I 12 The Individual 32 Elizabeth Drew, On The Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon and I Schuster, 1994), p.86. 33 Paul Fick, The Dysfunctional President: Inside the Mind of Sill Clinton (New York: I Birch Lane Press, 199S), pp.11-12. 34 Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, second edition (New York: Routledge Classics, 1 2002). 35 James William Anderson, "The Methodology of Psychological Biography," 1 Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11: 45 S—75, 1981. 36 Sally Patel, "The Perils of Putting National Leaders on the Couch," New York 1 Times, June 29, 2004. 37 Anderson, "The Methodology of Psychological Biography," p.455, pp.456—60. Chapter 8 Personality and Beliefs Suggested Further Reading Alexander George and Juliette George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York: Dover Publications, 1964). Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). Films Woodrow Wilson (PBS American Experience): See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ wilson. LBJ (PBS American Experience): See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperiencc/ films/lbj/. Particularly excellent documentary about Lyndon Johnson's life, and contains portions of interviews with Robert Dallek and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Many of the interviewees attest to LBJ's remarkable personality. Analyzing Personality Even if one rejects the subjectivity of psychobiography as an approach to studying personality, we cannot leave things at that, not least because there are other ways of approaching the topic. Clearly, personality does not matter in all circumstances, and political psychologists who focus on personality factors nowadays are generally cautious in the kind of claims that they make. A leading itdvocate of personality-based approaches to politics, Fred Greenstein, provides us with a classic distinction which formalizes in a rather neat fashion some Ideas that may have occurred to you already. In assessing whether individual leaders "matter"—in our terms, whether dispositions make a difference in duping behavior—Greenstein distinguishes between what he calls actor dispensability and action dispensability.' This is a handy way of thinking about the forces that shape politics and history. Suppose that a given actor—let's make him George W. Bush in the example—has made a decision, and let's further suppose that the decision is In invade Iraq. In order to make a difference to historical events, it is clear lli.it the actor in question (Bush) must not be dispensable; in this case, this is .mother way of saying that if Bush had not been president—say if Al Gore or 11'Ih i Kerry had been in the Oval Office instead—the decision to invade Iraq might not have been taken (if anyone would have taken this decision, then the actor is dispensable). But there is a further test that must be passed if thi' individual is to have a material impact on history: the decision itself niiist matter as well. This is what Greenstein calls action dispensability. If the ,11 lion (the invasion of Iraq) had no real impact on the path of history, then tin- action is dispensable. Most people would probably come to the opposite 11 inclusion, though: the invasion of Iraq does seem to have had an enormous Impact on a variety of outcomes, including the welfare of ordinary Iraqis, iliiiih.stic politics in the United States, regional stability in the Middle East, 114 The Individual Personality and Beliefs 115 U.S.-European relations, and other things. If an individual leader paifj both tests—actor and action dispensability—then he or she has had a mateflH impact on events. Though psychobiography may no longer be in vogue, the tradition studying personality within political psychology remains a vibrant one. In 1 previous chapter we noted the problem of access: political leaders, whctlio past or present, are difficult to put "on the couch." David Winter argues ill we can reliably and objectively measure the personality attributes of leada "at a distance," however.2 We can do this by content analysis of speeches, fo instance, or by asking experts who know (or have written) about a givefl individual to fill out personality questionnaires as if they were the individual I question. Paul Kowert, for instance, used the "Q-sort" technique to reac a general view of the personality traits of a number of American presidenti The experts he used included people who had personally known the prei dents involved and those who had written about them from a historical, social scientific, or journalistic perspective.4 This technique has the obvious] benefit of generating more consensual or "intersubjective" portraits of leader* across a large range of individuals, rather than relying on a single author1! psychobiographical interpretations. Performing content analyses of the public utterances and/or writings political leaders also allows us to rate a number of different personality attributes, such as a leader's cognitive style. Some political psychologist! examine what they term a leader's integrative complexity, for instance.5 Suedfe and Tetlock explain what this term means: At the simple end of the continuum, decisions are characterized by! anchoring around a few salient reference points; the perception