The Psychological Assessment of Political LeadersPublic DataThe raw information used to support the analysis of character ele-
ments and their relationship to presidential performance is all "pub-
lic data." That being the case, the term deserves some attention.
Public data is simply information that is available to any inter-
ested person and that resides in the public domain. Included are
multiple, cross-checked news accounts of events; multiple, cross-
checked biographical accounts; the words of the candidates them-
selves; and those of others about them. Each kind of public data is
used in a specific way for a limited purpose with recognition of each
source's biases, advantages, and limitations. I characterize the
approach to that information as "psychologically informed events
analysis."
Newspaper and other journalistic accounts are primarily used as
documentation of the major facts concerning a particular event; for
example, a presidential candidate made a particular pledge, a partic-
ular event took place within a certain sequence of events, and so on.
The accounts themselves are, for the most part, concerned with
describing events and the circumstances surrounding them.^2 This
material is an important part of the attempt to use specific contexts
and circumstances in a theoretically useful way. In attempting to
answer the question of what happened (as a prelude to trying to
answer why), a presidential researcher depends on many types of
data, including presidential news conferences and interviews, inter-
views with major actors, documentary evidence, and so on.
None of these sources is without flaws. However, each can be
viewed as a form of commentary designed to influence the framing
and understanding of particular narrative lines or incidents. Thus, a
presidential press conference can be viewed as the president's narra-
tive of his behavior and the reasons behind it. Likewise, interviews
with other actors provide their own narrative perspective. Even the
release of what seems to be less subjective data, such as a report
released by the White House (or its opponents) on the number of
welfare mothers given help to find employment, is part of a narrative
with a particular definition of work and of success.
Another important source of data for psychologically informed
events and case analysis is the experience and understanding of the