A fascinating and relevant article, though I think it errs on most of the candidates' types.

I agree with OKA's Hile Rutledge's assessment of these first three types:

Barack Obama — INFP. His mild I tends to obscure his F, though his NF core is surely what motivates his idealism; and he chooses his words more carefully, haltingly, and calmly than an ENFP would.

Hillary Clinton — INTJ, as she reportedly tested. Think of an evidence-driven judge in action, or a politically active law professor; she was said not to have been a great courtroom trial lawyer, which suggests that she's not an E, much less an ESTJ. She's probably a mild I who has learned to socialize more or less gracefully, but I'll bet it drains her.

Bill Clinton — ENFP, as he reportedly tested. There's no doubt about his E, F, and P, and he's probably not an S given his apparently intuitive approach to life, his ability to synthesize information quickly, and his diplomatic sensibilities; plus he seems not to be as into the visual arts and aesthetics as ESFPs typically are.

I'd bet that W. is an ESTJ, not F or P. "The Decider" is famously punctual, impatient, incurious, obsessed with loyalty, ribald, stubborn, and enormously personally self-disciplined — though an unusually ineffective manager for an ESTJ. He, too, considers likely ESTJ Harry Truman a hero and role model.

This from the article seems to describe W. well: "[O]f all the sixteen types this is the most conventionally masculine."... "As Kroeger points out, ESTJs can be stunned when the plans fail: 'Having packaged the argument so neatly and precisely, how could anyone possibly disagree?' Keirsey says this blindness comes from the concrete-thinking ESTJ's pronounced weakness at the abstract arts of strategy and diplomacy."

Al Gore strikes me as an INTP, not J. Check out his desk in the Time story "The Last Temptation of Al Gore — that's no J's work space.

George H.W. Bush I would bet is an INFJ, and Ronald Reagan almost certainly was an ENFJ — far too driven, disciplined, and organized to have been a P.

ESTP seems right for John McCain, the former Navy pilot who is spontaneous and loves mixing it up but is essentially practical.

So our choices this year seem to me to be an an INFP (Obama), and INTJ (Hillary), or an ESTP (McCain).

An increasingly likely Obama-McCain matchup, then, would present a choice of near typological opposites, an introverted idealist vs. an extraverted realist, both of them spontaneous — and both equally prone to errors in their own predictable ways.

The central question then becomes: What is America's personality type this year?


Matthew Eisley
Raleigh, N.C.

I do not have time to Google around and remember what all those letters mean.