Marc Barron
Paper Assignment #1
POS4413
Evaluation of President Bush’s Personality
If I were to evaluate President Bush’s personality based on his term in office, I would have to praise him for being very ambitious, cunning, and straightforward. Yet, it is those character traits by which I feel make him an average president at best. It is good for Bush to have ambition, his greatest personality trait in my opinion, but I think sometimes he is way too overconfident in his decision making ability. For example, while some may support Bush’s adamancy for the war of terror, one could question whether he knew of the many (unnecessary) American casualties that would result from this war.
I think the criteria for each model comes to a different conclusion when evaluating the president’s personality. The Barber model establishes the president’s personality on a few criteria (style, world view, and character) on the basis of their life from childhood to adolescence to their presidency. This model draws upon how the presidents’ developed their personality which would influence their position on matters such as controversial issues (i.e. abortion, same-sex marriage). Under this model, Bush strongly opposes the two issues based on his upbringing and his political ideologies, which would also classify the president as having a narrow-minded personality because of his traditional views.
In contrast, the Greenstein model, the more reliable approach in my opinion, evaluates a president’s personality on their interaction with the public. It is well known, for example, that Bush lacks the poise and communication skills of a good orator to deliver a speech in public, and that sometimes he cracks under pressure when being asked questions that are relative to his agenda. His answers for the most part lack confidence and structure, and he tries to avoid giving definitive answers by using old clichés and catch phrases – which he can’t even remember half the time –...