If success and prominence were Johnson and Baines bloodlines, LBJ’s childhood also contributed to his larger-than-life personality. Johnson was an emotional orphan. He was the offspring of “absent” parents: his father was a self-absorbed character who was often away from the household, and his mother was usually too depressed to fill her children’s emotional needs. LBJ’s childhood is an object lesson in the formation of a narcissistic personality. Yet it does not explain how so self-centered a child, adolescent, and mature man was able to translate his neediness into constructive achievements that were the envy of healthier personalities. LBJ is also an object-lesson in the complexity of human behavior. He may have been, as New York Times columnist Russell Baker says, “a human puzzle so complicated nobody can ever understand it.”
.. Throughout his life Johnson had demonstrated a compensatory grandiosity that spawned legends. In one of them, German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard asked Johnson whether he had been born in a log cabin. “No, no, no,” LBJ answered, “you’re confusing me with Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger.”
.. Johnson’s behavior largely came from the conviction that intimidation was indispensable in bending people to his will. It was gratifying to have people love you, but it was essential to overpower them if you were to win on controversial public issues.
.. I remember once asking him, `Why did you cast that vote, Mr. President?’ `Bob,’ he said, `one thing you’ll learn someday is that you have to be a demagogue on a lot of little things if you want to be around to have your way on the big things.’ I’ll never forget him saying that. A lesson in primer politics from the Master.”
..The son of a famous father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Harvard-educated, handsome, charming, urbane, a northeastern aristocrat with all the advantages, JFK appeared to be everything LBJ was not. As painful to Johnson, Kennedy’s claim on the presidency seemed unmerited alongside of his own. “It was the goddamnedest thing,” Johnson later told Kearns, “here was a whippersnapper…. He never said a word of importance in the Senate and he never did a thing. But somehow … he managed to create the image of himself as a shining intellectual, a youthful leader who would change the face of the country.” Behind Kennedy’s back, Johnson called him “sonny boy,” a “lightweight” who needed “a little gray in his hair.”
The Mind of Donald Trump
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency
.. More than even Ronald Reagan, Trump seems supremely cognizant of the fact that he is always acting.
.. Research decisively shows that higher scores on extroversion are associated with greater happiness and broader social connections, higher scores on conscientiousness predict greater success in school and at work, and higher scores on agreeableness are associated with deeper relationships. By contrast, higher scores on neuroticism are always bad, having proved to be a risk factor for unhappiness, dysfunctional relationships, and mental-health problems. From adolescence through midlife, many people tend to become more conscientious and agreeable, and less neurotic, but these changes are typically slight: The Big Five personality traits are pretty stable across a person’s lifetime.
.. The psychologists Steven J. Rubenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer, in conjunction with about 120 historians and other experts, have rated all the former U.S. presidents, going back to George Washington, on all five of the trait dimensions.
.. Across his lifetime, Donald Trump has exhibited a trait profile that you would not expect of a U.S. president: sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness.
.. A cardinal feature of high extroversion is relentless reward-seeking. Prompted by the activity of dopamine circuits in the brain, highly extroverted actors are driven to pursue positive emotional experiences, whether they come in the form of social approval, fame, or wealth.
.. People low in agreeableness are described as callous, rude, arrogant, and lacking in empathy.
.. ” By the standards of reality TV, Trump’s disagreeableness may not be so shocking. But political candidates who want people to vote for them rarely behave like this.
.. According to Barbara Res, who in the early 1980s served as vice president in charge of construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan, the emotional core around which Donald Trump’s personality constellates is anger: “As far as the anger is concerned, that’s real for sure. He’s not faking it,” she told The Daily Beast in February.
.. Research suggests that extroverts tend to take high-stakes risks and that people with low levels of openness rarely question their deepest convictions.
.. Like Bush, a President Trump might try to swing for the fences in an effort to deliver big payoffs—to make America great again, as his campaign slogan says.
.. Because he is not burdened with Bush’s low level of openness (psychologists have rated Bush at the bottom of the list on this trait), Trump may be a more flexible and pragmatic decision maker, more like Bill Clinton than Bush: He may look longer and harder than Bush did before he leaps.
.. although the cool rationality does not always seem to fit, probably because Trump’s disagreeableness appears so strongly motivated by anger.
