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Is [Your Favorite Politician Here] Narcissistic Enough To Be A Good President?

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I expect we all agree that the presidency is not a job for a shrinking violet.  We acknowledge that a president without self-confidence would be a disaster in the making.  But just how confident do we want our president to be?  Is the kind of extroversion that helps people succeed in modern political campaigns also helpful in making our presidents better leaders once elected?

An interesting study published in Psychological Science suggests the benefits of narcissism outweigh the harms.  The study rated all U.S. presidents (through George W. Bush) on a narcissism scale, and then tested whether their level of narcissism was correlated with objective measures of their success as presidents.  Researchers broke narcissism into two subdomains: (1) grandiose narcissism—characterized by flamboyance and interpersonal dominance and (2) vulnerable narcissism—characterized by emotional fragility and social withdrawal.

Here is a picture of how presidents stack up on these traits:

As you can see, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism are not mutually exclusive.  LBJ and Nixon, for example, rated highly on both measures.

As for presidential performance, vulnerable narcissism isn’t associated with much of anything.  But grandiosity?  It is associated with the ability to communicate, the ability to push a political agenda through Congress, and measures of overall leadership ability.

But there is a downside.  Grandiose presidents were more likely to take big risks and even more likely to be put through impeachment proceedings.  (Think Clinton and the blue dress.)

In today’s political climate, narcissism is practically a prerequisite of a successful presidential candidacy.  Indeed, the researchers found that presidential narcissism is increasing over time.  Perhaps our best hope is to do what we can to elect grandiose narcissists as presidents, and then surround them with people strong enough to prevent them from taking unnecessary risks.

Easier said than done!