for gun owners and voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Kip is a fifty-two year old ranch manager and horse trainer from Northern California.  Twenty years ago she took her seventeen-month old baby and left her second husband to form a new family with her partner Janet, a local sheriff.  They’ve been together ever since, and Kip’s daughter just graduated from college.  Raised in a strict Catholic family, Kip is now very independent spiritually and laughingly considers herself a member of the “church of the living hoof.”  She’s a Democratic voter who detests President Bush, although in general she’s not much interested in partisan politics.  Her views used to be more liberal, but today she says she’s “hardened up a bit,” and if anything considers herself a political moderate.

Two married couples are included in the group of ten participants.  The first of these couples went through an incredibly harrowing series of life challenges during the year of their journal-keeping.  Dan is a thirty-six year old Army Special Forces sergeant, a career soldier approaching the twenty-year retirement mark.  He left for his third tour in Iraq during the journal-keeping year.  Raised Catholic, he is politically conservative and believes the U.S. is engaged in a difficult but necessary long-term battle to “plant the seeds of democracy” in the Arab world.

Dan has been married for five years to Sophia, a thirty-one year old who takes care of their preschool-age daughter in their home on the outskirts of Dan’s current base in North Carolina.  Sophia has always been an active dreamer, and in her local community she’s known as someone who’s available to talk about dreams.  She’s politically conservative and supportive of President Bush, but spiritually progressive in avoiding fundamentalist church-goers and seeking alternative, non-Christian sources of wisdom.  Soon after she began keeping her sleep and dream journal, and right after Dan received his latest deployment notice, Sophia discovered she was pregnant.  Her journal thus became a record of her sleep and dream experiences across the nine-month term of her pregnancy, the last half of which she spent alone while Dan fought in Iraq.

The remaining six members of this group are, or have been, residents of the same rural, economically-depressed county in Western New York.  Richard is a forty-eight year old hospital security manager who was born in Germany and immigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was one year old.  His views tend to be conservative both religiously and politically (he’s pro-Bush and pro-Iraq war).  He used to be registered as a Democrat but recently changed his affiliation to Republican.  Relatively short of stature, Richard has a black belt in karate and is the founder of a successful, all-volunteer animal rehabilitation clinic in his community.

Grace, a forty-six year old preschool teacher, is Richard’s wife.  She says she’s becoming increasingly conservative in her politics, and for the most part she supports President Bush, although she usually tries to pay as little attention to political current events as possible.  Raised as a Catholic, she is now more interested in Christian spirituality outside of formal church settings.  She and Richard have a nine-year old daughter whom they adopted as a baby, and whose well-being is the core concern of their lives.

Will is a twenty-six year old man who grew up in a town close to where Richard and Grace live.  He’s well educated, highly intelligent, and knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects.  He’s had difficulty in school and work, though, due in part to a hand deformity and a history of emotional troubles.  Will is politically liberal and an avowed atheist—two qualities that further alienate him from the traditionalist mores of his conservative Catholic surroundings.

Paul is an eighty year old former Catholic priest who left his Franciscan order to marry an ex-nun.  They raised four children, then divorced; he remains on good terms with her, even though she remarried soon after they split.  Paul considers himself wiser now about religion than when he was a priest, and he leads a physically and socially active life.  A pro-Bush, pro-war Democrat, he is an avid viewer of Fox television news.

Lola is a 49-year old administrator at a retirement home.  Her life was scarred by a heart-rending tragedy ten years ago—in the heat of a family argument, one of her sons shot and killed her other son.  They were fourteen and eleven years old at the time.  The echoes of that awful fratricide continue to reverberate in her family, in her local community, and in her dreams.  Lola was raised Lutheran, though she does not currently attend church.  She prays regularly and considers spirituality to be immensely important in her life.  Politically she’s a conservative Republican, though she’s sickened by the war (one of her nephews is in the Army, serving his first tour in Iraq) and she can’t bear to watch or listen to the news anymore.

