The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersreporters often piece together their understanding of events in the form of a
"story," and this subtext can be shaped either by a reporter's attitudes or view or
by decisions (strategic or unconscious) of the person(s) on whom the reporter
relies. Third, stories on occasion can simply be in error. This is a special difficulty
when covering presidents, but it also occurs when covering candidates. Both
presidents and candidates (and their staffs) try to put the best frame on events.
For all these reasons, events data must be one of a number of data sources that an
analyst uses.
- Unstructured interviews, while in some ways more revealing of the candi-
date, are often not completely spontaneous. It is a fact of political life that candi-
dates and presidents spend much time behind the scenes considering how they
should approach or respond to pubic issues or events. The amount of uncalcu-
lated information that is reflected in the give-and-take of a question and answer
format depends in large part on the nature of the format. General questions from
supportive, or for other reasons, uncritical audiences allow a candidate or presi-
dent more opportunity to respond in preselected ways than if the format was a
real debate. - Al Gore let it be known that he had been in contact with General Powell.
However, he refused to say whether he had apologized to General Powell. On the
Today Show, Gore said, "That was the spirit of the call. That word wasn't used.
But I regretted the way he heard Donna's comments" (Seelye 2000, Ai, emphasis
added). - Freud acknowledged that his study of Wilson "did not originate without
strong emotions," that he found Wilson "unsympathetic," and that "this aver-
sion increased in the course of years the more I learned about him and the more
severely we suffered from the consequences of his intrusion into our destiny"
(1967, xiii, xvi). However, Freud went on to say these feelings had "underwent a
thorough subjugation" (xvi) to a mixture of "sympathy, but sympathy of a spe-
cial sort mixed with pity" (xv). This is hardly an auspicious vantage point from
which to conduct such an analysis, and it has led some observers like Elms to
make the very sensible suggestion that the analyst will "choose a subject towards
whom he feels considerable ambivalence rather than harsh antagonism or uncrit-
ical adulation" (1976, 179). - Even then, a person may become aware that there are dangers lurking in
their psychology and will try to avoid them. George and George (1956, 321)
report that Woodrow Wilson told his closest advisor of reoccurring nightmares
that he might repeat the pattern of success then failure that had plagued him as
president of Princeton. The Georges argue that he "was casting about for ways to
avoid a repetition of his highly distressing experience as a reformer at Princeton."
He failed in doing so. - A major problem is that different variables will lead to the construction of
different typologies. However, a bigger problem is that people rarely fully fit the
categories to which the typologists would like to assign them. Barber's Nixon,