A Political Scientist’s Doubts (response article)

A long time ago I published an essay on the psychological sources of Ronald Reagan’s appeal (Political Psychology, 1988, v. 9: 571-589). It was a clever argument by a young professor arguing that Reagan’s personality allowed him to soothe the narcissistic injuries suffered by the American public in recent years. Trouble is, I have no idea if what I said was right, wrong, or in between. Worse yet, after all these years I still have no idea how I might find out.

This experience, itself a narcissistic injury (albeit a minor one), colors my reading of Ken Fuchsman’s paper, “President Obama in History: The Political Intersects with the Personal.” I’m a political scientist, and I found his account of Obama’s policies, especially the difference between promise and performance, accurate and compelling. I was impressed by his uncovering of discrepancies between what Obama claimed about his family life in print and what he said over the years. I was particularly fascinated by conclusions such as the following:

It was then that his own resentments at the unreliable adults in his own childhood may have been more prominent and contributed to his reluctance to make helping the less fortunate victims of the recession a central part of his Presidency. We all have an underside to our emotions. Obama’s came out when he may have unconsciously identified those suffering economically with the lack of dependability of his parents.

This could be true or it could be false. Certainly other factors came into play, such as the fact that the poor don’t vote, at least not at a rate compared to the middle classes. President Obama is, after all, a politician who, for all his achievements, has proven singularly adept at getting himself elected and reelected.

More troubling, the same question came up when reading

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Professor Fuchsman’s paper as when thinking about my own paper on Reagan. Not only do I not know if Fuchsman’s hypothesis is true, but I have no idea how one would go about figuring this out. To claim that Obama unconsciously identified the poor with his parents’ lack of dependability, while psychologically plausible, is simply indemonstrable. Perhaps not in principle, but would be possible only in-depth interviews with the President, or possibly access to his diary, if such exists. Books intended as works of self-promotion, as revealing as they turned out to be, are not the same.

I’m a political psychologist and a political scientist. I’m absolutely convinced that personality plays a major role in the success or failure of a national leader. Statements along the lines of “Obama’s life was one of reconciling conflicting views,” and “This psychological pattern made it difficult for him to adapt to Republican recalcitrance,” are the type of statements that can be supported by evidence, and are in fact supported by the evidence. Such statements assume a dynamic unconscious with political consequences, but do not attribute his motivation to specific experiences in Obama’s childhood.

Someday, after he has sat down with his biographers, will there be enough evidence? Possibly; it’s not in principle impossible, just unlikely. Ironic is that Obama was far more revealing in Dreams from My Father (1995) than most politicians ever are, perhaps more revealing than he knew. Here is where Fuchsman is on more solid ground, pointing out the discrepancy between the book and remarks to friends, for example. What this discrepancy means for political positions taken out of a complex mix of psychology, political expediency, and the political reality of limited presidential power, seems almost impossible to say.

Reaching these conclusions is unsettling, for they pertain not just to Fuchsman’s essay, but the limits of political psychology done in this vein. I wish that the psychological insight and acumen of the thoughtful and enterprising academic were enough. I just don’t think it is.

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