of only j one side of an argument or problem; the ignoring of subtle differences! or similarities among other points of view; the perceiving of other j participants, courses of action, and possible courses of action as being totally good or totally bad; and a search for rapid and absolute solutions in order to achieve minimization of uncertainty and ambiguity. At the complex end, we find flexible and open information processing; the use] of many dimensions in an integrated, combinatorial fashion; continued! search for novelty and for further information; and the ability to consider multiple points of view simultaneously, to integrate them, and then tol respond flexibly to them.6 When one compares George W. Bush with JFK, for example, "Kennedy scored higher in integrative complexity, and had a coherent verbal manner of expression, laced with irony and wit. Bush's language, in contrast, is awkward saturated with the earnest rhetoric of conventional morality," David I Willi. i link's.7 I Much of David Winter's work uses content analysis to rate political leaders mIhiji ki their motives, with a particular emphasis on a recurring set of per-ilii\ dimensions: the extent to which they seek power, affiliate themselves mil, ..ili.-rs, try to achieve great things, and seek to control events. Winter and i Kli'« I, lor instance, find that the need for power and the need for affiliation •to I'.n licularly important motivations for U.S. presidents.s As Winter notes, mini ma lity is a complex matter, and he defines it to include not only motives ■OW much power a leader seeks, for instance) but character traits as well Mil instance, how introverted or extroverted a leader is). While the latter ■h* relatively fixed, the former can vary over time, making the measurement H personality additionally tricky. Less conventionally, Winter also defines Mři tonality to include both cognitions or beliefs (what a leader thinks about •I""1....., tor instance) as well as the social or political context in which a leader i ■ iperating ("the situation," in our terms). ' Along with Winter, Margaret Hermann is perhaps the scholar who has dune most to place personality at the forefront of political psychology. Although llinc are many of her studies we could discuss here, one of the best known 1« Iht 1980 study of forty-five political leaders.9 Based on earlier research, Hermann notes that "aggressive leaders are high in need for power, low in Conceptual complexity, distrustful of others, nationalistic, and likely to believe 111.11 they have some control over the events in which they are involved." On the Oilier hand, the same research suggests that "conciliatory leaders are high in [need for affiliation, high in conceptual complexity, trusting of others, low In nationalism, and likely to exhibit little belief in their own ability to control |hc events in which they are involved."10 Hermann later built upon this tfll'lier work to develop leadership trait analysis, in which personality is treated UN a combination of seven traits: belief in one's ability to control events, uiiueptual complexity, need for power, distrust of others, ingroup bias, self-confidence, and task orientation. Like Winter's framework, this approach Utilizes at-a-distance content analysis of public speeches." Stephen Dyson has also recently applied this approach to the personality of li inner British Prime Minister Tony Blair.12 Examining Blair's responses to parliamentary questions on the Iraq War, Dyson investigates the role played by Hlair's personality in shaping British decision-making on that issue. Utilizing I lermann's framework, "Blair has a high belief in his ability to control events, a low conceptual complexity, and a high need for power," Dyson argues. In the Iraq decisions, the evidence indicates broad support for the expectations as to Blair's preferences and behavior derived from his personality 16 The Individual Personality and Beliefs I 17 profile. He demonstrated a proactive policy orientation, internal I<>|H of control in terms of shaping events, a binary information processing framing style, and a preference to work through tightly held procPKlH in policy making.13 According to Margaret Hermann and Thomas Preston, a survey of the litem ture shows that five factors in particular have shaped the study of leadcMflH style, namely "involvement in the policy-making process, willingness to tolfl ate conflict, a president's motivation or reason for leading, preferred stratcgM for managing information, and preferred strategies for resolving conflict ,V They relate these factors to the kind of advisory system preferred by vai'l(M American presidents. Preston subsequently broadened some of these in.sigjH into a more general framework for categorizing leadership style along [ym dimensions: the need for power and involvement in the decision-maklB process on the one hand, and cognitive complexity or sensitivity to context ■ the other. Along the first dimension, for instance, some leaders exhibit hil|fl a high need for control and also a high degree of interest and experience in tfl policy process. Preston terms these "directors." Others have a low need M control and a low interest ("delegators"). It is also possible to combine a hJH need for power with low interest ("magistrates") or