History — and hundreds of millions of people around the world — will mark today as the day that the first African-American takes office as President of the …
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“Greatness” apparently decided (by whom) after the fact, and not necessarily related to actual accomplishments in office, but perceptions or feelings only… !
“The greatest presidents have longer administrations” — is that a correlation, or a cause?
“Family background, personal characteristics, education, occupation, and political experiences provided few if any predictors of Presidential performance”
I find that hard to believe. Take Lincoln, for example. Personal characteristics had little to do with his “greatness”? That is not how I perceive it.
It might help to give you the two hypotheses this study posed:
This researcher then went on to conduct a number of followup studies since this study, which honed in on some of the factors. But most of the key factors mentioned above were all shown in followup studies to be relevant to history’s (admittedly subjective) judgment of the “greatness” of a President.
“A researcher named Simonton did a study in 1981 that found the single most attribute correlated with presidential greatness was years in office.”
Wow. He must be really annoyed at Dubya for single-handedly invalidating his work.
“His litany of failures are well-known — a failure to stave off the largest recession since the Great Depression” and then you write, “The President has little direct influence on the economy.” There’s a logic problem here.
Logically or not, people expect the President to “do something” when the American people are suffering due to an economic downturn. History looks more favorably upon FDR than it does Hoover (even though there are economists who claim that FDR’s interventions actually extended the Great Depression).
I joined the session CNN and Facebook made together and was excited to be able to communicate as the inauguration happened with people all around the globe.
Made some screen shots. One result you can find here:
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-193172
It was: Yes, we can!
It is: YOU DID
I’m not sure Simonton’s work shows the psychological attributes that predict greatness–merely the various experiences that predict others’ perceptions of a president’s “greatness.”
However, I am reminded of a MetLife study that attempted to identify the attribute most predictive of an insurance agent’s success. It was not mathematical ability or problem solving ability or extroversion.
It was optimism.
It makes sense–a salesperson must pick him/herself up and dust him/herself off after each rejection, believing that he/she is just one call away from a sale.
I think it’s a good predictor for presidents (and all of us) as well.
Our Presedent is an interesting man. He is someone who through no choice of his own has stood outside of virtually everthing. He is not black enough to be accepted as black, not white enough to be accepted as white. He was thrust into the Muslem religion at a very young age, but was not allowed to become a Muslem. He was An American boy, not allowed to live in America as a very young child. He had no father to help clarify and set his identity. His only rock solid grounding to the world, his mother, seperated herself (seemingly rejected him) from him when he was y young. He found himself living with Grand Parents who were not of any of the things that he might aspire to belong to. He was in every way the ultimate outsider. He was as alone as it is possible to be alone. It can truley be said that there was no one int this world that he could feel was just like him.
How did that affect him? How did he manage to deal with it? What must he really be like inside?
The young Obama was forced to drive so much of his hurt, and lonelyness, and desperation down deep inside. He trowled over it with layer after layer until he did not have to deal with these thing daily. He compensated for his lack of identity, and self-confidence by surrounding himself with the armor of apparent self-assuridness. He must never allow the world to see the weekness within, lest he be forced to confront those things himself. He must keep it all down to avoid dredging up all of the pain and rage that infested his being as a small child.
Mr. Obama is very intelligent. He is so smart that he is even able to fool himself into believeing that he’s really ok. He looks into the mirror each morning, and sees the attractive, smart, eriodite facode that he has created, and even he can believe the he is the immage of himself that he has crafted.
His only saving grace is his wife and kids. Their acceptance grounds him in ways that help him to endure. As part of them, he has become attached to part of a culture, the Black American culture. They form the bedrock that keeps him from confronting his deepest hurt.
Why does someone like Mr. Obama seek high public office? Perhaps it has much to do with his constaint deep seated need to pretend that he is normal, and OK. Public acceptance, fortifies his defenses, and the armor he has built around himself. With out that constaint
emtional support, the pain and rage would be less weighted down, and would rise closer to the surface, and he would have to feel it all again.
Perhaps there is a very real danger in how Mr. Obama would respont to anyone, or anything that threatens to crack his facade. The fear of having to once again confront all of his rage, and pain, and lonelyness could drive him to act out with rage against such a percieved threat.