Psychoanalytic Assessments of Character and Performanceevents as expressed by the leaders themselves. Therefore, a key source
of supplementary evidence to accounts of events is the (now often
transcribed) words of the candidates themselves. These include
unstructured (but not necessarily unrehearsed) interviews, press con-
ferences, and other spontaneously recorded transactions that are a
part of every campaign and presidency.^3
It is obvious that candidates and presidents have private under-
standings or motivations that they don't reveal (and may not even be
aware of). Even so, it would be a mistake to totally discard as unim-
portant analysis of their publicly stated views and behavior. Why?
First, candidates' publicly stated views and behavior may be very
useful in revealing, sometimes quite starkly, what they wish to con-
vey about themselves to others. When Al Gore stresses his childhood
roots in Tennessee (and not Washington), he is inviting us to see him
as a candidate who has not been part of the Washington establish-
ment (via his father) and who has grown up with core American val-
ues. When Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley stresses
his upbringing in a small rural town, he too is inviting us to see him
as the product of a way of life nostalgically remembered as reflecting
a better time and place.
My point is not that these invitations are fraudulent. Both cases
do reflect aspects of the candidates' experiences. However, the role of
the analyst is to learn enough to identify the extent to which they are
representative. In Al Gore's case, he spent only summers at the fam-
ily farm in Tennessee, and in Bradley's case he came from a well-off
family that traveled widely when he was a child, including trips to
Europe. Neither of these facts necessarily means that small town
virtues were not part of cither's childhood experience; rather, it just
means that inferring psychology from large sociological concepts
(e.g., "small town values") is best done carefully.
Candidates' views of themselves also provide an important basis
for comparison to a candidate's behavior in other less public circum-
stances. Consider the 2000 presidential campaign, when Republican
presidential candidate John McCain ran on a platform in which his
honor, integrity, and role as a "truth teller" were critical to his suc-
cess in the early rounds of the nomination process. His cornerstone
and signature campaign issue, building on this persona, was cam-
paign finance reform. This he defined as the elimination of the role