How to choose a president

What Americans need to look for in a presidential candidate, making the right choice, and Bush's presidency.

By J. Barber, published on May 01, 1992 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

So, "particularly because he would feel contagiously uncomfortable in old Sam Rayburn's 'Board of Education' gathering, and because he will be strongly tempted to go public when his opponents are verging on success, Carter will have a tough time selling legislators on the idea that it is incumbent on them to follow the maxim: `To get along, go along."'

Carter achieved some progress--as in human rights--but his trouble in negotiating with Congress, dominated by his own party, confirmed his anticipated style trouble.

Reagan's style was easily predicted as "centered on speechmaking." Thus "his would be a rhetorical Presidency." But few saw him in advance as a passive-positive type. My predictive estimate based on his life story was that he was "likely to try to please people."

"His political life centers on collecting affection from his environment. He wants to be at the center of a friendly crew of colleagues who are appreciative of him and like him. The man, after all, is an actor who wants to please his family and his friends. He always was reputed to be a nice, friendly, cheerful, optimistic sort of guy."

The bushel of books about Reagan as President, now stacked up across the land, confirm that passive-positive character which, among other things, helped to create the nation's incredibly huge deficit.

Bush's Presidency has turned out to be one of those most accurately predicted. His character? Active-positive. His skills as President? Basically effective. His world view? Incredibly bizarre and dangerous. Before he became President, I saw him as: "enlivened and inspired by a mission into a new, different, distant, unknown land....He is not stuck with consistency....Mr. Bush's hunger for mission could carry us all over the brink of disaster....The ultimate danger is war. That was Mr. Bush's first big mission....Economic realities, even beyond the deficit, pose a most difficult obstacle to any major political mission. One of Mr. Nixon's in-house conspirers, H. R. Haldeman, noted that Mr. Bush would 'do anything for the cause.' Turning to a military cause, even beyond the dimension of the Grenada invasion that Mr. Bush helped to orchestrate, is always going to be a temptation for this President.

The Bush potential is there, as it turned out to be for Harry S. Truman, who fostered the Marshall Plan. Or as it turned out for Lyndon Johnson, who fostered the Vietnam disaster. We cannot assume he will just sit still and shut up. If he does believe in what he says he does--including reality--the better turn could happen."

Bush shows his hunger for surprise. His apparent devotion, as a potential President, to the United States as "a kinder, gentler nation" was smashed aside by his Presidential action for the Persian Gulf War. His preelection economic promises did not happen. Healthy as his character is, Bush's world view is overwhelmingly dominated by his hunger for surprise.

That is not how democracy is meant to work, with law and policy determined by a Congress representing the people's preferences. But Bush has succeeded in taking on huge monarchical power in distributing hundreds of thousands of soldiers on his own personal judgment. Given his radical deterioration in popularity, far down from the width of his support at wartime, Bush is no doubt tempted to start war again to force votes up for victory.

So go Presidential predictions based on pre-President biographical studies. At least as late as early winter 1992, far too little public perception of the biographies of Presidential candidates actually happened. Instead, minor, isolated blips came out, as if certain one-time actions by a candidate would give just the clues needed to guess at his Presidency. Those who drive off to work and listen to the radio are getting more and more confused.

In the end, voters who have perceived the characters they need to know should step forward to seek out the real probabilities of what promises the candidates will actually try to keep. The promises during a campaign should not be forgotten, not trashed off in the political vacation between the day of election and the day of inauguration. Voters should indeed demand that each candidate puts forth a platform--and that he shares it with significant allies. That is what a political party used to do.

Now, thanks to the extreme fragmentation dominating our time of life, destroying parties, Congress, universities, communities, and the like, the United States needs to reach out to a candidate who will actually do--as best he can--what he says he will do with the nation. And to make these hopes happen, when a candidate swears from his heart just what he wants to make happen in life by pressing forth a policy plan of his own, the journalist should put forth a tough and highly relevant question these days to the candidate, "You and who else?"

Meanwhile, political psychologists who care for humans have a chance to make knowledge happen. Democracy needs that--now.

PHOTO (COLOR): A kinder, gentler apathy: We face real probabilities of heavy horrors: war, depression, disease, crime, ignorance, and anarchy. The greatest psychological danger this year is apathy, washed into our brains by propaganda selling placidity-gentling the citizens into looking up at the stars rather than down at the snakes.