Groupthink or Deadlock: When Do Leaders Learn from Their Advisors?

2. Who Learns, and When?

CHAPTER 2 Who Learns, and When? It is easy to think of moments in history when the fate of many hinged on the actions of a few. This does not mean that scholars would always be well-advised to concentrate their attention on the qualities of those few individuals. Apart from historical curiosity , investigating the character traits or decision-making abilities of world leaders has value only if one expects to learn something that can be generalized to other leaders, in other circumstances. The dubious quality of many generalizations about political leaders has undermined enthusiasm for the approach. Because this chapter argues that it is not only possible but necessary to generalize about leadership style if we are to explain whether or not leaders will learn from their advisors, it may help to begin by considering a few common objections. Many accounts of Saddam Hussein that appeared after the Persian Gulf War noted that the Iraqi leader’s father died before he was born and that he fled an alcoholic, abusive stepfather to live with his maternal uncle, who was a fervent Iraqi nationalist.1 Later, the adolescent Hussein returned home to drive his stepfather out of his mother’s home. Perhaps these and other facets of his childhood explain Hussein’s preoccupation with power, his ruthlessness, and his well-known brutality. In one of the quirks of fate that make politics so interesting, another recent world leader grew up in surprisingly similar circumstances. Like Hussein, Bill Clinton’s father died before his son was born. And like Hussein, 11 Clinton grew up with an alcoholic stepfather, left home at a relatively early age, and eventually returned to confront his stepfather. Fred Greenstein attributes a personal style practically opposite to that of Hussein to the same events: “Clinton’s almost unsettling good cheer reflects the exaggerated need to be agreeable found in children (and stepchildren) of alcoholics.”2 Or consider the case of another American president. Woodrow Wilson is probably second only to Richard Nixon as an inspiration for psychoanalytic studies of failures in the office of the presidency . Common wisdom remains, as Alexander and Juliette George argued, that Wilson’s father—a Presbyterian minister of high standards who did not hesitate to enumerate the ways in which his son failed to measure up—is responsible for producing a lasting sensitivity to criticism and a stubbornness that later prevented President Wilson from compromising even slightly in negotiations abroad and at home on the League of Nations covenant.3 The Georges’ work is a model of careful documentation and research, and their hypotheses are more nuanced than this brief summation indicates. But even care and nuance leave important matters unexplained, such as the notable flexibility Wilson displayed earlier in his political career in his conversion from conservatism to pragmatism. The Georges conclude that Wilson was simply more adept at pursuing power than at wielding it.4 How can very similar childhood circumstances explain the apparently divergent leadership styles of Hussein and Clinton? And how can Wilson’s domineering father explain both his flexibility in some cases and his extreme rigidity in others? Perhaps, such paradoxes can be resolved by scholarly fine-tuning. No doubt there were other important differences in Hussein’s and Clinton’s childhood experiences. Or, conversely, their leadership styles may actually be more similar than most people appreciate. And perhaps, in Wilson’s case, additional hypotheses can be introduced to explain why he reacted strongly to criticism in some cases and adapted to it in others. None of these explanations, however, give the impression that a satisfactory general theory of political behavior can begin with a study of personality. Such pessimism is one of the main reasons why social scientists have almost completely abandoned the study of personality and politics.5 The inherent difficulty of studying character and leadership style is another reason. Personality traits (unlike behavior) cannot be measured directly. Efforts to be more scientific 12 Who Learns, and When? thus led scholars in many fields to de-emphasize personality in favor of social or economic explanations of behavior. Even psychologists redirected their attention away from personality and emotion and toward cognition and social psychology.6 Many psychologists also complained that the few remaining, extended efforts to study personality actually suggested that most people’s behavior is determined more by their environment than by any coherent “personality.”7 These problems are all serious. To summarize...