As prominent new candidates appear on the political scene, we evaluate them as source material becomes adequate to do so. Unfortunately, quality biographies are typically only written after a politician has achieved substantial prominence. For example, despite Barrack Obama's status as rising star and primary challenger to Hillary for nearly a year, there are no biographies available about him that fit our criteria.

For the 2004 election, we explored an alternative method: We read multiple quality book-length biographies and completed the questionnaires ourselves. Fellow presidential researcher Aubrey Immelman greatly assisted us in this regard, serving as a rater and enlisting one of his students to rate John Kerry.

This summer at the annual meeting of the International Society for Political Psychology, we presented the results of our new analysis of three prominent candidates for the 2008 election: Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani. This paper is being revised for submission to a SCHOLARLY journal FOR publication. (A copy of the paper presented at ISPP is available on request.) Below, our principle findings for the three candidates are summarized. Descriptions are based on the actual items that the three raters deemed most descriptive. In all cases, they were both strongly endorsed (rated "strongly agree" or equivalent) AND extreme when compared to the ratings given past presidents in our main study (upper or lower fifteenth percentile).

Readers should understand that although all three of us are psychologists and far more interested in personality assessment than politics, the findings reported are limited by the quality of source material, our selection of it, and the simple inability of human raters to make perfectly accurate assessments of other people. We did not interview any of the candidates. We present the following as a good faith effort to accurately describe each candidate using a standardized method and a respected personality inventory. Scores and probabilities reported below should be viewed as approximations and not as precise figures.

Hillary Clinton

In a nutshell, Hillary is a proud, aggressive, and ambitious introvert, much like Nixon and Wilson were. She scored lower on THE Big Five factor of Agreeableness than any president to date. Low scorers are distrustful, selfish, combative, manipulative, rude and hard-hearted. Nixon is the lowest scoring president to date, with a T score of 14 (about equal to a percentile rank of less than 0.01; only one person out of 7,000 score this low); Hillary's score (T = 9) occurs only once in 48,000 people.

Summary of Hillary's Scores on the Big Five Factors

. A more detailed picture emerges by examining the items endorsed as most accurate by the three raters (SR, TF, AI) that assessed her. All raters were in general agreement for the items that are listed; this is true for all three candidates described below.

Ms. Clinton is a dominant and forceful woman who thinks highly of herself, values her own judgment, desires to have power and prestige, and may think herself better than others. Not surprisingly, some people consider her self-centered and egotistical, cold and calculating. She has clear goals and pursues them methodically, thinks things through when making decisions, and is ambitious, enterprising, and opportunistic. Other adjectives deemed highly descriptive include concise, exacting, efficient, fastidious, self-disciplined, industrious, persistent, tenacious, and thorough. Ms. Clinton gets things done, is productive, and something of a workaholic. She is decisive, deliberate, firm, purposeful; she thinks about real problems and solutions and avoids daydreaming.

Ms. Clinton is cynical and skeptical, and can be sarcastic and cutting when called for. She is willing to bully, flatter, or manipulate people to get her way and does not believe being perfectly honest is wise. While she strongly believes social policies should change with the times, she is personally "set in her ways," stubborn, and hard-headed.

While not a flattering portrait, some of the seeming negative qualities are actually assets for the difficult job of Chief Executive. Overall, despite her introversion (which is generally a liability for both politicians and presidents), Hillary scores above average in terms of her personality assets for the job - in the upper quarter among past presidents. Her assets include her high assertiveness, ambition and goal focus, and low Straightforwardness. A liability is her relatively low score on Positive Emotions: She is not known for her light heartedness and sense of humor.

John McCain

In contrast to Clinton, McCain is an extravert who is impulsive, volatile, fun- loving, and a thrill-seeker. Somewhat surprisingly, McCain did not show the extreme scores that the other two candidates did, despite good agreement among raters. McCain most resembles Teddy Roosevelt, the man with the most personality assets of any president to date. He also resembles other highly successful presidents as FDR, Kennedy, and Andrew Jackson - but also George W. Bush. He is least like Nixon and quite different than Hillary.

