Leader Personality Assessments in Support of Government Policyhas permitted him to make bold initiatives, often overriding
his advisors' objections. (Post 1979, 3)So prominent was Sadat's special sense of self that the major study of
Sadat that CAPPB produced was entitled "Sadat's Messiah Com-
plex." Sadat's creative diplomacy in November and December 1977,
highlighted by his historic visit to Jerusalem in which he overrode
his advisers' objections, emphasized this central personality quality.
When Sadat became the object of intense media attention, giving
major interviews to the likes of Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor,
and Barbara Walters, it was an explosion of narcissistic supplies, and
his extreme self-confidence was magnified to grandiose extremes, a
phenomenon initially dubbed by the CAPPB as "the Barbara Wal-
ters syndrome."
Over the succeeding months, his grandiosity magnified exponen-
tially. One of the most interesting changes had to do with the sharp
increase in his use of the first-person singular pronoun. No longer
did Sadat speak of the problems with Egypt's economy. Rather, he
spoke of "my economy." There were accounts suggesting that Sadat
would be angered by and would refuse to believe reports that his
goals for Egypt and himself were in trouble. This led to a shrinkage
of his leadership circle to sycophants who only told Sadat what he
wanted to hear, leading him to be increasingly out of touch with
political reality. Sadat's grandiosity became so pronounced that the
profile prepared by the CAPPB for Carter was entitled "Sadat's
Nobel Prize Complex." In his memoirs, Carter indicated that this
aspect of Sadat's personality was in the forefront of his thinking.
Sadat was strong and bold, very much aware of world public
opinion and of his role as the most important leader among the
Arabs. I always had the impression that he looked on himself as
inheriting the mantle of authority from the great pharaohs, and
was convinced that he was a man of destiny. (Carter 1983, 328)
In contrast to Sadat, who was well known to a succession of Amer-
ican diplomats, when Menachem Begin came to power in a stunning
election upset, he was a virtual unknown with whom there had been
little official contact. But there was a rich source of information in