Portrait of George W. Bush As a “Late Bloomer”

College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU

Psychology Faculty Publications Psychology

9-2000

Portrait of George W. Bush as a “Late Bloomer”

Aubrey Immelman St. John's University / College of St. Benedict, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Immelman, A. (2000, September). Portrait of George W. Bush as a “late bloomer.” Clio's Psyche, 7(2), 55–57. Retrieved from Digital Commons website: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_pubs/ 12/

Portrait of George W. Bush As a “Late Bloomer”

Aubrey Immelman St. John’s University, Minn.

Speaking with reporters yesterday as she The words commonly used to visited the Austin campaign characterize Bush capture the essence of headquarters of her son, George W. what contemporary personality theorist Bush, Barbara Bush said: “George is no Theodore Millon calls the “outgoing dummy … maybe he was a tad of a late personality pattern.” Bush clearly bloomer.” recognizes his central personal quality, — The Washington Post, Dec. 3, 1999 as affirmed in his own words in a 1994 interview with Tom Fiedler of the Miami It’s a hot simmering day in August 1989. Herald: “When your name is George The new part-owner of the Texas Bush, with the kind of personality I Rangers is sitting behind the batting cage have, which is a very engaging watching baseball practice. The $2,500 personality, at least outgoing, in which black eel-skin boots of the Lone Star my job is to sell tickets to baseball state’s future governor are clearly games, you’re a public person.” visible, as is the emblazoned Texas flag, which seems as vibrant as “Dubya” Millon notes, however, that few people himself. exhibit personality patterns in “pure” or prototypal form. Most personalities To those who know him best, represent a blend of two or more presidential candidate George W. Bush prevailing orientations, and Bush is no is a likeable, gregarious personality, exception. Beyond his trademark charming and congenial. If ever proof gregariousness, Bush’s college cronies was needed that character endures, remember him as “mischievous” and a Dubya would be it: College classmates “prankster.” Those words evoke images characterize Bush as “personable,” of Millon’s “dissenting pattern” — a “outgoing,” and “funny,” while dauntless, adventurous, unruly childhood friends describe “the personality type. Bombastic Bushkin” in similar terms.

Originally published in Clio’s Psyche (Journal of the Psychohistory Forum), vol. 7, no. 2, (Sept. 2000), pp. 55–57.

Bush’s colorful life story bears witness turned his life in a direction that would to an indelible outgoing streak, tinged ultimately take him to the pinnacle of with an unruly, dauntless element. At power in politics. age 20, frat boy George was questioned, arrested, and charged with disorderly This turning point in the life of conduct following the disappearance of a George W. Bush marks a juncture where wreath from a New Haven storefront. psychological inference diverges from (The charges were later dropped.) The direct biographical interpretation. The errant scion of the Bush clan had another conventional wisdom concerning Bush’s run-in with the law at Princeton when, midlife course correction is that Laura with fellow frolicking Yale fans, he Bush’s exhortations played a pivotal flattened the goalposts following a role, as did personal faith and the healing football game. This time, Bush was power of heart-to-heart talks with family detained, questioned, and told to leave friend Billy Graham and other pastoral town. For a future governor who would advisers. later invoke education as an election incantation, the budding young Bush’s But consideration of Bush’s character in college years at Yale were remarkably broader context raises another rooted in the less cerebral components of possibility. The adventurous, dauntless a college education. personality style is a normal, adaptive variant of a personality pattern that in Following graduation from Yale and a extreme cases may emerge as an Vietnam-era stint in the Texas Air antisocial personality disorder. Perhaps National Guard, and armed with his by dint of more favorable childhood natural exuberance, his daddy’s socialization experiences the more connections, and an MBA from Harvard adaptive styles express themselves, as Business School, the 29-year-old Bush Millon puts it, “in behaviors that are returned to Texas in the summer of minimally obtrusive, especially when 1975, “drawn by the entrepreneurial manifested in sublimated forms, such as spirit of the energy business,” to forge a independence strivings, ambition, career for himself in the risky oil competition, risk-taking, and exploration and development business. adventuresomeness.” Risky, perhaps, but undaunting for someone propelled by an adventurous In The New Personality Self-Portrait personality with its love of high-risk (1995), John M. Oldham and Lois B. challenges, gift of the gab, and talent for Morris characterize individuals with this thriving on sheer wits and ingenuity. kind of adventurous personality style as bold, tough, persuasive, “silver-tongued” Throughout his time in the oil business, charmers talented in the art of winning Bush, by his own admission, was friends and influencing people, who like “drinking and carousing and fumbling to keep moving and are adept at getting around.” But the “so-called wild, exotic by on wits and ingenuity, with a history days” of his youth ended abruptly just of childhood and adolescent mischief after his 40th birthday in 1986 when and hell-raising. Bush biographer Bill Bush unceremoniously jumped on the Minutaglio writes in First Son (1999) wagon, reigned in his unruliness, and that Bush “loved it” when Richard Ben

Originally published in Clio’s Psyche (Journal of the Psychohistory Forum), vol. 7, no. 2, (Sept. 2000), pp. 55–57.