a low need for power w|l high interest ("administrators").15 Preston also classifies presidents according to their degree of cognitlW complexity—where complexity is treated as a relatively fixed personaltH characteristic—and interest in foreign policy. Here he divides leaders intfl "navigators," "observers," "sentinels," and "mavericks." Navigators, (m instance, have a high degree of interest in foreign policy with a high ncsi for information and a high degree of cognitive complexity. SentinS have a high degree of interest but a low need for information and a lofl degree of complexity, and so on. Putting these two categorizations togctiM then allows us to fit presidents (and potentially any kind of leader) into t richer, more detailed, and more reliable kind of "master scheme" than llul devised by, say, James David Barber. Preston characterizes Bill Clinton, I'm instance, as a "delegator—observer"; in other words, he is a delegator aloifl the first dimension—meaning, as the name suggests, that he relied l>l< i actually treat beliefs as one aspect of personality. For the sake of P«l\li' al clarity, we will treat them separately in this chapter, however. One lul u.iy of thinking about this distinction in a way that hopefully makes H i ill clear is to contrast a pair of individuals with a similar belief system H|| illMering personalities, or a pair with essentially the same personality ii I mi differing beliefs. In the first category, former British Prime Minister Hlildmi Known and his predecessor provide a useful contrast. Both Blair and pimii wire leading members of what became in Britain the "New Labour" mitrincnt within the British Labour Party. After suffering defeat after defeat at H| polls in successive U.K. elections, "New Labour" members began to feel > |||il i I lie party should move to the center and even the right on many political Uoth Blair and Brown were political moderates within the party who •......favored this strategy. In 1994 Blair became leader of the Labour Party, I Junil inning a policy of moving to the center that had been initiated by his pre-ili 11 v.or, and in 1997 the party finally won the general election after eighteen i. ii in opposition. "New Labour" won two more elections under Tony Blair Hnul lie stepped down in 2007 and was replaced by Brown as both Labour leader and U.K. prime minister. Wli.it is especially interesting about this example is that while Blair and hrnu n shared a very similar ideological belief system, they appeared to exhibit Nil nigly different personalities. At the time of writing we do not have a 11 malic comparison of Brown's personality with that of Blair along various lliill dimensions, but there is already a consensus of sorts regarding some of the III I < i ei ices. While Blair was outgoing and more "political" in the way that his 111* inl Bill Clinton was, Brown seemed more quiet and reserved. While Brown |llii|ccled an image of cautiousness and seemed rather "donnish," Blair was pin <• inclined to take political risks, most notably when he went against his own iiiiIiik al party and a substantial majority of British public opinion by backing e W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. While Blair and Bush had enjoyed an apparently warm personal relationship, Brown made it clear from the start that III u i mid not have the same sort of relationship with the American president. s I )lssatisfaction with the somewhat vague and imprecise nature of per-mnulity itself—and the difficulties involved in tracing the processes by willed particular personality attributes produce particular decisions—has led H flowing number of political psychologists to turn to the content of people's lirllels or cognitions, which seem more directly related to leader decisions. All hough as we have seen in the situationist part of this book there are some 120 The Individual Personality and Beliefs 121 true views, and he almost certainly did not construct these views after thfl fact. More importantly, however, there are empirical objections nowadays tli.tt we could level at Holsti's analysis. At the time Holsti wrote, it was widely assumed that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a "do nothing" president who spent most of his time on the golf course, delegating domestic policy tfl his White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams and foreign policy to Dulles, In recent years, however, revisionist research has largely debunked thin unflattering image of the Eisenhower presidency. Thanks to Fred Greenstein'i pioneering work in The Hidden-Hand Presidency, for instance, we now know that Eisenhower and not Dulles was the real architect of the administration'k foreign policies. Eisenhower, he argues convincingly, deliberately gave tin appearance of not playing a policy role because he wished to preservi the popularity which comes from the symbolic side of the presidency) knowing that it was his national "father figure" status that underlay liif* broad popularity—and that getting your hands dirty with the political side of the presidency inevitably erodes that popularity—Eisenhower deliberately cultivated the perception that he was not involved in policy-making, letting! Dulles and Adams take the political heat for unpopular decisions; behind tho