Summary of McCain's Scores on the Big Five Factors

We endorsed the following items as most descriptive of McCain, many of which reflect his heroic biography. These included the item "deserves to be admired." McCain was further described as "brave, courageous, daring," as greatly admired and held in awe by followers, and as "important, significant" and "impressive, remarkable." He shows moral courage, personal magnetism, and is interesting and captivating. Not surprisingly, he had many sexual encounters. He has fewer fears than others, is capable and unfazed in emergencies, and feels able to handle most of his problems.

McCain expresses hostility directly, is quick-tempered and hot-blooded, and ready to fight back if someone picks on him. He is explosive, tempestuous, and volatile, but also adventurous, mischievous, playful, rambunctious. He has done things simply for excitement and is carefree, happy-go-lucky, spontaneous, impetuous, uninhibited, and unrestrained. He frequently acts before thinking things through. Despite his energy and volatility, he is described as casual, easygoing, informal, natural, and relaxed.

A political maverick, McCain is autonomous, independent, individualistic, non-conforming, rebellious, and unconventional.

Despite his resemblance to some of the most successful and promising presidents, McCain rates only about average in terms of personality assets for the job. His major assets are his sense of humor (high score on the Positive Emotions scale) and activity level, whereas he was rated somewhat below the average of previous presidents in Achievement Striving, Competence, and Intelligence and IQ. While his intellectual abilities have never seriously been questioned, his Openness to Experience score is below average.

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani's personality closely resembles that of LBJ, Andrew Jackson, and Nixon. Despite the fact that Hillary and McCain are near opposites, Giuliani shows resemblance to both. Giuliani's personality profile stands out by his extremely low score on Agreeableness. Giuliani's T score is -1.2 (minus 1) - more than five standard deviations below the average US man (and occurring just once out of 6,500,000 men).

Summary of Giuliani's Scores on the Big Five Factors

Many of the items rated descriptive of Hillary and McCain were also endorsed for Giuliani. He is very dominant, controlling, aggressive man who does things vigorous and is willing to bully or flatter to get his way. He can be cutting and sarcastic, thinks highly of himself, and doesn't mind bragging. He expresses hostility directly, lets people know if he doesn't like them, and often argues with family and coworkers. He was described as "faultfinding, harsh, unforgiving, unsympathetic" and even "cruel, ruthless, vindictive." As a group, we endorsed items indicating that he likely abused the power of his position and disregarded the rights and feelings of others if not on his side.

Demonstrative, exhibitionistic, AND flamboyant, Giuliani likes calling attention to himself and creating drama. HE sometimes acts before thinking and likes to be "where the action is." Although not especially interested in art, he loves the opera.

He is stubborn and hard-headed, values his independence and autonomy, and is set in his ways. Not surprisingly, some think he is self-centered, egotistical, cold, and calculating. Giuliani perceives people as ready to exploit others if permitted. He is hard-headed and tough-minded and doesn't sympathize with beggars. On the other hand, he is decisive, deliberate, firm, and purposeful, something of a workaholic, capable in a crisis, and people look to him for leadership. He is rarely anxious or fearful.

Giuliani was rated as being quite interested in women and as having had many sexual encounters, including a highly public extramarital one.

Giuliani shows considerable similarity to presidents we labeled Dominators, including LBJ, Andrew Jackson, and Nixon. His assets as a potential president include above average activity level, assertiveness, and low Straightforwardness. His most prominent weakness is an extremely low score on Tender Mindedness. Overall, his combination of assets and liabilities place him at the boundary between middle and upper third of chief executives.

Aubrey Immelman, PhD of St. John's University has also profiled these candidates using his own assessment device and method. He also assisted us greatly by providing his ratings for these three candidates on our assessment package. http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/research/CandidateMIDC-patterns.html