Nadine is a 24-year old waitress living in Florida, engaged to be married and planning to move soon to Colorado.  Raised as a Catholic in the same Western New York region, Nadine recently moved away from home and is trying to start a new life on her own.  She hasn’t entirely rejected Catholicism, but she avoids organized religion in general, preferring to pursue her interests in Native American spiritual traditions. Her political views are mostly liberal (she worked for two years in Americorps, the youth volunteer program founded by Bill Clinton), although she is very upset that affirmative action policies limit the financial opportunities for “non-minority” people like her.

Dream series available for study

Five of the focus group dream series—those of Will, Paul, Grace, Lola, and Sophia—as well as collections of dreams of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are available for study at www.dreambank.net, along with dozens of other dream series gathered from other sources.  Instructions for performing easy word-search analyses of these dreams can be found by clicking the website’s “help” button.


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Is My Dream Research Biased? A Quick Look at Limitations and Suppositions

When I wrote my book, American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else,
I expected some resistance such as:

Dreams are crazy nonsense.

Response: Wrong.  Dreams are meaningful expressions of people’s most important concerns, activities, and beliefs in waking life.  Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t paid attention to the last half-century of dream research.  For scientific evidence in favor of the “continuity hypothesis” see www.dreamresearch.net

Dream interpretation is Freudian foolishness.

Response: I’m using methods very different from Freudian psychoanalysis.  I start with broad, easily observable patterns in large collections of dreams, and then focus on particular dreams that can further illuminate those patterns.

The author is a leftwing nut job.

Response: True, I live near Berkeley, California.  I have a pony-tail and an androgynous name, and I’m a strong Obama supporter.  So what?  My book still provides a “fair and balanced” account of the political psychology of liberals and conservatives, highlighting the character virtues and weaknesses of each perspective, using methods that anyone can try for themselves.  Take a look at the brief biographies of the 10 members of the “dreamers focus group” and you’ll see the political diversity of the dream material presented in the book.

Limitations to my findings

Limits to the sleep and dream poll:

My friends in the social sciences have pointed out the many uncertainties that bedevil the use of simple statistics like these in arguing for broad psychological theories.  I share their concerns, which were well expressed by de Tocqueville: “When statistical method is not based upon rigorously accurate calculations, it leads to error rather than to guidance.  The mind easily allows itself to be deluded by the deceptive appearance of precision which statistics retain even when wrong and it relies confidently upon mistakes apparently clothed in the forms of mathematical truth” (Democracy in America, 255).  I fully recognize the limits of these data, but I’ll stand by the rigor and accuracy of my calculations regarding the sleep and dream patterns of contemporary Americans until other researchers come up with something better.

Limits to the dreamers focus group:

Without question, the lives of ten people can never be a perfect mirror of a nation of three hundred million.  Any research project that’s based on data from journals, interviews, and surveys runs the danger of over-generalization.  Although I tried to cast as wide a recruiting net as possible, these ten dream-journaling volunteers included no Hispanics or African-Americans, no one from the Midwest or deep South, no high-income professionals, no evangelical Christians, no Jews or Muslims.  Any claims made in this book must be qualified by those limitations.  Still, these ten particular people’s lives embody so many of the challenges facing the country today that it’s fair to view them as representing other Americans with similar experiences and convictions.  We can’t learn everything from this group, but we can learn a lot.

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American Dreamers: How Sleep, Dreams, and Religion Intersect

Interested in the ways that sleep, dreams and religion intersect for American Dreamers?  Below are some of the data charts from my book American Dreamers.

Religious Attendance x Sleep

More than once a week Never
Sleep Less than 6 hours a night 11 18
6-8.9 hours a night 84 76
More than 9 hours a night 2 6
Insomnia Never 70 51
1-2 nights a week 13 19
3 or more nights a week 13 27

Religious Attendance x Dream Prototypes

More than once a week Never
A person who’s now dead appearing alive 29 41
Magically flying in the air 25 29
Being chased or attacked 33 45
Falling 40 44
Sexual experiences 34 50
Being in a situation exactly like your regular waking life 53 63
Being aware you’re dreaming and able to control the dream 37 47

Chapter 3 discusses these findings in relation to the religious and spiritual dimensions of the dreams of the journal keepers. For more on dreaming and religion generally, see Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History.

