Let's Not Elect Any More George Bush Types as President

This article was written before Obama won the election, but speaks loudly about how incompetent George W. Bush really is. I got motivated to write this post after my Mom sent me an article in http://www.truthout.org/ about this same theme. I find most interesting how they talk about Bush being sort of a privleged bully spoiled by wealth. They also delve into the Myers Briggs take on his personality. Very interesting. What are your thoughts bloggers???



We've seen America at its best and our government at its worst. Millions of Americans are beginning to realize where they fit in our democracy under Republican governance: nowhere.
—John Kerry (speaking of the Katrina disaster)

America has not always been fortunate in its statesmen. Arguably, in fact, the majority have been mediocrities, elected only because electoral politics are not about identifying and selecting the most capable leaders, but rather about identifying and selecting the most politically acceptable representative. There have, however, been a few great presidents, as well as a good many lousy ones. A strong case could be made that Bush is the standout incompetent among the failures; but that's not the case made here. Rather, our interest here lies in trying to understand what has made for such gross incompetence in the Bush administration. If we can keep these issues more in the forefront of our minds in the next election, we might be able to avoid the next Bush before he (or she) gets to the primaries. And that would be a very good thing.

"I trust that God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.”— George W. Bush

Why is George Bush president of the United States, despite his manifest unsuitability for the job? One explanation would be this: he was socially promoted. Social promotion occurs in the schools, of course, when parents or teachers are concerned that the negative social impact of being held back a grade in school because of poor academic performance would outweigh the benefits of repeating a grade. Among the wealthy, and especially among the politically-connected wealthy, social promotion of various kinds occurs because it's simply unthinkable that among the elite there could be any mediocrities, let alone failures. Politicians such as George Bush senior, now long past the days of his own lackluster presidency, are something like the fathers of high school football athletes reliving a lost (or never existent) glory. Their sons have to be stars because nothing less will satisfy their own dreams of greatness by proxy.
In the midst of a family dynamic of inflated expectations insert one mediocre male. Rear him to tales of family greatness. Bring him up in an environment where want and need are utterly unknown. Give him every advantage, and isolate him from the remotest possibility of failure. Send him to elite schools where his sense of superiority is further reinforced, and then hand him every professional success on a silver platter. What sort of individual will you end up with? The material of great leadership, or something else altogether?
When dealing with anything as complex as a human being, good answers to questions such as these can be hard to find. Some individuals rise far above the expectations we may have for them, despite their circumstances. Others fall below even our lowest expectations. Much seems to depend upon native character and aptitude; but when there is little native character or aptitude, then the results sometimes really are rather predictable. And so they apparently were with George junior: a spoiled, arrogant, and irresponsible adolescent grew to become a spoiled, arrogant, and irresponsible adult. Actions and their consequences have no reality for him. How could they? The human toil and the exhaustion of natural resources that lie at the root of most contemporary wealth do not have a human face or any physical reality for him. Why would they? And so Americans woke up one morning in the wake of a massive hurricane to discover the unthinkable: George Bush, surrounded by the flattery of sycophants, as hopelessly lost in the face of disaster as an adult human being could possibly be, barring a childhood spent on a deserted island.
So a first generalization to be drawn might be this: when considering a child of privilege for a leadership role, one might do well to ask "Has native aptitude or life experience done anything to season this person, and raise them above a hopelessly superficial and shallow understanding of the realities of life?" If the answer is "no", then don't vote for that child of privilege. Children of privilege can amuse themselves with many more harmless pursuits than the misadministration of the presidency of the United States.
Now, it has long been recognized that those with a hunger for power are not necessarily those whom it would be most desirable to endow with it; and there is, to a lesser degree, a parallel recognition that those who most lust after wealth are those most likely to be crippled by its attainment (think, for example, of the myth of King Midas). In the former case, the power is typically sought as an adornment of the ego, and recognition of the responsibility that must accompany the exercise of power is disdained. In the latter case, those apt to attain wealth are likely to be narrow and selfish to begin with, and the attainment of wealth often acts to further reinforce these traits by isolating the individual from the economic and social realities that everyone else must deal with.
Rather ominously, a majority of US politicians are quite wealthy; and, obviously, the majority have a lust for power.
Interestingly, we can today go far beyond the truth of these insights, thanks to some progress in the psychology of personality, to attain yet deeper insight. It happens that we now know something about the sort of person who lusts after power.
A number of studies have grown out of a personality assessment tool known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). More specifically, MBTI research has show that one personality type (known as ESTJ) is especially drawn to wealth and power . Unfortunately, ESTJs tend to make poor choices for a leadership role, and can't really be trusted to do the right thing with wealth, either. Bush, unfortunately, is an ESTJ, so far as that assessment can be made in light of known traits.
Let's see why that's an especially bad thing in a president.
To begin with ESTJs are extroverted. Unless carefully coached, extroverts tend to:
Act, then think
Talk more than listen
Prefer breadth to depth
That is, the extrovert is apt to make fast but poor decisions because there tends to be little intellectual depth behind his choices. Bush, of course, is an extrovert, and is famous for "trusting his gut", another way of saying that there's no thought or wisdom behind his decisions. (He is also well-known for being a "C-student" and for having no interest in reading).
Next, Bush is a "Sensor." Sensors are strictly interested in what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. They have little imagination, and therefore are incapable of good anticipation and long range planning. (Note the excuses made for not anticipating the events of 9/11, and similar excuses made in the wake of Katrina. "Who could have anticipated this?") Sensors are also "traditionalists", who tend to look backward, clinging to the past instead of seeing the possibilities of the future. Thus, their thinking tends to be rigid and inflexible, and they are prone to be petulant and stubborn. At best, they tend to be limited to consideration of what is happening in the narrow present; and, as part of their lack of imagination, they like the very concrete. (Bush has a passion for numbers.)
Bush is also a "thinker" type, not in the sense of being an intellectual, but rather in the sense that he tends to be devoid of both empathy and compassion. (He has been carefully coached to present a different public persona, but is known to be cold, critical, and a crisp disciplinarian in private.) Caring deeply about other people doesn't come naturally to him. Bullying, however, does come naturally to the ESTJ. Malaysian academics who conducted a study of lawyers and administrators found that the most common personality type was the ESTJ (29%). Interestingly, the Australian recruitment firm, TMP Worldwide, found that 18 per cent of employees said they had been bullied - and that the worst offender was the legal profession, where 33 per cent of employees said they were experiencing bullying tactics from their bosses. Also interesting is the fact that lawyers are twice as likely as the general population to be alcoholics. (See this link.)
A young George Bush exhibits classic ESTJ behavior on the rugby field at Yale. (Photo first appeared at: http://www.progressiveliving.org/politics/week_2004_08_08.html)