Cramer, in his chronicle of the 1988 asserts that the experiential history of presidential campaign, What It Takes “socially sublimated antisocials” is often (1993), called him “an ass-kicking foot imbued with secondary status in the soldier, a quick-witted spy, the ‘Roman family: “It is not only in socially candle’ in the family.” underprivileged families or underclass communities that we see the emergence Oldham and Morris’s portrayal of this of antisocial individuals. The key pattern provides the theoretical problem for all has been their failure to underpinnings for what Bush himself has experience the feeling of being treated referred to as his “nomadic” period and fairly and having been viewed as a the “so-called wild, exotic days” of his person/child of value in the family youth. The American Psychiatric context. Such situations occur in many Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical middle- and upper-middle class families. Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM-IV) Here, parents may have given special description of people with antisocial attention to another sibling who was personalities as “excessively admired and highly esteemed, at least in opinionated, self-assured, or cocky” the eyes of the ‘deprived’ youngster.” individuals having “a glib, superficial charm,” does not seem too far removed The circumstances surrounding the death from accounts of the — to borrow his of his three-year-old sister Robin when own phrase — “young and George was seven, younger brother Jeb’s irresponsible” Bush in his 20s and 30s. early achievements, and the unspoken burden of being the standard bearer of But the clincher is this: According to the Bush legacy may all have played a DSM-IV, antisocial personality disorder part in the emergence of these “may become less evident or remit as the speculative dynamics. Pamela Colloff, in individual grows older, particularly in the 1999 “Who is George W. Bush” the fourth decade of life.” Ultimately, we special issue of Texas Monthly, have no way of corroborating the root chronicles how, during the seven months cause of Bush’s dramatic midlife change that his sister battled leukemia in a New at age 40; human behavior, after all, is York hospital with mother Barbara Bush determined by multiple causes, none of at her bedside and father George Bush which can be experimentally controlled shuttling back and forth between in the psychobiographical study of lives. Midland and New York, George W. and Thus, attributing diagnostic meaning to his baby brother Jeb were often left in Bush’s midlife metamorphosis must of the care of family friends. And in a 1998 necessity remain highly speculative. New York Times Magazine profile, Sam Howe Verhovek paints the young Psychobiographically, the operative George Bush as “a mischievous boy with question is whether Bush’s a passion for sports, especially baseball, developmental history reveals and a penchant for wisecracks that may compelling evidence of socialization well have its origins in a family tragedy. experiences consistent with the … [B]oth of his parents told friends that hypothesized underlying dynamics of George seemed to develop a joking, dauntless, antisocial character traits. In bantering style in a determined bid to lift Disorders of Personality (1996), Millon them from their grief.”

Originally published in Clio’s Psyche (Journal of the Psychohistory Forum), vol. 7, no. 2, (Sept. 2000), pp. 55–57.

Concerning Jeb’s favored status in the effective policy, fail to exhibit depth of Bush family and George W.’s burden of comprehension or understand the first-born status, Paul Burka, also in the broader implications of his decisions, Texas Monthly special issue, writes: and force decisions to be made “[George W. Bush] will inevitably be prematurely. compared to his father. … They spent quality time together … but well into As the 2000 presidential campaign George W.’s adulthood, their unfolds, Bush’s task will be to convince relationship was marked by the voters that he’s a serious candidate, not competitive issues that often arise just a charmer who wants to be taken between fathers and firstborn sons. … seriously — a task for which, ironically, Perhaps the source of the tension lies in he has the requisite personality skills. the status within the family of brother And voters, for their part, will have to Jeb, seven years his junior, … who was weigh the evidence and decide what regarded as the smart one, while George premium to place on the past and was the smart-alecky one.” whether the mellowed George W. Bush has the mettle to lead the United States There can be little doubt, however, that into the new millennium. the life course that George W.’s parents charted for him — following in his Aubrey Immelman, PhD, is an associate father’s footsteps to Andover, Yale, and professor of psychology at St. John’s the oil fields of Texas, and his prominent University in Minnesota, where he also role in his father’s political campaigns directs the Unit for the Study of — also bestowed special privileges on Personality in Politics, a faculty–student the “First Son,” scion of the Bush collaborative research project with the political dynasty. It would be a mistake mission of studying the impact of to venture too far out on a limb with the personality on political leadership and speculative “socially sublimated disseminating the findings to the public. antisocial” hypothesis in describing the Immelman specializes in the personality character of George W. Bush. assessment of presidents, presidential candidates, and other public figures. The Nonetheless, what can be stated personality data in this paper are drawn unequivocally is that Bush is not a from Immelman’s contribution, “The highly conscientious character type, and Political Personality of U.S. President this can have important political George W. Bush,” which will appear in implications. Perhaps most pertinently, the forthcoming Praeger volume, Bush is unlikely to exhibit what Political Leadership for the New psychologist Dean Keith Simonton calls Century: Personality and Behavior a “deliberative” leadership style. Thus, a among American Leaders by Ofer President Bush may neglect to keep Feldman and Linda O. Valenty (Eds.). himself as thoroughly informed as he Dale Fredrickson, an undergraduate should (for example, by diligently political science major at St. John’s reading briefings and background University, contributed to this paper. reports), place political success over

Originally published in Clio’s Psyche (Journal of the Psychohistory Forum), vol. 7, no. 2, (Sept. 2000), pp. 55–57.