James David Barber's Matrix

Why the Up and Down of the graph?

Wanted to see how to predict politics

  • Since politics is the “master discipline”, you have to know everything since it all combines to create politics

  • They would steal ideas from other disciplines (economics, sociology, psychology)

Barber hanged out with psychologists (created political psychology)

  • Interested in explaining the psychological mechanisms (what motivates people to do what they do)

  • barber tried to identify psychological characteristics to determine what makes a president a good president

Found out the effective leaders have certain characteristics

What is Affect?

  • A continuum between positive and negative

  • DO you see life as opportunities or burdens you have to overcome

What is energy?

  • having goals and putting energy into achieving them

  • passive (have no goals and go with the flow)

having the characterizes does not mean that you are guaranteed to be a good president, it just means that you are psychologically disposed to be one

  • context of the presidency, war, circumstances

This theory is good at hindsight, not good at predicting

  • It is a subjective theory


Positive

Affect

Negative

Active

  1. Personal Growth - lets do it and see what happens!

  2. Adaptability

  3. Enjoy their work - like the process of finishing something

  4. Use power productively - Not using power to help themselves

  5. Seek the public interest

  6. Self-Confidence - know who they are, what they want, why they want it, unshakable

  7. Goal-oriented

  8. Flexible, abandon unfruitful paths

  9. Pragmatists

Constitute the best president

Examples: F Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Bush Sr, Clinton

Obama?


  1. invest energy, don’t enjoy the job

  2. Power for its own sake

  3. Disregard the public interest - focus becomes on maintaining their power

  4. Poor self image and lack of confidence- no amount of therapy can help

  5. Seek power to replace self esteem

  6. Policies favored are morally right - no grey area, only right vs wrong

  7. Can’t live without certain programs

  8. Ideologues, rigid, inflexible

Constitute a great danger to the nation. Have no goals, float through life, and life is a burden

Examples: Wilson, Hoover, Johnson, Nixon

Trump?

Energy Level




Passive

  1. Choose job because they are ‘political lovers’ - loves everything about politics. Loves Campaigning

  2. Enjoy people and doing favors

  3. need to be wanted and loved - all of the time

  4. Low self esteem

  5. Superficial optimism

  6. Let others set goals

  7. Difficulty making decisions - don’t have their own sense of right and wrong

  8. Leave the nation adrift

Average Presidents

Examples: Taft, Harding, and Regan

Biden?


  1. Unwilling to Invest Energy

  2. Hates the Job

  3. Public Service ‘ought to be done’ - If not me, then who?

  4. Feelings of uselessness

  5. Dutifully agree to work for others

Below Average Presidents

Examples: Coolidge and Eisenhower