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Do Conservatives Sleep Better at Night than Liberals?

What do political ideology and sleeping habits have to do with each other?  Lots, as it turns out.  The data below is excerpted from my book American Dreamers.

Sleep and dream poll results: Political ideology

The sleep and dream poll was designed to balance a detailed analysis of the focus group members with a demographically broader and statistically meaningful source of evidence. I wanted to generate the kind of data frequently used in mainstream political analysis and correlate it with data on sleep and dream patterns. The poll was conducted on my behalf by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in August of 2007. A total of 705 American adults were contacted at home by means of random-digit dialing telephone calls. These people were demographically representative of the U.S. population in terms of age, gender, region, and political outlook. The margin of error for the overall statistical findings was plus or minus 3.7%, slightly higher for the smaller subgroups. The poll data provides two ways of looking at the sleep-dream-politics relationship. In the first, pro-Bush respondents (somewhat or strongly approving of him) were separated from the anti-Bush respondents (somewhat or strongly disapproving) and compared on the frequency of their answers to the sleep and dream questions.

Ideology x Sleep

Liberal Conservative
Sleep Less than 6 hours a night 12 15
6-8.9 hours a night 82 80
More than 9 hours a night 7 4
Insomnia Never 54 63
1-2 nights a week 17 17
3 or more nights a week 28 16

Ideology x Dream Prototypes

Liberal Conservative
A person who’s now dead appearing alive 48 35
Magically flying in the air 23 20
Being chased or attacked 48 40
Falling 54 47
Sexual experiences 47 38
Being in a situation exactly like your regular waking life 58 56
Being aware you’re dreaming and able to control the dream 44 34

Chapter 1 of American Dreamers presents my interpretation of these results.

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“The most skillful interpreter of dreams is he who has the faculty of observing resemblances.” Aristotle, On Prophesying by Dreams

International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD)
DREAMWORK ETHICS STATEMENT

IASD celebrates the many benefits of dreamwork, yet recognizes that there are potential risks. IASD supports an approach to dreamwork and dream sharing that respects the dreamer’s dignity and integrity, and which recognizes the dreamer as the decision-maker regarding the significance of the dream. Systems of dreamwork that assign authority or knowledge of the dream’s meanings to someone other than the dreamer can be misleading, incorrect, and harmful. Ethical dreamwork helps the dreamer work with his/her own dream images, feelings, and associations, and guides the dreamer to more fully experience, appreciate, and understand the dream. Every dream may have multiple meanings, and different techniques may be reasonably employed to touch these multiple layers of significance.

A dreamer’s decision to share or discontinue sharing a dream should always be respected and honored. The dreamer should be forewarned that unexpected issues or emotions may arise in the course of the dreamwork. Information and mutual agreement about the degree of privacy and confidentiality are essential ingredients in creating a safe atmosphere for dream sharing.

Dreamwork outside a clinical setting is not a substitute for psychotherapy, or other professional treatment, and should not be used as such.

IASD recognizes and respects that there are many valid and time-honored dreamwork traditions. We invite and welcome the participation of dreamers from all cultures. There are social, cultural, and transpersonal aspects to dream experience. In this statement we do not mean to imply that the only valid approach to dreamwork focuses on the dreamer’s personal life. Our purpose is to honor and respect the person of the dreamer as well as the dream itself, regardless of how the relationship between the two may be understood.

Prepared by Carol Warner
International Association for the Study of Dreams
Spring, 1997

“Is Dream Interpretation a Sin?” (article)

“Penelope as Dreamer: The Perils of Interpretation” (conference presentation)

Dreaming Beyond Death: A Guide to Pre-Death Dreams and Visions (book)

Dreaming Beyond Death – Newsweek 2005

Dreams of Healing: Transforming Nightmares into Visions of Hope (book)

Transforming Dreams: Learning Spiritual Lessons from the Dreams You Never Forget (book).