Barack Obama puzzles many of us. His performance as president has disappointed so dramatically that it prompts me to wonder what makes him tick.
The most widely used tool for understanding personality types is a questionnaire called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. So I bought a book called “Do What You Are,” by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, and read their explanation of the Myers-Briggs classifications to try to understand our president in the broad terms commonly used by professionals.
Most philosophers and psychologists have concluded that there are four basic types of human temperament, and over 2,500 years they’ve described them in surprisingly consistent ways. In modern lingo, according to Tieger and Barron-Tieger, these four categories are: traditionalists, experiencers, idealists and conceptualizers.
It looks to me as if our president is in the “idealist” category, which the authors describe as “on a perpetual search for the meaning of life ... often excellent communicators and can be thought of as catalysts for positive change. (Idealists) generate enthusiasm for their ideas and actions. At best, they are charismatic, receptive, and accepting. ... Sometimes they are too idealistic ... not particularly good at disciplining or criticizing others. They value harmony and do not flourish in a competitive or divisive arena.”
The Myers-Briggs model identifies four dimensions of individual personality: how we interact with the world, the kind of information we notice and rely upon, how we make decisions, and whether we live in a more structured or a more spontaneous style. It then organizes this in a matrix of 16 possible combinations. I tried to figure out which “set” described Obama, and decided he was probably an ENFJ. In the Myers-Briggs world, those letters stand for extraverted, intuitive, feeling and judging.
Here are some phrases applied to that ENFJ subgroup: people-lovers; live by their values; energetic and enthusiastic, responsible, conscientious, and persevering; even-tempered and tolerant; good at promoting harmony; good communicators, usually using their expressive gift verbally; conflict avoiders. ENFJs need to keep their eyes open, as well as their hearts.
By way of contrast, an ESTP (extraverted, sensing, thinking, perceiving) can get conflicting parties together, “and can be tough when the situation warrants.”
You don’t need Myers-Briggs to see that Obama is so detached, so unwilling to defend himself and his causes against partisan obstructionism or raw hatred, that he often appears not to know where the line between useful compromise and meaningless accommodation lies. He treats demagogic opponents in the tea party and in Congress with the forbearance a family elder might reserve for fractious relatives. To be courteous with domestic political enemies who boast that their overriding objective is to drive him from office rather than to pursue what is good for the nation risks substituting weakness for judgment, sliding from statesmanship to defensiveness. That is where Obama is today.
One decision of Obama’s last year clearly fell outside the ambit of this description: the mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden. In that case, Obama acted as if bin Laden were outside the pale of civilization, family or the rule of law, and his extraordinary attention to backup and protection for the Navy SEALs who undertook the mission was evident to all. For Obama, those SEALs were part of the American family he wanted to defend against external danger.
It’s one example, but it’s reassuring in terms of our president’s ability to shape and execute a thoughtful but firm foreign policy. What we need him to do now is recognize that the greatest threats to his values and our country are domestic. He needs to take the gloves off and use the presidential bully pulpit — plus his own eloquence — to lay out where we need to go domestically, and to turn the pitiless flame of ridicule and shame on the narrow-minded obstocrats who would try to stop us from getting there. Our president needs to reach down and come up with a little more ESTP to offset his ENFJ.
• Goldmark, a former publisher of the International Herald Tribune, headed the climate program at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Comments (13)
Add commentHe's like such a Leo!
Or perhaps this isn't about his zodiac sign. Let's get one of fox news' body language experts on this. Then we' get Ghost Whisperer to ask dead presidents their opinion on obama's personality type. Wrap it up with reading his chakras.
Bah!
The guy's just trying to navigate a path through the toxic political pits that are out there. He's trying to be Clintonesque, though he's not nearly so adroit at it.
Whoever's in the WH next year will be facing the same toxic pits, and the more polarizing they are, the sooner they'll fall into one of them there pits.
instant replay fever
In the 1950 the advent of the live TV broadcast began a new era in the ability of Americans to watch the President. There he was live and in person for all to see on a regular basis. By the 2000 the internet and a massive increase in live cable news started the next series of coverage of the presidents and their almost every move. Today with streaming live video a president can hardly have a bodily function without instant coverage. Perhaps we are a nation with too much instant coverage of everything.
News of our presidents has never been more intrusive into their every move than it is today. I fear within a few year we will be watching live coverage 24/7 as our presidents eat their meals under the watchful eye of the "news." There will be the postulating over our president's choice of meals and the political implications of choosing any item on his menu.
Get tough on what?
