The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersgood aspects of their own nation and to deny or rationalize away any
weaknesses. As a result, these leaders are likely to mobilize the sup-
port of their people through scapegoating or attributing the ills in
society to an external threat. In the extreme, they may keep their
country mobilized militarily indefinitely to deal with the external*
threat. Politics is a battle between good and evil, just and unjust, the
noble and the degenerate; it is a zero-sum game where one side's loss
is another side's gain. Therefore, a leader must be constantly vigilant
to ensure that his or her nation wins, not loses—or be quick to inter-
pret ambiguous events as wins. Highly nationalistic leaders gener-
ally choose to have around them advisers who are loyal and commit-
ted to the goals and interests of the leader; advisers who show any
individual initiative risk becoming a scapegoat themselves for any
failed policies.
Leaders who combine a strong sense of nationalism with a high
distrust of others are likely to view politics as the art of dealing with
threats. Everything that has just been said about leaders who are
high in nationalism is accentuated by an intense distrust of others.
Such leaders will always be suspicious of the intentions and actions
of others, seeing ulterior motives and designs where there may be
none. Moreover, the others—the enemies—are viewed as "pulling
the strings" and being in charge of what happens; thus, these leaders
can only react, so they must be highly vigilant and try to anticipate
what is going to happen if they are to have any influence over events.
And they will become hypersensitive to criticism, often perceiving
that they have been criticized where others would not; such leaders
are always on the watch for a challenge to their authority or self.
Given Hussein's high scores on nationalism and distrust of others,
he is expected to reflect this type of leadership. As a consequence, he
is likely to take most actions on his own—advisers are implementers
of actions, not participants in the decision-making process—to act
deliberately but often to interpret the environment as threatening
and demanding when such was not the intention of those involved,
to take bold actions in anticipation of what is going to happen, to be
highly sensitive to criticism, and to be very controlling of those
around him. He wants to be the winner in the game of chess that is
politics; to do so requires vigilance, strategic behavior, and a will-
ingness to take risks.