scenes, however, he quietly orchestrated the activities of his administration using what Greenstein calls "hidden-hand" techniques.'9 Nevertheless, there are parallels between Holsti's analysis and (lie observations that are often made about George H.W. Bush's relations with the Soviet Union as the Cold War came to an end. Against all expectations, Ronald Reagan had developed warm personal relations with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Cold War drew to a close, but several members of the succeeding! Bush administration were suspicious of Soviet intentions, maintaining an. "inherent bad faith" model similar to that of Dulles. As secretary of defense, Dick Cheney was especially skeptical about Gorbachev's intentions, as wan the president himself. Operational Code Analysis One especially prominent approach that political psychologists have used] to study political beliefs is called operational code analysis.20 Nathan Leitej: created the basis for this approach in the early 1950s when he investigated | the political beliefs of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. In a classic 1969 article, Alexander George reformulated Leites' observations into two sets of questions or fundamental categories: philosophical beliefs and instrumental beliefs. The operational code, George argued, provides a "set of general beliefs about fundamental issues of history as central questions as these bear, in turn, on thi problem of action":21 ; Philosophical Beliefs What is the "essential" nature of political life? Is the political universe essentially one of harmony or conflict? What is the fundamental character of one's political opponents? What are the prospects for the eventual realization of one's fundamental political values and aspirations? Can one be optimistic, or must one be pessimistic on this score? Is the political future predictable? In what sense and to what extent? I low much control or mastery can one have over historical development? What is one's role in moving and shaping history in the desired direction? What is the role of "chance" in human affairs? ■ Instrumental Beliefs • What is the best approach for selecting goals or objectives for political action? • I low are the goals of action pursued most effectively? • How are the risks of political action calculated, controlled, and accepted? • What is the best "timing" of action to advance one's interests? • What is the utility and role of different means for advancing one's interests? The first set of beliefs has to do with one's general philosophy about the nature of political life, while the second deals with more "practical" questions muli as how one goes about implementing one's chosen political objectives. As you can probably see from a brief perusal of the questions, a leader's I'liilosophical beliefs have to do with the answers which animated the classic political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. While Hobbes had ■in exceptionally dark view of human nature, Locke held a rather more optimistic view. While Locke saw the world as a harmonious place, Hobbes Famously held the opinion that if man were freed from the order-providing shackles of government, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Contrasting with these fundamental "what is the political world like?" Questions, on the other hand, are questions having to do with "how should we achieve our goals?" These are our instrumental beliefs. As Scott Crichlow suggests, the operational code approach is fundamentally dispositionist in the sense that it stresses the ways in which leaders differ in their reactions to the same political environment. If situation were everything, we would not need to bother studying a leader's beliefs, because these would not add anything much to the explanation (they would be epiphenomenal, to 122 The Individual -- use the social scientific phrase). But as Crichlow notes, "operational 0 analysis provides a means of testing a leader's fundamental predispoftla toward political action," and hence of understanding the sources of the- dil'l'ei In behaviors of leaders when placed in similar situations.22 George stresses lltM there are some circumstances where situation or environment would in ellli "force a leader's hand," but in general he maintains that dispositional he could be expected to shape behavior in many circumstances.23 Let's consider Lyndon Johnson and how he handled the probleii Vietnam as one example of some philosophical and instrumental bell Addressing just a few of the questions above, one can reliably say that: Johnson had little foreign policy experience, so regarding Vietnai relied on some simple but fundamental beliefs. For LBJ the essential nature of political life was conflictual, a war of versus evil (Hobbesian view). Johnson believed that he could control events in Vietnam. Domestically and internationally, he steered a "middle course" that enough to assuage hawks at home but not enough to provoke C into intervening in the war. His graduated bombing strategy allowed him to monitor (and to 11 extent control) risks. Instrumentally, he believed in bargaining backed up by threats (this served him well in the U.S. Senate, but tragically the technique did work well with his Communist adversary, Ho Chi Minh).24 I..... I Mil mil