JOHN W. DEAN Predicting the Nature of Obama's Presidency

FindLaw columnist and former counsel to the president John Dean makes predictions regarding Barack Obama's impending presidency, based on work by scholar and author James David Barber. Barber divided presidents into four categories based on whether they perform actively or passively in their political roles, and whether their feelings toward those roles were positive or negative. Dean deems Obama an active/positive president, and George W. Bush an active/negative president -- and explains how Bush's characterization accurately predicted important aspects of his presidency, and how Obama's characterization may do the same. Dean also notes which other presidents fell into the same categories as Obama and Bush, and how those presidents fared.

Barber says surprisingly little about Abraham Lincoln, but he appears to be the first of a number of great presidents who were active/positive types.

The Active/Positive Presidents: Barack Obama Fits This Mold

Active/Positive types not only dive into politics and government with gusto, becoming whirlwinds of activity, but they truly enjoy doing it. As Barber explains these are people with relatively high-esteem who have enjoyed success in their political careers before arriving in the White House. They are people who see productiveness as a value, and adopt styles that are flexible, adaptive, and "suiting the dance to the music."

Barber reports that Thomas Jefferson was our first active/positive president. "A child of the Enlightenment," he applied his reasoning skills to organizing the new government accordingly. He was a man of wide interests, "delightful humor," and astute political judgment, Barber notes. Other active/positive presidents Barber names are Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter.

Now the good news. After observing candidate Barack Obama, and reading his two memoirs Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, I strongly believe that he is a prototypical "active/positive" president - under the criteria of Barber's analysis. For that reason, allow me to further draw from Barber's work, to highlight the portrait of an active/positive president's key characteristics - quoting Barber's analysis as follows - for it provides a portrait of the coming Obama presidency, if Barber is correct:

A conviction of capability. The President soon reaches the conclusion that despite weaknesses he knows about, he is fully able to meet the challenges of the job.

Investment without immersion. He shows a deep interest in, and strong attention to, the substance of the issues he decides to take on. He learns quickly what he needs to know and stores in memory a great deal of information he might find useful. Yet there is also a certain detachment, a distance he puts between himself and his work. He has an existence beyond his occupation. A symptom of this objectivity is laughter, at his own blunderings and those of his enemies.

A sense of the future as possible. In his attention, the future is more important than the past. The future is not set, not inevitable either for good or ill. It is not to be mastered by some mechanical application of "principles," but by imaginative experimentation. It will grow out of trends, possibilities, accidents, opportunities--and it can be helped along.

A repertoire of habits. The active-positive President uses a variety of styles, moving flexibly among a number of modes of political action. Such a President seems to base his self-definition on ground deeper than the collection of stylistic approaches he has put together over the years. His style is a bag of tools, not a way of life.

The communication of excitement. The President moves outward from a base of relative strength and connects with other people, stimulating their interest, invigorating their own positive imaginations. From some he may elicit a 'charismatic' response; for nearly all he supplies a sense that he is at the center of fascinating events and that the center is moving."

Although not all active/positive presidents have been great presidents - Jimmy Carter had a failed presidency, though he has been our greatest ex-president - these active/positive traits seem to be the stuff of greatness. Personally, I am thrilled to have another active/positive president with Obama, for it is what the country badly needs.

While I have not done justice to Barber's work in The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, I have noted the uncanny accuracy of his pigeonholing of presidential performance. Under that analysis, Senator John McCain is a prototypical active/negative, and for certain, the country did not need another leader fitting the type of Hoover, Wilson, LBJ, Nixon, and Bush II. Rather, we needed someone with the disposition and abilities to clean up the mess of the last active/negative president.


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