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Saturday Morning News

What Qualities Make a Good President?

Aired August 5, 2000 - 9:55 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, as we've been sizing up the presidential candidates, have you ever really stopped to think about what qualities make a good president?

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, CNN's Jonathan Aiken reports there's no clearcut answer.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN AIKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): During this convention season, it might be helpful to know the character traits we want in a presidential.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A leader.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stubborn (ph) would help.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A president that's nice.

AIKEN: Above all, we want our presidents to be great, which doesn't always make them likable.

STEVE RUBENZER, STUDY AUTHOR: The qualities that make for a good president are not necessarily positive in all respects.

AIKEN: In fact, when Steve Rubenzer and two colleagues studied the personality traits of all 41 presidents, they found the great ones have been assertive, achievement oriented, and not always entirely honest with us.

RUBENZER: Straightforward people tend to be very honest and sincere and ingenuous, but they don't tend to make good presidents.

AIKEN: The research found our presidents have run the gamut from domineering figures like Teddy Roosevelt to introverts like Woodrow Wilson and good guys like Dwight Eisenhower.

It also found compulsiveness isn't always next to godliness.

RUBENZER: As it turns out, people who are really, you know, compulsive about, you know, where things go and the way they should be don't do well.

AIKEN: Which may be one reason why Jimmy Carter, who had a reputation as a micromanager, ranks lower than Abraham Lincoln, who, it turns out, was not the neatest man in the world.

RUBENZER: He kept his legal papers in his hat. He had big boxes in his office of papers from years and years back that he couldn't find anything in.

AIKEN (on camera): So that's one finding we can take from this study. If a natural inability to be organized turns out to be a prerequisite for greatness, then pretty much any of us could have a memorial dedicated in our honor, not just Lincoln.

(voice-over): It does appear that throughout our history, the personalities of our presidents have changed.

RUBENZER: Washington, Adams, Jefferson were all introverts. These days it's pretty rare to find somebody who's not very extroverted.

AIKEN: This study didn't look at Vice President Gore or Governor Bush, but Rubenzer says you can't really tell anything about the GOP nominee by looking at his father. Parents and children, he says, aren't that close.

Jonathan Aiken for CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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