Having laid out the basic form of operational code analysis, George (IH not conduct many actual operational code analyses himself, but left it to Ifl followers to apply the theory empirically. One of the most prolific of tlftVJ has been Stephen Walker, who has probably conducted more of these analylH than anyone else during their academic career. One of the best known ol'lfl articles is an operational code analysis of former National Security Advlnfl and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Examining Kissinger's work atm political scientist prior to joining the Nixon administration in 1969, WalktjH demonstrates a strong correlation—with only a couple of deviations—betwtH Kissinger's writings as an academic and his actual behavior in office, albeit ill one important issue (policy-making with regard to Vietnam between 196l> anil 1973). Walker concludes: In spite of the exigencies of bureaucratic politics and alliance diplomacy^ plus the personal intervention of President Nixon at key points, Kissingfl dominated the conduct of the American foreign policy that terminates fills Personality and Beliefs 123 |,S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He acted according to the 111*11 omental principles of his operational code.25 Pl'iitlonal code analyses have now been published for a huge variety ■tylrt'N since the 1970s, and a new generation of scholars has adopted Heated computational techniques designed to tease out the ways in i 11.u licular individual would answer the questions posed by the code. 11 work, moreover, has taken operational code analysis in new and nil:1 directions. Scott Crichlow, for instance, has used this approach mm me the ways in which leadership beliefs change over time.26 Charting ■ operational codes of Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, linws how the basic philosophical views of both leaders became less ■HmIIIi iii.iI between the 1970s and 1990s. Both men shared a similar view of (In ii political environment in the 1970s, and these views changed in a similar - i i"ii over time. Crichlow finds that: both leaders diagnosed their political universe in the 1990s differently 11 ii ii they had in the 1970s. In the earlier decade they saw a conflictual I environment in which they had little chance of achieving their basic political goals. In the 1990s they saw a more unpredictable political universe, balanced between cooperative and conflictual forces.27 1 'ii the other hand, the analysis shows that in both periods Rabin "was Hptl'ly predisposed to acting in a cooperative manner."28 Crichlow also I" George's original conception of the operational code by producing If typology of typical codes, ranging from out-and-out idealists to pragmatists I III realists, with various categories in between.29 In a comparative analysis of the operational codes of Tony Blair and Bill Hint on, Mark Schafer and Stephen Walker examine whether beliefs in the ll......cratic peace the popular thesis that democracies do not fidht one (Mother, but may be especially prone to go to war with non-democracies—vary lll'loss political leaders within democracies. The theory is usually proposed on a purely cultural level, suggesting that all politicians within a democracy limply internalize the democratic peace and thus that we can expect few if [Illy meaningful differences among individuals within a democratic state.30 But Id this the case? Schafer and Walker find that in some ways there are. For llmlaoee, they discover that while both Blair and Clinton hold highly positive | Ii " s of democracies and negative views of non-democracies, they vary in di' extent to which they believe that they can control the latter; Clinton scores lll^li on control while Blair does not.3' On the instrumental side, Clinton's luetics towards non-democracies are also more cooperative than Blair's. Blair 126 The Individual the concept see for instance "President Clinton's Policy Dilemmas: A Cofl^H Analysis," Political Psychology, IS: 337-49, 1994. 6 Ibid., p. 172. Cognitive complexity has also been linked to the sophisticfltjM and kind of historical analogies used by leaders. See Stephen Dyson and II...... Preston, "Individual Characteristics of Political Leaders and the Use of .W.I... in Foreign Policy Decision Making," Political Psychology, 27: 265-88, 2006. 7 Winter, "Things I've I earned About Personality From Studying Political I e.iiM At A Distance," p.570. 8 David Winter and Abigail Stewart, "Content Analysis as a Method of Sludyfl Political Leaders," in Margaret Hermann (ed.), A Psychological ExaminatlotU Political Leaders (New York: Free Press, 1977). 9 Margaret Hermann, "Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Peri|H Characteristics of Political Leaders," International Studies Quarterly, 24: 7—46, ljHJ 10 Ibid., p.8. i 1 Margaret Hermann, "Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis," in Jerrold (ed.), The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders (Ann Arbor, MI: University M Michigan Press, 2003). 12 Stephen Dyson, "Personality and Foreign Policy: Tony Blair's Iraq DccislojH Foreign Policy Analysis, 2: 289-306, 2006. 13 Ibid.,p.303. 14 Margaret Hermann ami Thomas Preston, "Presidents, Advisers, and hiH Policy: The Effect of Leadership Style on Executive Arrangements," P