Typing Politicians

[Dream Weaver]

I'm wondering what personality type our presidential candidates are. I'm pretty sure John McCain is ISTP. I watched him in an interview and he didn't seem overly ruffled or emotional which made me peg him a thinker. The interviewer made reference to the famous McCain temper, which screams SP to me. Also, he scored at the bottom of his military class, which makes me think he just wanted to get by in class and go out into the fray, hence the P. Finally, he seemed introverted considering the fact he had to ponder the questions given to him for several seconds before answering. That and just watching him in the interview.

I've also read somewhere that Hilary is INTJ and Barack Obama is ENTP or ENFP, but I can't offer justification for either. So, any thoughts?

[coffeeloverfreak]

I think that most politicians (those who get anywhere, anyway) are Es. They'd pretty much have to be, given the demands of the job.

And with politicians it's tricky, because you have to distinguish their public personas from their actual personalities. The ones who try to come across all "folksy" are usually just calculating on the vote bump from that strategy.

[Antares]

Politicians in my opinion are hard to type. I don't think it needs to be mentioned that we know very little about their lives, let alone their type. I have no experience in politics, yet I can cover my type very easily. Most of the time, I give off the 'ENTP' image.

[Santana28]

Ron Paul is an INTJ or an INFJ... i've read both in different articles

[Agile]

I second Ron Paul as INTJ. Hilary, to me seems pretty intelligent, though don't take that out of context, I would not try to type her.

Barack sounds like NT, from the debates, though he could be ST, I would not know the difference (as of yet). :) He attended excellent schools and practiced law for many years before entering government service, as far as the way he comes across, I would not type him as an E...P, though.

If you visit typelogic (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) they have candidate's pictures and their belief of what the person's type is. But Huckaby as INTJ? Come on.

[Jgib5328]

Politicians are really hard to type, not because they are overly complicated individuals, but because they have to put on a certain image. Guiliani however is an INTJ, I know that. I think it is more valuable to be an EF for a politician. EFs tend to have the most charisma and can seem very likable. NTs would probably do a much better job running the country though. Well I guess most of the upper level businessmen are NTs, so maybe NTs are running the country?





Jgib5328 added to this post, 2 minutes and 22 seconds later...

I second Ron Paul as INTJ. Hilary, to me seems pretty intelligent, though don't take that out of context, I would not try to type her.

Barack sounds like NT, from the debates, though he could be ST, I would not know the difference (as of yet). :) He attended excellent schools and practiced law for many years before entering government service, as far as the way he comes across, I would not type him as an E...P, though.

If you visit typelogic (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) they have candidate's pictures and their belief of what the person's type is. But Huckaby as INTJ? Come on.

That type logic stuff is crap, Mccain an INTP? I agree with the ISTP typing. Huckabee is way to conservative to be an INTJ, or an NT even. NTs can be conservative, but it's being conservative to their own morals and values. I'd hate myself if Hilary was an INTJ, I always heard that she was an ENTJ though.

[Antares]

I've also read somewhere that Hilary is INTJ and Barack Obama is ENTP or ENFP, but I can't offer justification for either. So, any thoughts?

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about the T or F of Obama, but it seems that he appeals to the public a lot in his speeches (from comments about him etc). Like his slogan: "Change we can believe in". Isn't that a bunch of virtue words used in propagandas? I think he's a T with an outward display of F.

[SShack]

A journalist over at Slate typed the Clinton, Obama and McCain MBTIs and her piece is here (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). She types Clinton as ESTJ, Obama as ENFP and McCain as ESTP.

I'm not sure I agree on her opinion of Clinton as extroverted. I think people assume that introverts aren't ambitious enough to pursue leadership as frequently as Clinton has, but I think that's an incorrect assumption. I think some of Clinton's perception issues are based on her being an introvert -- particularly the somewhat sexist issue of coming off cold and calculating. But the writer's discussion is nevertheless interesting.

I agree that Ron Paul's an introvert. I see him as ISTJ. I think the whole newsletter scandal is from him not recognizing the future problem of temporarily letting the more separatist elements of the libertarian movement take control of things, something an N might have thought through.

I thought for a little while that Obama was an ENTP like me and was acting more publicly F to separate himself from Clinton, but looking more closely at his policies and reading some analysis from others, there are some fundamental flaws with them that would fit with him being more idealistic as opposed to inventive.

