Obama: For and Against Himself-Observations on Personality During His First Four Years

               At an early age we are taught not to judge.  Not to judge someone by his or her looks, the car they drive, the clothes they wear, or any other materialistic or worldly possessions they may have to their name.  Rather, we are tough to give everyone a chance and base our options of them by less shallow means.  Personality, ethics, and actions are how we would ideally evaluate the people around us.  Yet, how would we understand and analyze the people we cannot come into contact with?  How are we as Americans supposed to decide which presidential candidate we wish to align our support with, if we can’t truly meet them? We have to do this by casting aside political biased and partisanship, and create a real option determined by the issues a candidate stands for.  Sometimes this isn’t enough though, we need to understand a person’s personality and past before we can cast our ballots and set our decisions in stone.  Steven J. Wayne, of George Town University, feels the same way about this topic, and closely observed Obama’s behavior and past to gain a clear understanding of his personality, and how this affects his style of “ruling”.  By reading Wayne’s book Personality and Politics: Obama For and Against Himself, the reader can gain a concrete of idea of the kind of person current President Barack Obama truly is.  I will discus my options based on the major themes I came across while reading Wayne’s book.  These themes include: Obama as a realist or an idealist, his decision making ability, and finally if he is a transformational or transactional figure as leader. 

            We will start by examining the question is Obama an idealist or a realist?  An idealist is someone who is guided more by ideals than by practical considerations.  While a realist is a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are.  An example of each of these types of people are Karl Marx, an idealist, and Niccolò Machiavelli who was a realist.  Marx had a romantic idea of communism, and used this “imagine if” idea of it to gain support of an unproven theory in his writing The Communist Manifesto.  Machiavelli demonstrated his realist ideas in his book The Prince, where he simply explained how to be a strong ruler.  He didn’t use any romantic ideas he simply stated facts he gathered from historical events from around his time.  I believe Obama is more of an idealist than he is a realist.  He believes humans are generally good and hard working.  Obama sees himself as living proof the American dream can be reached.  In his Inaugural address he said, “… we can shape our individual and collective destines, so long as we rediscover the traditional values of hard work…” The key word in that sentence is “rediscover”.  He has no control over this, he is hoping on the American people to make a change to better the country.  This is very similar to Marx as he was hoping to make a change in the ideas of the people through his writing.  “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” according to Obama “immortalizes the American belief in individual freedom…” (Wayne, 38)  He believes that if he can level the playing field, people will work to better their lives, for themselves and the people around them.  He is lead by the ideals he found while discovering his own identity, and his religious beliefs are used as a moral guideline, and not a literal way to live his life. 

            Obama makes rational decisions, and he likes to please the people he is working for.  He keeps his focus on the doable, and understands that compromise of his plans is necessary to making anything happen in politics.  His visions and ideas are strong, but he will sacrifice here and there to see his ideas pass through and gain support. Obama describes himself as, “… a practical person, somebody who, I think can cut through some very complicated problems and figure out the right course of action.”  He avoids taking risks, and is slow to rush to judgment because he needs to think about everything his decisions can affect.  “Rigor, logic, and rationality guide his thought process.  He tends to keep whatever emotions he feels well buried.” (Wayne, 52) He thinks with his head when it comes to making policies and laws.  “He’s very methodical in how he evaluates decisions.” David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist says, “He’ll engage you in a dialog on the options.  And then he’ll make a decision.  And he doesn’t look back at that decision.”  He is bold and he is confident.  In a way Obama is an elitist because of his ego.  Which he is fully aware of, this and his lack of emotion in making decisions makes him appear distant form regular people.

            Lastly, is Obama a transformational or transactional leader? A transformational leader goes beyond managing day-to-day operations and crafts strategies for taking his “company” to the next level of performance and success.  A transformational leader thinks about how to better the future of his “company”.  A Transactional leader is more concerned with maintaining the normal flow of things and keeping everything running smoothly.  Ideally one must possess traits from both styles of leadership to be successful, but I believe Obama is more of a transformational leader.  He is concerned with bettering the country for the future generations.  He wants to fix the problems we have now, and establish new programs to better situations down the road.  Obama’s policies on social change are what lead me to classify him as a transformational leader.  The easier thing to do would be to sit back and say everything is fine, but Obama addresses and warrants change.  Obama is pro-choice, pro same sex marriage rights, and his The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare as it’s now known) are all solid proof that he is trying to change the country for what he believes to be for the better.  “Obama sees government as a positive force in promoting greater contrary, Obama sees government as a positive force in promoting greater economic and social opportunities, especially for those at the lowest end of the socio-economic scale. “ (Wayne, 40)  Obama is trying to create programs and situations to better the lives of poor Americans.  He has been doing this since he was a young politician in Chicago.  Obama uses the Bully Pulpit to express his options on these issues.  He always speaks of how he plans to better the country, and he has been successful (to an extent) in doing so during his first four years as a president.

            In conclusion, I feel President Obama has done a good job in office during his first four years.  His upbringing and his search for his identity in a confusing time and in an unorthodox situation shaped him as a person and established his moral and political beliefs, as well as served as a means to keep him grounded and his ego in check.  He is an idealist, yet logical and is pushing for social and economic change.  He has already made many changes for the better, he cut prescription price of Medicare recipients by 50%, brought troops home, passed a $789 billion economic stimulus plan, Removed restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research, and much more.  Although sometimes it takes him a while to get his ideas passed, he almost always gets things done.  He is a man of change for the better, yet he keeps the traditional American values of hard work in order to prosper in check.  The manifest destiny idea is still alive in America.  If you work hard enough anything can be yours, and President Obama wants to keep that dream alive for millions of hard working Americans today.