.. Research shows that people low in agreeableness are typically viewed as untrustworthy. Dishonesty and deceit brought down Nixon and damaged the institution of the presidency. It is generally believed today that all politicians lie, or at least dissemble, but Trump appears extreme in this regard... PolitiFact recently calculated that only 2 percent of the claims made by Trump are true, 7 percent are mostly true, 15 percent are half true, 15 percent are mostly false, 42 percent are false, and 18 percent are “pants on fire.”.. Opponents called him a jackass—the origin of the donkey symbol for the Democratic Party... Jackson fought at least 14 duels in his life, leaving him with bullet fragments lodged throughout his body. On the last day of his presidency, he admitted to only two regrets: that he was never able to shoot Henry Clay or hang John C. Calhoun... Authoritarianism is also associated with suspiciousness of the humanities and the arts, and with cognitive rigidity, militaristic sentiments, and Christian fundamentalism... As the social psychologist Jesse Graham has noted, Trump appeals to an ancient fear of contagion, which analogizes out-groups to parasites, poisons, and other impurities... Disgust is a primal response to impurity. On a daily basis, Trump seems to experience more disgust, or at least to say he does, than most people do... As Jerry Falwell Jr. told The New York Times in February, “All the social issues—traditional family values, abortion—are moot if isis blows up some of our cities or if the borders are not fortified.”..For Trump, the concept of “the deal” represents what psychologists call a personal schema—a way of knowing the world that permeates his thoughts...A key to successful decision making is knowing what your schemata are, so that you can change them when you need to...In the negotiations for the Menie Estate in Scotland, Trump wore Tom Griffin down by making one outlandish demand after another and bargaining hard on even the most trivial issues of disagreement... This involves getting people into a room and negotiating compromises until everyone walks out of that room on the same page.
Amid the polarized political rhetoric of 2016, it is refreshing to hear a candidate invoke the concept of compromise and acknowledge that different voices need to be heard.
.. For psychologists, it is almost impossible to talk about Donald Trump without using the word narcissism. Asked to sum up Trump’s personality for an article in Vanity Fair, Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard, responded, “Remarkably narcissistic.”
.. When, in the summer of 1999, he stood up to offer remarks at his father’s funeral, Trump spoke mainly about himself. It was the toughest day ofhis own life, Trump began. He went on to talk about Fred Trump’s greatest achievement: raising a brilliant and renowned son.
.. People with strong narcissistic needs want to love themselves, and they desperately want others to love them too—or at least admire them, see them as brilliant and powerful and beautiful, even just see them, period. The fundamental life goal is to promote the greatness of the self, for all to see.
.. In a 2013 Psychological Science research article, behavioral scientists ranked U.S. presidents on characteristics of what the authors called “grandiose narcissism.” Lyndon Johnson scored the highest, followed closely by Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Nixon, and Clinton were next.
.. On the positive side, grandiose narcissism is associated with initiating legislation, public persuasiveness, agenda setting, and historians’ ratings of “greatness.” On the negative side, it is also associated with unethical behavior and congressional impeachment resolutions.
.. Steve Jobs was, in my opinion, every bit Trump’s equal when it comes to grandiose narcissism. He heaped abuse on colleagues, subordinates, and friends; cried, at age 27, when he learned that Time magazine had not chosen him to be Man of the Year ..
.. Psychological research demonstrates that many narcissists come across as charming, witty, and charismatic upon initial acquaintance ..
.. But more often than not, narcissists wear out their welcome. Over time, people become annoyed, if not infuriated, by their self-centeredness. When narcissists begin to disappoint those whom they once dazzled, their descent can be especially precipitous. There is still truth today in the ancient proverb: Pride goeth before the fall.
.. Extending his narrative to the story of his country, Bush believed that American society could recapture the wholesome family values and small-town decency of yesteryear, by embracing a brand of compassionate conservatism. On the international front, he believed that oppressed people everywhere could enjoy the same kind of God-given rights—self-determination and freedom—if they could be emancipated from their oppressors. His redemptive story helped him justify, for better and for worse, a foreign war aimed at overthrowing a tyrant.
.. Donald Trump grew up in a wealthy 1950s family with a mother who was devoted to the children and a father who was devoted to work. Parked in front of their mansion in Jamaica Estates, Queens, was a Cadillac for him and a Rolls-Royce for her.
.. On one such trip, Donald asked Fred why he always stood to the side of the tenant’s door after ringing the bell. “Because sometimes they shoot right through the door,” his father replied. While Fred’s response may have been an exaggeration, it reflected his worldview. He trained his sons to be tough competitors, because his own experience taught him that if you were not vigilant and fierce, you would never survive in business. His lessons in toughness dovetailed with Donald’s inborn aggressive temperament.
.. Military school reinforced the strong work ethic and sense of discipline Trump had learned from his father. And it taught him how to deal with aggressive men, like his intimidating baseball coach, Theodore Dobias:
What I did, basically, was to convey that I respected his authority, but that he didn’t intimidate me. It was a delicate balance. Like so many strong guys, Dobias had a tendency to go for the jugular if he smelled weakness. On the other hand, if he sensed strength but you didn’t try to undermine him, he treated you like a man.