[Santana28]

I agree that Ron Paul's an introvert. I see him as ISTJ. I think the whole newsletter scandal is from him not recognizing the future problem of temporarily letting the more separatist elements of the libertarian movement take control of things, something an N might have thought through.


you know what... i think that makes a lot of sense. thanks for pointing that out.

[coffeeloverfreak]

I don't know if it's fair to say that anyone who gets caught up in controversy or fails to have the foresight to prevent something like that is an S. S types prefer to use sensing over intuition, but it doesn't mean they lack foresight, or that N types are immune from errors in judgment. Preferring to use your intuition, furthermore, doesn't necessarily make your intuition any better or sharper. Remember, MBTI measures preference, not aptitude.

Anyway, I still stand by my original statement that politicans are near-impossible to type, because they spend so much of their lives pretending to be someone else. We see their public personas, not their true selves.

[SShack]

I don't know if it's fair to say that anyone who gets caught up in controversy or fails to have the foresight to prevent something like that is an S. S types prefer to use sensing over intuition, but it doesn't mean they lack foresight, or that N types are immune from errors in judgment. Preferring to use your intuition, furthermore, doesn't necessarily make your intuition any better or sharper. Remember, MBTI measures preference, not aptitude.

Anyway, I still stand by my original statement that politicans are near-impossible to type, because they spend so much of their lives pretending to be someone else. We see their public personas, not their true selves.

You know, after I wrote that I started thinking about how Ron Paul responded to the controversy, and his "that's the past, I've taken responsibility for it, let's move on" seems more N, doesn't it? You may be right there. I'm not sure many folks intuited back at that point how much information would become available to us as the Internet grew.

On that same idea though, I don't think politicians are able to hide their true personas as much as they use to. More and more chunks of history of all our public figures are becoming available to us all to see and interpret. It's much harder for a public figure to wear one face in public and a different one in private than it used to be. People are analyzing whether John McCain really is a "straight talker" and whether Obama is just all talk and discussions that simply never happened before. Did we ever spend this much time talking about superdelegates before or how primaries actually worked?

[meanlittlechimp]

I agree with you re:Obama. Here is some evidence. You're not going to admit you act like a P unless it's true since on surface, it's not ideal as a campaign tactic:


"In the days since Barack Obama first suggested that his ?greatest weakness? is being disorganized, Hillary Rodham Clinton has hammered him on it, repeatedly highlighting her own organizational and managerial skills in an effort to raise doubts about whether Obama pays enough attention to detail to be successful as president.

The way Clinton?s camp sees it, the distinction is not just who?s better at paper-shuffling and returning e-mails and phone calls.

Rather, they believe Obama?s recent remarks to the Reno Gazette-Journal and in a Jan. 15 debate can be used to make the case that he lacks the ability to hold government accountable.

It?s a story line that dovetails nicely with party criticisms of the Bush administration?s management of Iraq contracts and its response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama first broached the issue in a Jan. 14 interview with the Gazette-Journal editorial board, where he was quoted as saying, ?I?m not an operating officer. Some in this debate around experience seem to think the job of the president is to go in and run some bureaucracy. Well, that?s not my job. My job is to set a vision of ?Here?s where the bureaucracy needs to go.??

The next day, NBC?s Brian Williams, serving as a moderator of a debate in Las Vegas, read part of the quote to Obama, then asked, ?Do the American people want someone in the Oval Office who is an operating officer??

Obama responded that ?being president is not making sure that schedules are being run properly or the paperwork is being shuffled effectively. It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go.?

Later in the debate, when asked about his greatest strength and weakness, he elaborated: ?I ask my staff never to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it, because I will lose it.?

The comment prompted laughter, and he continued: ?My desk and my office doesn't look good. I've got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff. And that's not trivial; I need to have good people in place who can make sure that systems run. That's what I've always done, and that's why we run not only a good campaign but a good U.S. Senate office."

[Antares]

I think Obama is an 'N', judging from his debates with Alan Keyes. Keyes used the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy in the attempt to make Obama look like an atheist posing as a Christian, because Obama doesn't agree completely with what the scripture says.

[TheEnlightenedOne]

Typelogic.com typed the candidates on their front page:
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[44sunsets]

We discussed Hillary Clinton on the INFJ mailing list many years ago, back when the whole Bill Clinton blowjob saga was in the news, and it was universally agreed that she seems to be the quintessential INTJ. My readings over the years have only strengthened my views in this regard.