Posted on 10/17/2013 5:39:28 PM PDT by Conservative Beacon
In 1972, Duke University professor James David Barber brought out a book that immediately was heralded as a seminal study of presidential character. Titled The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, the book looked at qualities of temperament and personality in assessing how the country’s chief executives approached the presidency—and how that in turn contributed to their success or failure in the office.
Although there were flaws in Barber’s approach, particularly in his efforts to typecast the personalities of various presidents, it does indeed lay before us an interesting and worthy matrix for assessing how various presidents approach the job and the ultimate quality of their leadership. So let’s apply the Barber matrix to the presidential incumbent, Barack Obama.
Barber, who died in 2004, assessed presidents based on two indices: first, whether they were "positive" or "negative"; and, second, whether they were "active" or "passive." The first index—the positive/negative one—assesses how presidents regarded themselves in relation to the challenges of the office; so, for example, did they embrace the job with a joyful optimism or regard it as a necessary martyrdom they must sustain in order to prove their own self-worth? The second index—active vs. passive—measures their degree of wanting to accomplish big things or retreat into a reactive governing mode.
These two indices produce four categories of presidents, to wit:
Active-Positive: These are presidents with big national ambitions who are self-confident, flexible, optimistic, joyful in the exercise of power, possessing a certain philosophical detachment toward what they regard as a great game.
Active-Negative: These are compulsive people with low self-esteem, seekers of power as a means of self-actualization, given to rigidity and pessimism, driven, sometimes overly aggressive. But they harbor big dreams for bringing about accomplishments of large historical dimension.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Wrt the career @$$-kissers . . . I was trying to be polite. My father and father-in-law met more than their fair share of them - both of them refused promotions (my f-i-l to brigadier general) because they loathed the politics and lies. As RLS's David Balfour said, "I had seen it from behind, where it was all bones and blackness."
Yep, the smart lazy man gets all the opportunities in life. I had to learn that the hard way. Right now, I’m trying to overcome my desire to work in a diligent manner. But as many have noticed my frequent Asia postings on on Free Republic during my scheduled work hours, show that I’m unable to enjoy the lazy life. And when I’m not posting stories at my desk, I read big books. Right now, I’m reading a biography on George Washington. But the book is a bad influence on me. It shows how our Founding Father became successful due to his hard work ethic. Perhaps, I should follow the advice of my Chinese colleagues and just play computer games. But whenever I try that, I quickly lose interest and go back to Free Republic. I hope I someday find a cure, because I would prefer to earn more money.
Very good. Now I’ll wait to see how many of my “friends” will defriend me on Fakebook for posting that link.
Ja! Dad taught me some German. He taught me the formal greeting.
“Ich bin ein scheisskopf!”
The Germans sure are a jolly bunch. They always laugh when I introduce myself.
Lol.
Yes, all in the blog section whether they belong there or not.
It's spam really.
In other words, instead of jumping in and starting to throw things about (my own personal failing), the smart lazy man thinks about it first and devises the most efficient way to accomplish his goal.
My husband is a big, slow-moving, quiet guy that some folks probably think is a little thick. But he accomplishes as much or more than I do with all my bustling about (the fact that he's a Georgia Tech man probably has something to do with it - old joke about a UGA man, an LSU man, a Tech man, and a guillotine . . . )
"Don't just DO something - stand there!"
Yes, that’s the Great German Adjective (like “bloody” used to be the Great Australian Adjective).
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