.. In Crippled America, he says that a first step toward victory is building up the armed forces: “Everything begins with a strong military. Everything.” The enemies facing the United States are more terrifying than those the hero has confronted in Queens and Manhattan. “There has never been a more dangerous time,” Trump says. Members of isis “are medieval barbarians” who must be pursued “relentlessly wherever they are, without stopping, until every one of them is dead.”
.. David Winter, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, analyzed U.S. presidential inaugural addresses and found that those presidents who laced their speeches with power-oriented, aggressive imagery were more likely than those who didn’t to lead the country into war. The rhetoric that Trump uses to characterize both his own life story and his attitudes toward America’s foes is certainly aggressive. And, as noted, his extroversion and narcissism suggest a willingness to take big risks—actions that history will remember.
.. What higher prize will victory secure? Here the story seems to go mute.
.. Nearly two centuries ago, President Andrew Jackson displayed many of the same psychological characteristics we see in Donald Trump—the extroversion and social dominance, the volatile temper, the shades of narcissism, the populist authoritarian appeal. Jackson was, and remains, a controversial figure in American history.
Nonetheless, it appears that Thomas Jefferson had it wrong when he characterized Jackson as completely unfit to be president, a dangerous man who choked on his own rage. In fact, Jackson’s considerable success in dramatically expanding the power of the presidency lay partly in his ability to regulate his anger and use it strategically to promote his agenda.
.. It is always Donald Trump playing Donald Trump, fighting to win, but never knowing why.
Trump: “I try and unwound myself”
Trump, who criticized McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and made disparaging comments about former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s face, said he lashes out when he feels cornered.
“When I’m wounded, I go after people hard,” he told Kelly. “I try and unwound myself.”
But he said the aggression was a key ingredient in his meteoric rise against Republican rivals, even if it doesn’t appear presidential to his critics.
“If I didn’t conduct myself in the way I’ve done, I don’t think I would have been successful,” said Trump. “If I were soft, if I were presidential. In a way it’s a bad word, because there’s nothing wrong with being presidential.”
Why Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem
Boosting your ego won’t make you feel better. Instead, try talking to yourself like you would your best friend.
.. Well, it seems like it’s just deeply permeated, especially American culture, where we have very high levels of self-esteem and narcissism. I think because of the big self-esteem movement, people just got it in their heads that the key to psychological health was self-esteem. Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell showed that because of this emphasis on self-esteem, we actually got a generation of narcissists.
.. It’s not having high self-esteem is the problem, it’s pursuing it, which is usually based on feeling special and above-average or better than others. The best way to think about the problem of self-esteem is not whether or not you have it, but what you do to get it. That’s where the issues really come in... There’s a large body of research showing that bullying is largely caused by the quest for high self-esteem—the process of feeling special and better-than... So if I can pick on the weird, nerdy kid, I actually get a self-esteem boost. Then, if you look at things like prejudice, at least some element playing a role in prejudice is if I feel that my religious group or my ethnic group is better than yours, that’s one way to make a social comparison, and I am actually boosting my self-esteem... One of the reasons boys don’t suffer as much from low self-esteem is that boys, growing up, they think they’re pretty attractive. They rate their own attractiveness pretty high. The standards of beauty are much higher for girls than for boys. For girls, from the third grade, you start seeing a nose-dive in how attractive they think they are... So, when we have self-compassion, when we fail, it’s not “poor me,” it’s “well, everyone fails.” Everyone struggles. This is what it means to be human. And that really radically alters how we relate to failure and difficulty. When we say, “Oh, this is normal, this is part of what it means to human,” that opens the door to the grow from the experience. If we feel like it’s abnormal, this shouldn’t be happening, then we start blaming ourselves... A big one, which a lot of people just can’t quite believe, is that it enhances motivation. People who are more self-compassionate, when they fail, they’re less afraid of failure... It’s a very small difference, but it’s consistent: Women tend to be less self-compassionate than men... It seems to be the feminine women … when you think about it, when you really identify with norms of self-sacrifice, “I should always be meeting the needs of others,” a lot of those problems that come from identifying with the traditional female stereotype. They’re the ones who seem to suffer more. This is kind of new data, I haven’t even published this data yet, it’s kind of interesting but it makes sense to me. Women are told they should not take care of themselves; that they should always be outwardly focused... People who are more self-compassionate are more likely to take personal responsibility for harming others and are more likely to apologize.