With Obama, I voted for him, you have to read the fine print. I voted for him because he promised health care reform, ending of wars and the billions they cost us, and action on Wall Street. I never read the fine print and realize now how wrong I was. Obama is backpedaling now because many feel betrayed and duped. His personality has little to do with his current plight.
It's beyond me how anyone can
It's beyond me how anyone can find one redeeming factor with Obama. How can he be defended? All he's got left to play is the blame game. It's always someone elses fault, whether it's the TEA Party, Bush or the Republicans.
He's a dismal failure at everything he's done. Look at the unemployment numbers and the debt for starters. Cue the blaming...
He's an ideologue that is narcissitic beyond pale and looks down his nose at every one of us ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, about half of the citizens are buying his rhetoric.
I'm glad Michelle Obama is taking heat for being so mean. People have had it with the in-your-face-extravagance from these two.
And don't play up the Osama killing. He was out on the golf course, again, when the call came in. Any president would have given the go-ahead.
@Banditrider: your attitude
@Banditrider: your attitude is strange considering he did achieve healthcare reform and he has ended one of the wars so far. Considering congress, not the president, is the reason healthcare reform wasn't stronger and there was little action concerning Wall Street, your views leave me confused, and I question whether you voted for Obama at all or are just saying you did to score rhetorical points.
When I look
at our immediate past President and what he left for our present President to try and solve, to me, he stands head and shoulders over his predecessor. I find many redeeming factors in him and his attempt to sort out all the problems left to him, especially with a House of Representatives and some Senators whose main goal is to get rid of him attack him in any way they can. He has had to face a an attack of "Just say no to anything he says or proposes."
To me he is not a "dismal failure" as some say. He will go down in history, I think, as someone who inherited a mess of ignorance, immorality and corruption and did what he could to turn things around.
That's my opinion and I think it stands face to face with those who deride him and attack him.
Please give me one current Republican candidate who is attempting to replace him, and demonstrate in fact, not fiction, that they are or will be a better President than he has been.
That's my opinion.
Venting one's emotions and feelings
Comments are, I think, a place where individuals can vent their feeling and emotions, say whatever they want in response to an article. I think this is a good thing.
And so when I read that our President is a "dismal failure," that he is an "ideologue that is beyond pale," that his wife is "mean", I recognize that this is just one person, one individual venting his or her presumptions, perhaps anger and frustration.
Of course it is not necessarily the truth nor factual. Nor are my comments the absolute truth, it is just an opinion.
I am glad about one thing - my hot water heater has an valve that allows it to vent and spew out water when it can no longer contain the heat within. It prevents an explosion that might injure those around. If people have intense feelings, then it seems to me to be nice to have a place where they can vent and blow out their steam without really hurting others or has no relationship to reality.
That's just my opinion on venting.
Calypso - you are the king
at doing EXACTLY what you say you don't want others to do. Blame game indeed........
It would be comical, how unable to be objective or self-monitor you are, if you weren't serious. To find zero redeeming qualities in a particular party, or a particular president, even though what has been accomplished under their watch is exactly what one has been clamoring for (i.e. Osama) - - - to have NO allowance at all for 'yeah, ok, he did that one right' - - is to be pathologically unable to make a reasonable conclusion about ANY aspect of that party or that President.
Do you get that at all?
Don't blame Frenchie, swimmer
He has serious issues that he hasn't worked through yet. Could be brain damage.
An idealist in the White House!
---What a horrible fate. I almost feel sorry for the guy now.
On the face of it, this letter is an entertaining effort to make excuses for a president who has disappointed his base almost as much as he's outraged the far right.
Though I'm not one of those who view Obama as some sort of illegal alien/socialist infiltrator from h*ll who is out to ruin the country, or whatever the drivel is that's currently coming from Stage Right; I can't say I'm particularly impressed with him.
He didn't "achieve health care reform" by any measure---And whether or not it's going to be easier or cheaper to get insurance remains to be seen. As far as his extra-judicial killing of Bin Laden, I think the author got it right---Obama treated him, as well as the American citizen he later assassinated, as though he was beyond the pale and rule of law, which I think is very telling---Not only of what the Executive Office has become, but of what WE have become.
Like anyone, Obama has to be viewed in context, and those of us who are really interested in such things will just have to wait for history to unfold to get any kind of accurate view on his presidency.
I would have had him pegged as an ENTJ...
Another moderated post - I
Another moderated post - I hate that!
BO has been very successful
BO has been very successful at making Jimmy Carter look economically competent.
Worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/01/12/the-worst-economic-r...
Probably has to do with this
Probably has to do with this being the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. I imagine the recovery from the recession and the recession itself are related, somehow.