Who Is Clint Reilly, Really?

I drive back to San Francisco, wanting to ask Clint Reilly for his thoughts on making the transformation from priest-in-training to community activist to famous political consultant, and on some observations his mother made while discussing the same transformation. Among other things, she said she was not surprised that her son is often described as abrasive. "Clint can't tolerate petty people," she said. "He's not into small talk. He's not beholding. He pushes people; you know, you have to."

But what haunts me is something else she said about her first-born son: "People do not really like him. He's not lovable."

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"I left the seminary in 1969 because I wanted to make history, not bless it," Clint Reilly says, sitting in the mahogany-paneled conference room of Clinton Reilly Holdings atop the Merchants Exchange, the downtown office building that represents the bulk of Reilly's wealth.

In those days, he says, the seminary was a real cloister. "I was taking the same classes Boyle had taken 25 years before," remarks Reilly. "We were up at 5:30 a.m. for chapel, prayer, meditation, and Mass -- all before breakfast. Once a month we were allowed a three-hour walk in town. We were not allowed to watch television. All books had to be approved."

In the mid-'60s, things started to open up as Pope John XXIII liberalized the church. In Mass, Latin replaced English. Modern philosophy made its way past the rectors of St. Patrick's. Reilly became a philosophy nut.

"I started out studying Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. In their systems, there is a hierarchy of life, like rocks, animals, humans, God. You always know what the truth is, because it's objective, like the Ten Commandments, right and wrong. The universe is orderly, moral, and mechanistic.

"Then I learned about existentialism, the idea that truth is derived from one's existence, that it is subjective. But I was really taken with the work of Martin Heidegger, a mediator between Aristotle and existentialism, between objective reality and subjective truth."

(The German philosopher Heidegger, 1889-1976, renounced Catholicism after leaving the seminary. He has gone down in history as the only major European philosopher to enthusiastically use his own teachings to aid Hitler's National Socialist Party, an action for which he never publicly apologized. When asked about this association, Reilly says, "The Nazi connection? That's always the attack on Heidegger. It's important to separate the ideas from the person.")

"Heidegger defines the human being as only existing in relation to other beings in the world," Reilly says. "So the only way you can know your own truth is through interaction with other beings. In later years, I reflected upon the political and ethical implications of this. It's all about self-interest."

Reilly says he was also drawn to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit who, according to Reilly, "applied evolution to human history and predicted globalization and the decline of nationalism."

(Teilhard de Chardin, 1881-1955, believed that the planet Earth has evolved a "noosphere," which is a "planetary thinking network" akin to the human nervous system.)

"I hooked Teilhard de Chardin up with Marshall McLuhan," Reilly continues. "McLuhan said that media is bringing us together instantaneously, as spectators of war on television, as watchers of elections instead of voters, as globalized consumers."

(McLuhan, 1911-1981, a Roman Catholic college professor whose book Understanding Media propelled him to celebrity status in 1964, coined the phrase, "The medium is the message." McLuhan taught that communication media -- whether drums, print, or radio -- are the motive force of history. The manner of presentation -- the medium itself -- is more influential than the actual content of the message conveyed. Sensuous mediums, like television, transform traditional learning by packaging the message, placing it inside a wrap of sound and image and inserting it directly into people's consciousness.)

From these ancient and modern thinkers, Reilly says, he extracted a mechanistic, self-centered worldview, and some useful advertising techniques. He then left the seminary, hoping to work for social justice in the world.

I ask him to define the youthful, justice-related goals that remain important to him.

He laughs uncomfortably.

"I don't know," he finally says. "I have no 10-point plan."

He stares into space.

"You have to live according to your principles. Biblical dictums like: "He who loses himself will find himself.' Sometimes you need to leave your self-interest behind in order to find true peace and happiness."

He looks at his watch.

"I do feel part of the human family, and responsible to other beings to enhance their lives, and in doing so we can enhance our own life ... I don't know."

He blushes.

"No one ever asks me that question."