PaRfM

Personality

vv The Herald and The Lantel^

Wednesday, January 21,1981

(^Telling of the President

bv David Maxfiftd As Ronald Reagan set tli*s in at /he White House and hegrtis to chart his course for the nation, this may “be an appropriate time to take a lopk at some - other 20th-century ■presidents whose characters ultimately had much to do'with the records ■ of thtur administrations But first a related word about how you voted back in Noverdber It is impor tant to weigh the issues before going to the polls. Americans are told, and every four years millions of voters go through agony Irving to sort out the can didates' stands on everything from nuclear strategy to agricultural subsidies KOR TIIOSK WHO find this quadrennial citizen's duly'tH'Wildering if not actually hopeless, there is ah alternative suggested by a ntimbfr ot historians and political observers In short, it is to focus on the ponUcians character for clues to how ht’is likely tojierform in office. • The basic question in electing our presidents comes down to what their values-aro as individuals rather than to their stands on specific issues." says Marc Pachtef, historian of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and moderator of a recent symposium on ••Presidential Personality " •MANY VOTERS." Pachter adds, "actually do decide on personalities rather than on issues — and they may be .the shrewdest

among us Issues, after all, come and go." . Of course, this approach too is not without its oyn mysteries, and after an election. as‘ Pachter and others realize, there may be some startling, unforeseen times ahead . |;YNDON B. JOHNSON, for example, was regarded as effective within the context of the U S Senate as majority leader. Pachter notes, hut tht presidency posed an entirely different environment for his brand of deal making leadership To complicate any judgment of Johnson. LBJ press secretary George Reedy recalls. "One of the worst things you could do was look at what LBJ was saying rather than what he was doing What, then, are the par lieular personal traits that have served Reagan s predecessors for l>ettor - or worse once they arrived at the White House’’ Besides Johnson, the "Presidential Personality" symposium focused on Richard M, Nixon. John K Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt to get to know the “private man caught up in f the public institution.^ THERE'S A BOOM OF interest in Roosevelt these days, possibly, biographer Edmund Morris says, because of his characteristic forcefulness, optimism and essentially positive view of America and its potential, he was, Said Teddy’s fifth cousin. Franklin U. Roosevelt, "the 'greatest

man I ever knew." Jour nalist Walter Lippmann said of the Republican leader. "He was the only president who actually was lovable." Even his political opponents were impressed by this exceedingly complex, highly energetic personality. "You can’t resist the man." Woodrow Wilson once noted IF ANYTHING, this president was multifaceted - "like writing about seven different men," says Morris, author of The Rise of Theodore* Roosevelt Fragile and weak as a child. RooseveM built himself into a bear of a man but one who devoured at least one book a dav. wrote 70.000 letters in his first 50 years of life, and daily matched wits with natural history scholars. inventors, -employers and the statesmen who paraded through the White House "No chief executive, cer tainly. has ever had so much fun." Morris con eludes. What served Roosevelt so well in the White House. Morris believes, were ••four main seams of character" that developed during his youth, then merged latef in life, he was aggressive, the product of the early health-building regimen. He was righteous, seemingly born with his mind made up. He was full of pride, this demonstrated by his ability to find common strains of ancestry with voters, earning him the nickname, "57

varieties."

LASTLY. THE Roosevelt personality contained a deep seam of militarism, Morris says. At the White House, "to the glazed eyes of most guests," he would demonstrate important military battles by arranging knives and forks in dinner table formations and in one message to Congress. Roosevelt went so far as to assert. "A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace." "Yet the most extraordinary thing about this most pugnacious president." Morris says, "is that his two terms in office (were) completely tranquil, his own military catharsis at San Juan Hill during the SpanishAmerican War, Roosevelt was "at last, incongruously hut wholeheartedly a man •

of peace."

LIKE TEDDY, the na

tion's 35th president. John F. Kennedy, "was a strong president because he was a strong characterin the view of Theodore Sorensen, his White House aide and biographer. And like Roosevelt. Sorensen says. JFK "loved being presi dent, the pomp and the power He thrived on decision-making, the give

and take of politics." Another trait these two

men shared was their love of history. Kennedy knew. .Sorensen says, that history, gives perspective, for one.' teaching that "amenities between nations do not last forever.’’ Above all his other achievements, he

was proud to have authored Profiles in Courage. Like Roosevelt, Kennedy also had a sense of humor,. "devilish” and anchored in repartee whereas Teddy’s was more raucous. This trait “protected him from a sense of self-importance." Sorensen says, and it "helped Kennedy place his gains and losses in perspec-

tive."

IT ALSO apparently gave him the ability to look with a sense of perspective and detachment at the pressing business that rolls into the White House. Once at a meeting. Sorensen remembers, a staff member told JFK that his decision on a particular matter would be the biggest he would ever have to make, "We get one of those every week,*' Kennedy grinned Lyndon Johnson, of course, was a brted apart from Roosevelt or Kennedy: His background — Texas, poor, rural — contrasted with that of Roosevelt and Kennedy -* ‘Eastern, wealthy, urban. And whereas they vfere polished in manner. Johnson's "physical appetites, were gross," George Reedy says. But beyond these traits. American voters, it now. seems, could never have figured this man out. INDEED, "no one really understood this man, including LBJ himself," Reedy says. "I don’t think anyone in his own family understood him fully./fle was a man who was always playing roles. He’d he

Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday. Winston Churchill on Tuesday, Charles ’DeGaulle. \ the next.. Sometimes hdbecame confused about wntsjie was." Once he became president. LBJ’s appeUte for public projects became insatiable. Reedy recalls. "He hated poverty, and he hated it for everyone else. But his domestic projects floundered on two reefs: He passed too many of them and Vietnam drained away so much of the nation’s resources." JOHNSON’S SUC- ’ CESSOR. Richard Nixon, was an equally complex personality — an imaginative foreign pojicy leader to some, a political parish to others. Biographer Fawn Brodie thinks Nixon’s, ultimate downfall was seeded early in life, he was marked, she says, by a ‘‘fatalistic streak that nothing he touched would ever be crowned with ultimate suc-

cess."

"Hatred was a sustaining force for him. a deep dark rage,” Brodie c6ntendS. and lying was his vocabulary. In fact, he once told an associate. "If you can’t lie. you will never go anywhere." Brpdfe believes that Nixon "enjoyed lying.” and when the While House came crashing down around him. "he lied without guilt." What Americans may want in their leaders. Marc Pachter concludes, is for them to "aspire to greatness. And it is in-, 1 teresting to note that .the national character, somehow picks up the tone of the presidency We as a nation may feel better with an optimistic JFK or Theodore- Roosevelt personality." David M Maxfield .writes for the Smithsonian News Service.

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