CHAPTER 14. HOMOCLITE LEADERS: BUSH, BLAIR, NIXON, AND OTHERS
211 Grinker decided to take on this task: Roy R. Grinker Sr., Roy R. Grinker Jr., and John Timberlake, “ ‘Mentally Healthy’ Young Males (Homoclites),” Archives of General Psychiatry 6 (1962): 405–453.
213 “Within the general population of the United States”: Ibid., 445–446.
213 “People like the George Williams students”: Ibid., 446.
213 “To have a population of relative stability”: Ibid., 448.
213 “I often described my subject-population”: Ibid., 446.
214 Sigmund Freud’s dictum: Ibid., 448.
214 No ideal standard of mental health works scientifically: Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). S. Nassir Ghaemi, The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art and Science in Psychiatry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
214 “Standards of health on the basis of admirable traits”: Leston Havens, A Safe Place: Laying the Groundwork of Psychotherapy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 28.
214 “muscular Christian” normality: Grinker, “ ‘Mentally Healthy’ Young Males,” 444.
215 what happens when homoclites rule: Grinker’s work gives us a framework to understand mental health, and if applied to leaders it would head us in the direction of looking at personality and seeing whether our leaders are similar to or different from the rest of us in their personality traits. Historians and psychologists have worked out ways to do this, not only for personality traits, but also for intelligence, another psychological attribute commonly seen as important for leadership. (Dean Keith Simonton, Greatness: Who Makes History and Why [New York: Guilford, 1994].) For intelligence, this involves quantifying leaders’ achievements in childhood and early adulthood, such as grades and academic degrees, and correlating those achievements with population averages. Assuming a population IQ norm of 100, one can then infer higher or lower levels of intelligence for historical figures. This method has been used in psychology research now for over eighty years. For personality traits, historians and scholars are given biographical data—anonymized and altered enough to try to remove specifics that would identify the individuals—based on which they complete assessments of major personality traits, as in the NEO scale, which assesses the three major personality traits of neuroticism (one’s baseline level of anxiety), extraversion (one’s sociability and outgoingness), and openness to experience (one’s willingness to take risks or tendency to follow routines or habits). These estimates are then correlated with objective (number of bills passed, reelection) and subjective (consensus of historians) estimates of presidential success. (In the normal population, we all score somewhere on each of these traits, and we do so in a way that statistically is called the “normal” curve, also referred to as the bell curve. Most of us score in the middle, while 2.5 percent of us score at either extreme—very high or very low—on each trait. These traits can also be translated into the abnormal temperaments discussed previously. Thus those with hyperthymic personality will tend to be very high on extraversion and openness to experience.)
When applied to presidents (Simonton, 2006), these studies of intelligence and personality support, in my view, the idea that most presidents are homoclites, and that the most successful of them are the least homoclitic. Using the above methods, about one-half of presidents (twenty-three out of forty-three) had IQ estimates in the average, but not gifted, range (100–120). (The average college graduate has an IQ of 120, while the population norm is 90–110, above average is 110–120, gifted is 120–140, and above 140 is considered “genius” level.) Among twelve recent presidents from FDR onward, only four score in the gifted range (FDR, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton). For those presidents considered by some as not particularly intelligent, like George W. Bush (IQ estimate 111) or Reagan (IQ estimate 118), estimated intelligence is above the population average (though not greater than the average college graduate). These are not stupid men, nor are they highly intelligent; they are just normal. (Just to show that intelligence is overrated as a measure of success, by the way, one might note that the estimated IQ for George Washington was 125, lower than Clinton or Carter.) Personality seemed a more robust predictor of presidential success. Specifically, of the three traits in the NEO (Simonton, 2006), only openness to experience correlated with presidential success, and even this was not straightforward. The three highestrating presidents for openness to experience were Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Lincoln; yet Adams is generally seen as ineffectual. Clinton and Kennedy ran distant seconds on this personality trait, and some presidents viewed as successful, like Reagan and Washington, scored low on it. I would turn the usual interpretation of these personality tests around. The standard view is that these studies show that neuroticism, for instance, is “irrelevant” to presidential personality. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that extremes of neuroticism, and indeed all personality traits, are not found in our presidents. They are mostly average in their personality traits, and even their intelligence. Much as we yearn for heroes, our presidents are, by and large, normal people—homoclites like you and me. And yet when one picks out those who are extreme on any of these features, whether personality or intelligence, one finds names like Jefferson and Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy—those who are seen as the “best” presidents, the ones full of charisma and creativity. They are not “normal” people: they are the ones with abnormal temperaments, like hyperthymic personality, or even frank mental illness.
