In The Supervisor, the Champion, and the Promoter, journalist Emily Yoffe attempts to identify the Myers-Briggs personality types of the candidates for president. She concludes that Barack Obama is an “Idealist” (ENFP) and John McCain, like the current president, is an “Artisan” (ESTP). In making the decision about which of these men to elect as president, it is useful to consider those aspects of their personalities that are different in light of the foreseeable needs of our country (for the purpose of discussion, I will assume that Yoffe’s assessment is correct).

Obama and McCain differ in both the “perceiving” and “judging” functions. Obama relies most on intuition (“N”) and McCain tends to rely on tangible facts (“S” for “sensing”) in viewing the world, while Obama considers how people feel (“F”) and McCain uses thinking (“T”) to make decisions. People with Obama’s characteristics tend to be comfortable with abstraction leading to novel solutions to problems, and care about people being satisfied with those solutions; whereas people with McCain’s characteristics tend to rely on external rules and logic to develop solutions, and don’t take into account how people feel about them. The “lifestyle” dimension that both men share (the last one, “P”) indicates that they both tend to emphasize their perceiving functions when dealing with the world (intuition for Obama and sensing for McCain).

The world is a rapidly evolving and complex system which only begins to be comprehensible from the perspective of abstract concepts and relationships – theoretical “models” refined and tested using a multitude of observations that would easily overwhelm someone who relies on direct sensing such as McCain and Bush (who tend to compensate by dealing most with the leaders who they can directly perceive). Obama is clearly comfortable with abstraction and as a result has a better understanding of the large scale patterns in behavior and its governing infrastructure, culture. Many of the great issues confronting the world, chief among them climate change and resource depletion, will require intuitive leaps (and the ability to comprehend those of others); something that someone like Obama is innately capable of providing.

Since a significant part of a politician’s job is to find compromise among the wants and needs of constituents, having a strong feeling component in one’s personality (as Obama does) should be a prerequisite for the job. With as much power as the U.S. wields in the world, it is especially critical that this sensitivity be extended as much as possible to include the rest of humanity. To counter the risk of decisions taking too long (especially those in response to an immediate threat), people who are more detached should be included prominently in decision-making.

As recent history amply demonstrates, people who are fundamentally more suited to tactics than strategy and who are not inclined to consider the personal impact of their actions on others are not likely to exercise authority appropriately or responsibly except under increasingly rare, simple conditions such as concentrated power exercised by a small number of people. For this reason, neither the U.S. nor the world can afford to take a chance on an artisan like McCain, and has much to hope for with an idealist like Obama.