In this paper, I will argue that the victory of Barack Obama, which is considered historic, can not only be largely attributed to his highly effective political campaign, but also to his personality characteristics. In other words, Obama’s characteristics played a major role in his victory in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections. Barack Obama’s personal characteristics such as that being perceived as highly intelligent, having good oratory skills and his practical and inspirational style of leadership gave him an edge over John McCain.
Research Question
Through this essay, I aim to answer the following research question:
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How did Barack Obama’s perceived personality traits lead to his victory in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections?
However, before moving ahead on describing how Obama’s personality traits helped him win the elections, it would be first better for us to understand the relationship between personality traits and politics.
Theoretical Context & Research Design
I aim to use the theory of trait ownership as the theoretical context for this essay. This is mainly because, according to Hayes (2005), the theory of trait ownership provides explanations about the origins of trait perceptions of presidential candidates and how these perceptions affect the voters’ choice. As a result, since this essay aims to answer how Obama’s perceived personality traits led to his victory in the elections, the theory of trait ownership can be viewed as the most suitable when answering this research question. To answer the question, previous studies examining the role Obama’s personality traits played in influencing the voters’ choice were reviewed.
Data Analysis
For years, there has been a debate in the field of political science about the role that candidate characteristics play in influencing voters’ decisions. For example, for some voters, personal qualities are deemed more important than ideology or the style of political campaigns, while for others the ideologies and key points in political campaigning are much more essential than candidates’ personal characteristics (Hardy, 2014). This debate is further aggravated by the fact that the literature fails to define which candidate characteristics may have a larger influence on the election. However, despite this, there is some research, which indicates that candidate characteristics do play a role in vote preference. The most notable work that explains the relationship between personality and politics would be that of Greenstein (1992), who states that personality, as construed in political psychology, takes into consideration only the non-political personal differences and excludes political attitudes and opinions.
One of the major reasons that could be cited to explain why a candidate's personal characteristics were crucial in influencing the elections of 2008 is provided by Winter (2011) who examines Obama’s personality traits using the Big Five Personality Traits. This author states that a candidate’s personality is made up of a system of different components, namely social context, traits, or publicly visible stylistic behaviors, cognitions, and motives. The author adds that these components of the personality of political leaders play a crucial role in determining the outcomes of political leaders in elections. Applying these four components to the case of Barack Obama, the author states that Obama’s social context (his childhood background of being a lower-middle-class kid, his racial background), which also includes his personal contexts such as life stage and family played an essential role in making him gain an edge over his opponent in the presidential election. For example, Obama’s personal context or his characteristic of being a family man were considered highly attractive to voters in a country where the concepts of “family” were in flux (Winter, 2011).
It is not just the social context, though. Obama’s personal traits and cognitive aspects also played a huge role in depicting him as the one who had the advantage of emerging as a leader of an election which was considered an “election of change” because of various factors, such as an unpopular incumbent in the form of President George W. Bush, a sinking economy, and failure of the war on terror. A lot of previous studies (Immelman, 2008; Wayne, 2010; Hardy, 2014) examining the personality traits of Barack Obama have concluded that these characteristics of the candidate played a huge role in his election as the US president in the year 2008. For example, some studies (Winter, 2011; Wayne, 2010; Immelman, 2008) have termed Barack Obama as an extremely “disciplined thinker”, very “intelligent” and “efficient”, a “charismatic leader” and a “good listener” who has an “attractive style” of leadership that is “totally inspirational and practical”. In his work, Winter (2011) also stated that Obama’s personal characteristics such as having high emotional stability, his legendary calmness, his openness to experience, conscientiousness, and high levels of intelligence made him extremely popular among many groups of voters such as youngsters, ethnic minorities, and intellectuals, all of which most certainly contributed to his victory in the elections.
Another important characteristic that allowed Obama to “strike” a chord with the voters would be his excellent communication skills. Apart from his strong personality, Obama was always perceived as a good “communicator” by his voters. According to Johansson (2010), the excellent communication skills of Obama helped him to create an emotional connection with many voters, which largely worked in his favor. The author adds that this characteristic was particularly lacking in Obama’s opponent Republican Senator John McCain. Due to his excellent oratory skills, Obama was perceived by many voters as a person who was “speaking from the heart” – a skill that McCain found difficult to master and hence found difficult to carve out the message of “change” in the way that Obama was able to manage because of his excellent communication skills. There is no doubt that Obama’s election campaign was also crafted in a way that depicted him as a leader of change. But it was Obama’s ability to act in the way a really good potential presidential candidate was expected to act that made many people more attracted to his style of leadership. Obama also attracted the types of voters, especially young people, who are less interested to be involved in politics – a feat achieved by no other presidential candidate in any election in the history of presidential elections in the United States (Johansson, 2010).
However, it is worth noting that even though the personal characteristics of Obama played a huge role in influencing the results of the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections, it is also the communication environment that helped to amplify the characteristics of Mr. Obama to influence the voters. For example, in his work, Hardy (2014) states that candidates’ characteristics are mostly the categorizations of how the candidate responds to his or her environment. The author adds that the communication environment, which the author refers to as the environment which is shaped by political campaigns, the news media, and the concerns and conditions that are of utmost importance to the voters also amplifies certain characteristic traits of a candidate which the voters find highly attractive and ultimately support. This, in turn, gives the candidate an edge over his or her opponent. One good example of how the communication environment amplified certain characteristics of Obama would be his leadership traits. In addition to being a good listener and an intelligent person in general, Obama’s leadership traits of being an inspirational leader, and the specific factor of communication environment that the USA needed an inspirational leader that will save America from an ensuing economic crisis, also played a huge role in influencing the results of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections. As Hardy (2014) further points out, during the elections, the issue of the War on Terror was not the most important issue to American voters. Rather, it was the country’s dwindling economy that grasped their attention for the most part. This is one of the reasons, the author argues, that Barack Obama was elected against his senior, the Republican candidate John McCain. When it came to handling the economy, Obama’s personal characteristics of being an inspirational leader and his perceived ability to inspire change became more important to the voters than the military leadership credentials of John McCain (Hardy, 2014). Would the War in Iraq have been the most important concern to American voters, John McCain could have won the elections because he had the leadership credentials to handle military issues in a better manner compared to his junior Obama (Hardy, 2014). Therefore, excluding the leadership qualities of Obama in the 2008 presidential election would be a mistake, because these leadership qualities were, in fact, one of the most decisive factors that led to Obama’s victory in the elections.
Conclusion
As can be seen from the analysis above, and through the application of the theory of trait ownership which states that candidates’ perceived traits affect voters’ choice, it could be concluded that Obama’s perceived characteristics had a positive impact on the voters and helped him to win the elections. For example, from the analysis above, it is clear that Obama’s characteristics such as his social context, which included being a family man, personality traits such as being highly intelligent, having high emotional intelligence, excellent communication skills, and, importantly, his inspirational practical leadership style gave him an edge over his opponent and contributed greatly towards his victory in the 2008 presidential elections. However, it is also worth noting that the communication environment can also amplify some of the characteristics of the candidates, which can make some of them more attractive or important to the voters, making the candidate look best suited to handle central issues of the campaign and ultimately win the election. There is no doubt that political campaign strategists may find it difficult to discern the specific role the candidate characteristics play in influencing the election results. Nonetheless, the candidate traits are important and can even become dominant in certain environments. This is when they may influence the voter's choice to such an extent that the candidate wins by a landslide.
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