Most presidents, however, are normal and thus homoclites. Hence research about the psychological basis of political beliefs in the general population (who are also homoclites) might help us understand the psychology of these homoclite leaders. The classic work in this area is that of British psychologist Hans Eysenck (The Psychology of Politics [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954]), who observed that the left/right theory of politics could not account for the many similarities between communism and fascism—apparent extreme opposites. Eysenck interviewed middle-class and working-class persons in 1950s England and classified their political beliefs along the above labels; he then gave them NEO-like personality tests. (Eysenck himself was a founding father of personality research.) Statistically grouping people with similar political beliefs versus their personality traits, Eysenck found another factor besides political ideology (leftwing versus right-wing) that seemed to relate to how practical versus how idealistic people tended to be. In other words, political behavior needed to be seen on two dimensions, the first being political ideology, as is commonly accepted, and the second not being political at all, but psychological, correlating with personality traits, which (borrowing from the philosopher William James) Eysenck labeled tender-mindedness versus tough-mindedness. This produces a new two-dimensional picture, when combined with the original dimension of political ideology. Over the years, numerous genetic studies on identical twins have repeatedly confirmed that Eysenck was right: temperament is an important biological predictor of political beliefs (Lindon Eaves, Hans Eysenck, and Michael Neale, Genes, Culture, and Personality: An Empirical Approach [London: Academic Press, 1989]).
Eysenck’s thesis may help explain why apparently opposite political figures, like Bush and Blair, could find so much common ground: their personalities were similar—they were tough-minded “normal guy” leaders, taking pride in their toughness, arms swaying beside them as they strode to a press conference podium together, like two gunslingers at a shootout. Other homoclite leaders, differing in the normal range of personality traits, will be tender-minded instead, and thus likely to make different political judgments. It goes beyond available evidence to speculate how these considerations apply to other recent or contemporary leaders, like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but Eysenck’s theory provides testable hypotheses for historians and psychologists to assess.
216 Chamberlain was a commoner: Nick Smart, Neville Ch
amberlain: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2009).
216 “a good mayor of Birmingham”: George Lichtheim, Thoughts Among the Ruins (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1973), 177.
216 “a nice man”: Robert C. Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 97.
216 “rigid competence,” “indispensable for filling subordinate posts”: Peter Rowland, David Lloyd George: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 707.
217 “If Germany could obtain her desiderata”: Ibid., 219.
217 “In one phase men might seem to have been right”: Graham Macklin, Chamberlain (London: Haus, 2006), 97.
218 The son of a Philadelphia surgeon: Most of the material on McClellan is drawn from Stephen Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo, 1999).
220 “I almost think”: Ibid., 95.
220 “Shall we crush the rebellion”: Ibid., 99.
221 “One Napoleonic grand army”: Ibid.
221 “How does he think”: Ibid., 103.
221 “I am here in a terrible place”: Ibid.
222 “Cautious and weak” . . . “A psychiatrist could make much”: James McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 44.
222 unlike Lee, who seems to have been dysthymic: Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
223 what about Reagan, Eisenhower, Truman?: Historians may disagree. Truman did have to deal with Korea. And at the end of World War II, he had to make the massive decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whether the latter decision in particular was the correct one, and the mark of a successful crisis leader, is something about which Japanese and American readers may have differences of opinion. Reagan certainly has his fans, as did Eisenhower. I cannot and do not attempt to cover every major leader of the twentieth century in this book, and I especially try to avoid recent ones. The most recent leader I study in detail is Nixon. As for the others, I can only make tentative comments while awaiting the clarifying impact of time and distance. This all depends, of course, on historians’ having open enough minds to even consider some of these theses.
224 six books and a dozen professional journal articles: David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow (New York: Norton, 2004), 235.
224 “on the naked edge of a nervous breakdown”: Ibid., 256.
224 “Almost uniformly”: Ibid., 235.
224 “Each painted Nixon”: Ibid., 244–245.
