Professor Stephen Wayne
American presidents often take on personas as they enter textbooks and the collective memory: ‘Richard Nixon bad, Franklin D. Roosevelt good.’ But according to Professor Stephen Wayne’s research—and his new book, Personality and Politics: Obama For and Against Himself—presidents are complex creatures whose minds can help us put their actions into context.
Currently serving as the American Government Field Chair, Wayne has taught at Georgetown for 21 years. He began his career researching the legislative side of the American presidency—the relationship between Congress and the president—but increasingly found himself drawn to the “psychology of leadership.” Though not a trained psychologist, Wayne wondered if and how the personality, thought process, and even the childhood of individual presidents affected their choices.
In his undergraduate and graduate courses, Wayne teaches not only the nuts and bolts of policymaking, but also how to interpret presidents according to the circumstances that surround them—from internal factors, such as their ability to accept criticism, to external ones, such as national crises.
“What a president does makes a difference. So what I’m trying to look at is how presidents think about decisions, what factors go into deciding one way or another, and how closely they keep up with the decisions they make,” Wayne said. “Are they flexible or are they rigid? Are they emotive or are they rational? Are they driven by information or more driven by instinct? I’m particularly looking at a president to see how his character, how his operating style, [and] how his views of the world shape his decision making.”
According to Wayne, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama exemplify how differently leaders can and do behave. President Bush claimed he was an “instinctive” decision maker who relied on his “gut”—and like-minded conservative advisors—to make decisions. President Obama “is the opposite of that,” Wayne said. “Obama is very analytic. He doesn’t believe that emotion should be a part of decisions. He wants to generate some controversy among his advisors so he won’t be blindsided by not having factored in something that maybe would have changed his decision.”
Obama’s approach is perhaps more logical than Bush’s, but it is also more open-ended and time-consuming. Neither modus operandi is without weaknesses, which has led Wayne to believe there is no mix of personal traits that ensures someone will be a ‘good’ president. Historically, he noted, the only consistent thing about the presidency has been its inconsistency. Abraham Lincoln was a “brooder” who saved the country from collapse. Just as unforeseeably, Jimmy Carter was an engineer who was bad at problem-solving.
If anything, Wayne said, the only thing the ‘good’ presidents have had in common is an ability “to distinguish the forest from the trees”—or to be “generalists who think broadly” as opposed to specialists who see big issues from limited angles.
Wayne’s interest in the psychology of American leadership led him to publish Personality and Politics: Obama For and Against Himself earlier this year. He started the book in 2008 as an article meant to highlight the pros and cons of what seemed an imminent Hillary Clinton presidency. But when Obama won the nomination, Wayne published a new piece, adding to it as he became more familiar with “how [Obama] talks and how he thinks.”
After a year of researching hundreds of interviews and answers from the campaign trail, Wayne expanded the article into a short book about patterns in Obama’s behavior. It wonders, for example, if Obama’s atypical relationship with his parents is the root of his almost surgical approach to decision making.
On the whole, however, Personality and Politics more generally examines the link between presidential style and results. “[A president’s] personality affects his accomplishments. That’s why the subtitle is ‘Obama For and Against Himself.’ Some things he does very well, and on some things he gets in his own way,” Wayne said. “Everybody comes to the office with different strengths and with different weaknesses. As students of the presidency, I think we should be aware of them and try to point them out.”
—Brittany Coombs
Photos by Paulette Waltz
