A Modern Book with Classic Appeal: McAdams’ Bush

Review of Dan P. McAdams, George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 274 pages, ISBN: 978-0-19-975208-9, Hardcover $29.95.

Dan McAdams uses a lens grounded in modern theories of personality to clarify aspects of President Bush’s behavior. He combines insights gained from psychological work on traits, motives, beliefs, and narratives to avoid simplistic explanations for President Bush’s decision-making.

In his introduction, McAdams sets the stage for his personological analysis (the detailed multidisciplinary longitudinal study of individuals over time, based upon the work of Henry A. Murray’s Personological System and practiced mostly by academic psychologists) by asking: “Why did President George W. Bush invade Iraq?” This focus on a single or limited number of questions is reminiscent of classic psychobiographical works by William McKinley Runyan on Van Gogh (1981); David Winter and Leslie Carlson on Richard Nixon’s life (1988); and Alexander and Juliette George on Woodrow Wilson (1956). By asking a single question, McAdams signals he is not planning to write a comprehensive biography; rather, he wants to focus on a key moment in Bush’s presidency—a moment when personality was pivotal in the decision-making process. Think counterfactually for a moment and imagine that Albert A. Gore won the presidency in 2000 instead of George W. Bush. After the events of 9/11, Gore probably would have retaliated against the Taliban in Afghanistan by using U.S. military power. Individual personality was irrelevant—in post-9/11 America the situational demands on the

U.S. President to use armed force were overwhelming. However, it seems unlikely that Gore would have followed up a campaign in Afghanistan with an invasion of Iraq, as Iraq was uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks. Why did George W. Bush generalize the war on terror to justify an invasion of Iraq? McAdams argues that the personality of the 43^rd President matters to answer this question.

Chapter 1 of the book focuses on George Bush’s traits. McAdams argues that Bush (like President Bill Clinton) was exceptionally extraverted and (unlike Clinton) exceptionally low on openness to experience. In order to defend this classification, McAdams cites empiri-

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cal studies of U.S. Presidents conducted at a distance by political psychologists and then sifts through several accounts of Bush’s life. These accounts humanize George W. Bush. For example, during college at Yale, Bush made it a point to learn the names of all 54 fellow pledges to his fraternity. This is a remarkable feat, to learn the names of 54 strangers, some of whom you may never meet again. Bush’s extraversion provided “young George W. with a remarkable temperament resource for developing interpersonal relationships and building a broad social network” (p. 21). McAdams argues that an individual high on extraversion and low on openness is comfortable acting on a big stage if he knows in his heart that he is right—Bush’s traits provided the foundation for his ability to convince others to accept a clear and unambiguous message that the

U.S. must depose Saddam Hussein in the interests of national and world security.

Bush’s high extraversion and low openness, though, would not necessarily lead him to focus on Iraq—other factors were involved in directing Bush’s attention. In Chapter 2, McAdams discusses key motives that animated President Bush. Popular accounts suggest that Oedipal themes were important in his life; just as the number 43 is larger than the number 41, deposing Saddam Hussein would showcase Bush junior’s superiority to his father. McAdams makes the more parsimonious case that Oedipal themes and the succession of father figures in Bush’s political life played a secondary role in leading Bush to invade Iraq. More fundamental is the fact that Hussein was the senior President Bush’s greatest enemy, and killing or capturing Hussein would be proper vengeance against a man who “tried to kill my dad at one time” (p. 97).

McAdams next reviews contemporary research in political psychology, focusing on how neo-conservatism played an increasingly influential role in the Bush presidency. In particular, the transformative vision of neo-conservative belief (that it’s in the best interests of the U.S. to spread democracy to the rest of the world) dovetailed nicely with certain themes of redemption that existed in Bush’s personal and political life. This leads to Chapters 4 and 5 in which McAdams discusses his ongoing work on redemptive narratives and their psychological importance throughout U.S. history (see McAdams’ The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, 2006). Chapters 4 and 5 are important for McAdams because they showcase how a life history (George W. Bush) and an historical moment (post-9/11 America) interacted in a combustive way (Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment, 1975).

For example, a key redemptive scene in Bush’s life revolved around his decision to quit drinking. Through the redemptive power of

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Christianity and a good marriage, Bush turned his back on alcohol at the age of 40. He transformed a life story of alcoholism into a narrative of redemptive recovery. As demonstrated by McAdams (2006), Americans value redemptive stories such as rags to riches, spiritual awakening, and political emancipation. McAdams argues that after the tragedy of 9/11, Bush’s presidency was energized by redemptive possibilities in the U.S. and the Middle East. His traits allowed him to be comfortable on the world stage in the role of a redemptive leader. His motives and beliefs focused his attention not only on Afghanistan but Iraq. Because Bush was able to restore goodness to his own life through self-discipline, he felt that this was the moment for America to restore goodness (in the form of democracy) to Iraq and thereby make safe the American people. In formulating his argument, McAdams relies heavily on his research on redemptive narratives as well as a careful reading of the historical record, documenting the personalities and behaviors of Bush’s inner circle as they prepared for the Iraqi invasion. I should caution that McAdams generally takes Bush and his statements about his life at face value. On the one hand, this strategy puts McAdams on firm ground in that his interpretations are based on documented evidence. On the other hand, this strategy may be vulnerable to a kind of self-presentation bias by his subject by relying too much on autobiographical works produced by members of the Bush family.

Although I am familiar with the personality constructs that McAdams uses to make his argument, it was the primary and secondary historical accounts that interested me the most. I felt I learned much about Bush and his presidency. McAdams provided enough evidence so that I could form my own judgments about whether I agreed or disagreed with McAdams’ interpretations. In terms of presentation of theory, McAdams’ book has a lot to offer students of personality, social, and political psychology. In lecture courses, the book could serve as a common case study to illustrate basic psychological principles, and it would work particularly well as material for discussion in seminar classes in personality and political psychology. With 230 short pages of text, it should not be a problem for students to read the book over the span of a week. Political “junkies”—both conservative and liberal—should find McAdams’ analysis to be a page-turner; when writing, McAdams clearly made efforts to submerge his own political attitudes in an attempt to represent Bush’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader in an even-handed way. McAdams’ book showcases how multiple psychological constructs are necessary for understanding the way that major political decisions are made and acted upon. This use of empirically grounded theories to understand an individual life remains a hallmark of good psychobiography.

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