A Presidental Character

AP Government and Politics

Barber Assignment

In the book The Presidential Character, by James David Barber, Barber talks about the different personalities of previous presidents and how their personalities had a negative or positive influence on their election and term as president. A person’s character shows a lot about who they are as a person.

“ … Character is the way the President orients himself toward life - not for the moment, but enduringly. Character is a person’s stance as he confronts experience. And at the core of character, a man confronts himself (Barber 8). ” Barber’s book is also useful to see how prepared a candidate is to be president. Judging a person’s personality, especially a person who is constantly in the spot light, helps you to understand what kind of person they are, what they are passionate about, how they handle themselves in stressful situations, and really anything if you put enough research into it.

James David Barber simplifies his theory by dividing character into four different group patterns. He tries to support his theory and convince people that one person can be subjected to one group. A person who is considered active-positive is a person who has a high self esteem, values productivity, and is constantly working towards their own personal goals. An active-positive person is also considered well adapted (Barber 12). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, were all - according to Barber, considered to be active-positive people (McGuire). An active-negative character puts excessive effort into their work but does not receive or feel their own emotional reward. They are rarely satisfied with the work they have done. They are also said to have compulsive and perferctionistic personalities (Barber 12). Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon Baines Johnson were judged to be active-negative. William Taft, and Warren Harding, labeled as receptive, compliant, affection seeking, agreeable, and easily manipulated people. In Barber terms they are considered to be passive-positive (McGuire and Barber 12). The final group, called passive-negative, consists of people who are not enthusiastic about politics, have a low self-esteem, do not have much experience, are vague, but feel that they have a certain civic duty. The best example of a person who was passive-negative would be America’s first president, George Washington; he did not necessarily want to be the president, or at least not the first president of America. He felt pressured but was elected unanimously and he felt that he had a duty to his fellow Americans. Other presidents which fall into the passive-negative group are Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Eisenhower.

The Presidential Character is a pretty convincing book because it is full of what seems to be all fact. By some, his book is considered to be bias, fake and “psychoanalytic mumbo jumbo (Davis).” In a critical essay written