William Jefferson ClintonIn studying Clinton, the need to identify a comparison group or
groups (see chapter 7) quickly reduces the volume of verbatim mate-
rial to two obvious and major standard speeches. For profiling Clin-
ton the 1992 presidential candidate, his official announcement
speech on October 3, 1991, can be compared to those of the other
eight major candidates in the 1992 primary campaign. As president,
Clinton's first inaugural address on January 20, 1993, can be com-
pared to the first inaugural addresses of other presidents from George
Washington through George Bush (see Winter 198ya, 1995), in the
same way that Winter and Carlson (1988) assessed Richard Nixon's
motive profile based on his first inaugural address in 1969. More-
over, Clinton's presidential speeches could be compared with them-
selves to determine whether and how his motives have changed over
time.^1 Such an intrapersonal comparison could use, for example, the
president's yearly State of the Union message. Typically, the speech
is a broad summary of the condition of the country, focusing on top-
ics and goals of the president's choosing and given to the same audi-
ence (Congress and invited dignitaries) under the same circum-
stances (national prime-time television) at the same time (late
January) every year. Thus Clinton's State of the Union messages from
1993 through 1996 could be taken as a time-series of his motive lev-
els during his first term.
Clinton as Candidate
In his announcement speech for the 1992 campaign, Clinton scored
a little above average in achievement and affiliation and a little below
average in power, as shown in table 12.2. The following sentence
from Clinton's announcement speech illustrates the combination of
these two motives: "I believe with all my heart that together [affilia-
tion], we can make this happen. We can usher in a new era of
progress [achievement], prosperity and renewal." The high achieve-
ment/high affiliation pattern also fits much of Clinton's rhetoric and
performance before, during, and after the campaign: high goals and
aspirations tinged with warmth and compassion (e.g., his oft-quoted
remark, "I feel your pain"). However, Clinton's relatively low power
motive score suggests that, for all his experience as governor of
Arkansas, he might be neither comfortable nor effective in the
quicksands of Washington federal politics.