The More things Change...

I just finished James David Barber’s The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House. It was an extraordinary read at many levels and I’m indebted to Allan Patterson for bugging me on it. He sent along a couple of articles by John Dean who used the book as the basis for comparing George W. Bush to Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and to his old boss, Richard Nixon and for finding a match.

Professor Barber died a few years back and cannot comment on the Dean proposition, but I think that the comparison fits very well, not that it makes much difference. I purchased the 1982 edition of the book which I believe was the last issued. The book was written, edited and expanded a number of times over a quarter of century. The first edition ended with the presidency of Richard Nixon and the ’82 version is extended into the term of George H. W. Bush – Bush 41.

Barber’s thesis is that by examining the formative period in a life one can predict the type of president the young person will make. This makes for great reading but as you can imagine is extremely subjective. The intention of the work is to warn the voters and party leaders not to select the worst kinds of presidents based on the categorizations by Barber.

Frankly, I loved going over the early lives of the presidents of the twentieth century. I’ve read rather extensively about Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon so I wasn’t surprised at how Barber put them on his couch. Reading about such lesser lights as Taft, Harding, and Coolidge who didn’t hit the author’s `A’ list of presidents was great fun, especially since I’m a fan – albeit a very unfanatic – of Silent Cal. Others like Ike and the first Bush were very well written up even if they didn’t particularly turn me on.

That Barber admires President Ford made me happy and put me in the professor’s corner; ditto for Harry Truman. Unfortunately, while Barber liked Jimmy Carter on a personal level, it colored his analysis and he had to do a lot of dancing to understand the flaw in his thesis when Smiley let us a down. His views on Bush 41 are also badly shaped by being too close in time to when he wrote about him. This, of course, shows the flaw in the thesis that by careful research one can predict how a presidential candidate is likely to perform if he (or she) is elected.

Obviously, every effort is made by the campaigns to hide, cover, obfuscate, and otherwise flimflam us about the candidate’s early life. The facts are often tossed out but with sufficient spin to set our heads and judgment reeling. All in all, I enjoyed and admired Barber’s efforts at selling his thesis. Unfortunately, I didn’t buy it as a great predictor of future performance.

But I bought hook line and sinker the notion that presidents can be categorized pretty much as Barber indicates. I won’t waste your time with all the good guys or even the mediocre performers. But there is no doubt that his categorization of `Active – Negative’ presidents is worthy of a moment. Wilson, Hoover, Johnson, and Nixon are placed in this category. Each of these presidents is charged by Barber – and history – with pressing to “persevere in a disastrous policy.” (p.80) Wilson was unable to make even minor compromises on his League of Nations goal. Hoover could not find any way to be flexible in the face of economic calamity. Johnson ploughed forward disastrously in Vietnam. And Nixon was unable deal with the petty crime of Watergate and was consumed by it.

John Dean sees the `stay the course’ Iraq policy of the present President Bush as a perfect match with the `Active - Negatives’ of Barber, and so do I.

At the basic level the book is a brilliant examination of what made great, mediocre, and failed presidencies. I’m certain that other historians could do the same biographical research and find differences, but the thesis really held for me. Unfortunately, as I said earlier it doesn’t seem to have much future value due to the packaging of candidates and all of the bunkum – positive and negative – being thrown at us.

But the reading was extremely valuable to me at another level. This book was extremely popular when it first came out and at each subsequent rewrite. In 1982, Barber made observations that are even more relevant for today. Barber’s review and analysis of the Constitutional issues relating to the Gulf War in 1991 are eye opening and remain relevant after almost a quarter of a century. While I remember supporting the forced removal of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, I had completely forgotten the byplay that went as the build up to the intervention took place.

The situation is shockingly similar to that which occurred as the nation readied to attack Iraq again in 2003. This posting is already well over my self imposed word limit, but I cannot end it without a vignette concerning the squabbling between the Congress and the White House that shows that some things never change and that the leopard cannot change its spots. “When Senator Edward Kennedy asked Bush’s Defense Secretary Dick Cheney whether Bush needed the approval of Congress to go to war, his answer was, “I do not believe the President requires any additional authorization from Congress before committing U.S. forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf.”” (Page 478)

There’s more gold in many old books than we think.

Vote and work for divided government! It really is important.

Blog On!

Wild Bill