Finally, Bush is a "judger." He tends to see things in terms of black and white, is inflexible, and authoritarian. Because judgers love to make decisions, extroversion is a poor trait to bring into combination with this trait. This is the sort of person likely to want thought police, with or without the excuse of terrorism. There can never be enough "law and order" for such persons, provided that they're the ones making the laws.
(Interestingly, all of these traits may well be in play in the adoption of political conservatism as a political orientation and religious fundamentalism as a belief system, but that's an essay for another day.)
So a second generalization to be drawn is this: beware any ESTJ in a position of authority, particularly a position of authority that requires vision and long-range planning.
To summarize: what we have in George Bush is a child of privilege who, as an ESTJ, lusts after power, but who lacks all aptitude for its exercise in a role such as the presidency, where aptitude for vision and long-range planning are essential. This worst of all personality types for such a role was powerfully negatively reinforced by the sociopathic tendencies that frequently arise in the families of the wealthy (attitudes of superiority, intolerance of criticism, and social , economic, and intellectual isolation). The result: among the most incompetent presidents in US history, and a catastrophe for both the United States and the world.


And one great quote from William Rivers Pitt(a guy I have interviewed on a conservative radio station) from the article Mom sent me:

Your greatness will be defined by how we rise to overcome and undo what you have done. Your greatness will stand forever if we never, ever forget the hard, bitter lessons you taught us. We are responsible for this republic, for our Constitution, and for each other. We are our brother's keeper. You taught us that by becoming our Cain. You nearly slew us, but here we stand, and we defy the place in history you would relegate us to. We defy you, and by doing so, we rise.


Amen Brother