224 Narcissism has never been empirically validated: The concept of narcissism was heavily used by Freud, and is a psychoanalytic belief. It is often used pejoratively. Though it can be operationalized and identified in populations (Robert Raskin and Howard Terry, “A Principal-Components Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and Further Evidence of Its Construct Validity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, no. 5 [1988]: 890–902), it is not validated as a distinct and separate personality trait or personality disorder or unique personality condition. By validation, I mean scientific standards as described in this book: being distinct from other conditions in the four validators of symptoms, course of illness, family history, and treatment response. In such studies, it is poorly separable from a host of other claimed personality disorders. Andrea Fossati, Theodore P. Beauchaine, Federica Grazioli, Ilaria Carretta, Francesca Cortinovis, and Maffei Cesare, “A Latent Structure Analysis of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Narcissistic Personality Disorder Criteria,” Comprehensive Psychiatry 46 (2005): 361–367. W. John Livesley, “Diagnostic Dilemmas in Classifying Personality Disorder,” in Advancing DSM: Dilemmas in Psychiatric Diagnosis, ed. Katharine A. Phillips, Michael B. First, and Harold Alan Pincus, 153–168 (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 2003).
225 “so outlandish as to be downright silly”: Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 238.
225 “Do not inflict this Freudian horseshit”: Ibid., 253.
225 Regarding treatment: Ibid., 242–243.
226 “I cannot help thinking”: Ibid., 232.
226 “dangerous emotional instability”: Ibid., 257.
226 “crazy with rage”: Ibid.
226 “as if he were a tape”: Ibid., 258.
226 Haig . . . remove his sleeping pills: Ibid., 259.
226 “I think I’ve got a lousy personality”: Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 282.
226 “cocksucker” and “damn Jews”: Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 254. Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 353.
226 “screw” and “fuck”: Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth (New York: Random House, 1993), 143. Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 172.
226–227 Johnson . . . favored metaphors of urination and defecation: In one of my favorites, Johnson once commented to John Kenneth Galbraith as follows: “Did y’ever think Ken that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.” John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (New York: Ballantine, 1981), 450.
227 McGovern told a heckler: Perlstein, Nixonland, 739.
227 Victor Frankl would have known: Said Frankl, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon, 2000), 32.
227 Nixon constantly encouraged the sick JFK: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, 87–102.
227 Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. sent word to Nixon: Ibid., 132.
227 Robert Kennedy . . . quietly voted: Ibid., 113.
227 “I just saw a crushed man today”: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, 199. Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes (New York: Signet, 1969), 40.
227 to invite the widow and her two children: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, 292–297.
228 It was 1946: What follows is based on Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon.
229 “Chotiner had two working precepts”: Ibid., 35.
229 “I understand yours was Whittier”: Ibid., 61.
230 as author Rick Perlstein puts it: Perlstein, Nixonland, 435.
231 “you’ve got to be a little evil”: Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1991), 686.
231 “The notion of Nixon”: Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 263.
231 “a study in psychiatric imbalance”: Ibid., 261.
231 In truth, Nixon was rather normal: Three authors who appear to come to similar conclusions based on journalistic and historical evidence are Wicker (One of Us), Wills (Nixon Agonistes), and Perlstein (Nixonland).
231 “How is the nation to be protected”: Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 261.
231 “A man harassed, tortured, and torn” . . . “There is a delicious inconsistency”: Ibid., 262.
232 the Hubris syndrome identified by David Owen: David Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illnesses in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).
233 As a young man: The material in this paragraph is drawn from Ronald Kessler, A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush (New York: Sentinel, 2004).
233 “He was Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer”: Ibid., 16. 2
33–234 about 15 percent of all adults . . . lose a parent or a sibling: http://www.disabledworld.com/communication/community/parent-loss.php (accessed February 27, 2011).
234 childhood parental loss . . . increases the risk of depression: Kenneth Kendler and Carol Prescott, Genes, Environment and Psychopathology (New York: Guilford, 2006).
234 some studies show that . . . losses during childhood: Norman F. Watt, James P. David, Kevin L. Ladd, and Susan Shamos, “The Life Course of Psychological Resilience: A Phenomenological Perspective on Deflecting Life’s Slings and Arrows,” Journal of Primary Prevention 15 (1995): 209–246.
234 SAT score was 1280 . . . IQ of about 120: Kessler, A Matter of
Character, 23.
235 his memoir Decision Points: George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010).
235 his blood alcohol level was found to be 0.10: Kessler, A Matter of Character, 35.
235 pressured him to quit drinking . . . he apparently did: A psychiatrist colleague has told me that he knew a Bush family member who claimed that Bush continues to drink and has even been drunk at times at family meals, as recently as just before the 2000 presidential election. However, according to my colleague, that person was not willing to make that accusation publicly, and since I cannot confirm the source or corroborate the claim, I cannot present it as probably or even possibly true.
235 This history is actually the best possible outcome: George E. Vaillant, The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
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