188 CHAPTER Six ■ The IndIvIdual
year. Car ter personalized the hostage taking. He was humiliated, obsessed, wanting
above all to have his decisions vindicated. After an attempted he li cop ter rescue mis
sion failed, he rationalized the failure as a “worthy effort,” feeling that some action
was better than no action. Glad points to Car ter’s personality characteristics: his dif
ficulty in admitting that he made mistakes in this situation was based on his more
general need to be right. In this instance, the psychic costs to the United States of its
impotence in a crisis upon which the entire people and government focused for several
months, as well as the po liti cal price Car ter had to pay for that fixation, would make
it particularly difficult for him to see where he had gone wrong.^6 Reflecting back over
that period in 2015, citizen Car ter lamented that if only had he sent in more he li cop
ters, the rescue might have been successful and he would have been re elected.
Personality characteristics affect the leadership of dictators perhaps more than that
of demo cratic leaders because of the absence of effective institutional checks, as Glad
has also investigated. She analyzed the personalities of tyrants— those who rule with
out attention to law, capitalize on grandiose self presentations and proj ects, look for
every advantage, and utilize cruel, often extreme tactics. Comparing Hitler, Stalin,
and Saddam Hussein, she labels them as having malignant narcissism syndrome. Glad
explains how “proj ect over reach and creation of new enemies leads to increasing vul
nerability, a deepening of the paranoiac defense, and volatility in be hav ior.”^7
The late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (the “Dear Leader”) and his father, Kim
Il Sung (the “ Great Leader”), exhibited some of these same characteristics. Kim Il Sung
erected more than 34,000 monuments to himself during his 50 year rule, and his
photo was prominently displayed in buildings and other public places. Likewise, Kim
Jong Il expressed his megalomania with gigantic pictures of himself, spending mil
lions of dollars on spectacles with historical themes while millions of his people
starved. One former CIA psychiatrist suggested that Kim Jong Il was self absorbed,
lacked an ability to empathize, and was capable of “unconstrained aggression.”^8
Following Kim Jong Il’s death in 2011, North Korean propaganda immediately
began to elevate his son, Kim Jong Un, to deity, noting his talents and extraordi
nary deeds— all in an effort to legitimize the succession. Labeled the “ Great Succes
sor,” Kim Jong Un, like his father and grand father, has consolidated power through
a cult of personality. He is extolled as an “outstanding leader of the party, army, and
people” and “a great person born in heaven”— attributes that serve to legitimate his
succession.
Personality characteristics, then, partly determine what decisions individual lead
ers make. But individual leaders also have personal preferences, and they may have
the ability to chart a policy course that reflects those personal preferences. The Global
Perspectives box on p. 190–91 illustrates the preferences of Pope Francis and how he
is charting new courses for the Catholic church, almost singlehandedly.