Sadly, the presidential candidates are not lining up for their
diagnostic testing, so PT turned to a host of political psychologists for
their thoughts on the candidates. Without delving into armchair analysis,
they reinforced the importance of personality, ethics, cognitive skill,
communication, vision, emotional intelligence and other categories in
determining if these men will make it to the White House and how they'll
do if they get there.
Some, like Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., of the International Society of
Political Psychology and professor of psychology at Saint John's
University, have created personality profiles of the candidates, matching
their personality styles with syndromes in the psychologist's bible: The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Immelman has found Bush to be "highly charismatic/extroverted and
somewhat interpersonal/agreeable, but not very
deliberative/conscientious." By contrast, Core looks "highly
deliberative/conscientious, somewhat lacking in
interpersonality/agreeableness, and low in charisma/extroversion." Not
far, in fact, from the popular analysis: Bush-friendly but dumb;
Gore-smart but stiff.
The idea here, as psychologist John Berecz, Ph.D., explains it, is
that we can all be judged on the spectrum of personality disorders in the
DSM. This doesn't mean we have a disorder, but our personality style can
be used as a metaphor and a guide.
To Berecz, whose forthcoming book on the presidency,
Character-in-Chief, describes nine personality styles in detail, Gore is
basically an example of the obsessive-compulsive personality style. This
is a benefit in the thinking-through of detailed programs, but it also
can be a liability. "Obsessive-compulsives compartmentalize things," he
explains. "I trust his personal morals--we're not going to have another
intern in the back halls--but politically he might tell you with tears in
his eyes about his sister dying of lung cancer [true story] and then tell
the tobacco growers 'I'm with you.'"
Bush, according to Berecz's analysis, has more of a histrionic
personality style, "emotionally alive, emotionally accessible." It's the
trait that made Ronald Reagan so appealing to voters, but it doesn't
indicate a sense of conviction or vision. "Some balance of the obsessive
and histrionic is probably the ideal," said Berecz." If you had someone
with the interpersonal skills of Reagan and the intellectual grasp of
details of Carter, you'd probably have a pretty damn good president."
Similarly, he adds, a hybrid John McCain/Bill Bradley would have done the
trick.
Other researchers examine candidates using highly detailed analyses
of verbal expression and facial gestures down to the smallest muscle, and
correlating facial movement (the now-infamous Bush smirk) with
personality [see sidebars, pages 50 and 52].
Still others look to history and leadership rather than psychology,
studying, for instance, what we can learn from the ways a president ran
meetings. Thomas Preston, assistant professor at Washington State
University and author of the forthcoming The President and His Inner
Circle, is developing a "leadership style typology." He is more
interested in Gore's foreign policy experience during his vice presidency
and Bush's lack of experience in that arena, and in the emotional ways
each candidate responds to public crisis.
Robert Lefton, Ph.D., a psychologist and leadership consultant,
studies leadership styles by focusing on how a leader makes decisions,
relies on his staff, articulates his vision and executes his desires.
Lefton rates leaders on two scales: dominance-submissiveness and
warmth-hostility. Through studies of 20th-century White Houses, he has
determined that the most successful presidents have a combination of
warmth and dominance, listening to those around them but not being afraid
to lead; and that the least successful are hostile and dominant (in a
word, bullies). Bush, he believes, started out as hostile and submissive
but is improving; and Gore to him is primarily a combination of warmth
and submissiveness.
It's here, then, that the problems of these methods become clear.
Is Gore warm and submissive, always aiming to please? Or is he "lacking
in interpersonality/agreeableness," as Immelman suggests? Can
psychologists who study leaders from afar accurately assess personality?
Should they even try? And how do we know whether their own politics are
not, intentionally or incidentally, jostling the evidence?
Perhaps we must simply adopt the perspective of Professor Fred
Greenstein, author of the forthcoming The Presidential Difference:
Leadership Style from Roosevelt to Clinton. "In a campaign, putting the
candidates under pressure can reveal character," he reflected. But "the
very best test of a person's abilities is the presidency itself."
READING BETWEEN THE LINES Speech analysis
Do you remember 1996 Republican candidate Bob Dole frequently
proclaiming that he was the most optimistic man in America? And how many
times did we hear Bill Clinton remind us that he was from a town called
Hope?
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