The People They Enslaved

Schools across the country are adorned with posters of the 44 U.S. presidents and the years they served in office. U.S. history textbooks describe the accomplishments and challenges of the major presidential administrations -- George Washington had the Revolutionary War, Abraham Lincoln the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt the Spanish-American War, and so on. Children's books put students on a first-name basis with the presidents, engaging readers with stories of their dogs in the Rose Garden or childhood escapades. Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution welcomes visitors to an exhibit of the first ladies' gowns and White House furnishings.

Nowhere in all this information is there any mention of the fact that more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. These presidents bought, sold, and bred enslaved people for profit. Of the 12 presidents who were enslavers, more than half kept people in bondage at the White House. For this reason, there is little doubt that the first person of African descent to enter the White House -- or the presidential homes used in New York (1788-90) and Philadelphia (1790-1800) before construction of the White House was complete -- was an enslaved person.

The White House itself, the home of presidents and quintessential symbol of the U.S. presidency, was built with slave labor, just like most other major building projects had been in the 18th-century United States, including many of our most famous buildings like Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Boston's Faneuil Hall, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and James Madison's Montpellier. President Washington initially wanted to hire foreign labor to build the White House, but when he realized how costly it would be to pay people fairly, he resorted to slave labor.

Constructed in part by black slave labor, the home and office of the president of the United States has embodied different principles for different people. For whites, whose social privileges and political rights have been protected by the laws of the land, the White House has symbolized the power of freedom and democracy over monarchy. For blacks, whose history is rooted in slavery and the struggle against white domination, the symbolic power of the White House has shifted along with each president's relation to black citizenship. For many whites and people of color, the White House has symbolized the supremacy of white people both domestically and internationally. U.S. nativists with colonizing and imperialist aspirations understood the symbolism of the White House as a projection of that supremacy on a global scale. This idea is embodied in the building project itself.

Although the White House is symbolically significant, there is a largely hidden and silenced black history of the U.S. presidency. Here are just a few examples.

George Washington's stated antislavery convictions misaligned with his actual political behavior. While professing to abhor slavery and hope for its eventual demise, as president Washington took no real steps in that direction and in fact did everything he could to ensure that not one of the more than 300 people he owned could secure their freedom. During the 10 years of construction of the White House, George Washington spent time in Philadelphia where a law called the Gradual Abolition Act passed in 1780. It stated that any slaves brought into the state were eligible to apply for their freedom if they were there for longer than six months. To get around the law, Washington rotated the people working for him in bondage so that they were there for less than six months each.

Despite Washington's reluctance to carry out his stated antislavery predilections, the movement against slavery grew anyway, including within the president's very own household among the men and women he enslaved. One of the presidential slaves was Ona "Oney" Maria Judge. In March 1796 (the year before Washington's second term in office ended), Oney was told that she would be given to Martha Washington's granddaughter as a wedding present. Oney carefully planned her escape and slipped out of the Washingtons' home in Philadelphia while the Washingtons were eating dinner. Oney Judge fled the most powerful man in the United States, defied his attempts to trick her back into slavery, and lived out a better life. After her successful attempt became widely known, she was a celebrity of sorts. Her escape from the Washingtons fascinated journalists, writers, and others, but more important, it was an inspiration to the abolition movement and other African Americans who were being enslaved by whites.

By the age of 10, Paul Jennings was enslaved at the White House as a footman for James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. When he got older, Dolley Madison hired out Jennings, keeping every "last red cent" of his earnings. Dolley indicated in her will that she would give Jennings his freedom, but instead sold him before she died. Thankfully, Daniel Webster intervened and purchased his freedom. Soon after, Paul Jennings helped plan one of the most ambitious and daring efforts to liberate enslaved blacks in U.S. history, thePearl Affair. It was not successful, but as with John Brown's raid, the political repercussions lasted for decades and strengthened the abolitionist cause. Paul Jennings went on to become the first person to write a memoir of a firsthand experience working in the White House.

In textbooks and popular history, the White House is figuratively constructed as a repository of democratic aspirations, high principles, and ethical values. For many Americans, it is subversive to criticize the nation's founders, the founding documents, the presidency, the president's house, and other institutions that have come to symbolize the official story of the United States. It may be uncomfortable to give up long-held and even meaningful beliefs that in many ways build both collective and personal identities. However, erasing enslaved African Americans from the White House and the presidency presents a false portrait of our country's history. If young people -- and all the rest of us -- are to understand a fuller, people's history of the United States, they need to recognize that every aspect of early America was built on slavery.

Dr. Clarence Lusane is the program director for Comparative and Regional Studies at American University. He teaches courses in comparative race relations, modern social movements, comparative politics of the Americas and Europe, and jazz and international relations. He is a national columnist for the Black Voices syndicated news network.Lusane has authored a number of books includingThe Black History of the White House (City Lights, 2010). This article is part of the Zinn Education Project If We Knew Our History series.

More Than A Quarter Of U.S. Presidents Were Involved In Slavery, Human Trafficking

AMY GOODMAN: As the country marks Presidents’ Day today, we turn to an aspect of U.S. history often missed: the complicity of American presidents with slavery. The first person of African descent to enter the White House was most likely a slave. The nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., once hosted markets where human beings were sold for profit. Slaves built some of the country’s most famous landmarks, including Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Boston’s Faneuil Hall, James Madison’s Montpelier. Last week, President Obama mentioned the role of slaves in building one specific landmark: Thomas Jefferson’s plantation estate in Charlottesville, Virginia. Obama was touring the home of America’s third president with French leader François Hollande. This is what Obama had to say about Monticello.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This house also represents a complicated history of the United States. We just visited downstairs, where we know that slaves helped to build this magnificent structure, and the complex relations that Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, had to slavery. And it’s a reminder for both of us that we are going to continue this fight on behalf of the rights of all peoples, something that I know France has always been committed to and we are committed to, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama speaking last week during French President François Hollande’s visit to the U.S.

We’re joined now by Clarence Lusane, who has documented the racial history of Washington, D.C., and the presidency. His most recent article is "Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved." Clarence Lusane writes, quote, "more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. These presidents bought, sold, and bred enslaved people for profit. Of the 12 presidents who were enslavers, more than half kept people in bondage at the White House," he writes. Clarence Lusane is author of The Black History of the White House, a member of the D.C. Commission on African American Affairs, also professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

Professor Lusane, welcome to Democracy Now! So, talk about this history of slavery and U.S. presidents.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, I’m glad that you pointed out that President Obama, when he went to Jefferson’s home, pointed out the slave history there. But it’s also important to note that the most iconic building in the U.S., the one that represents the country to the world, the White House, also was a place where slavery existed. Not only that, it was built by slaves. And none of that has been publicly acknowledged. There is over a million people who visit the White House every year, who go on tours, who come for meetings, and you can go through that building and never have a sense of that important history.

And that’s critical because I think Presidents’ Day should be a period of critical reflection, not some kind of blind celebration, but it should be one where we really try to get a better sense of the country’s history. And part of that history, part of what I think resonates even to this day, is that, significantly, before the Civil War, nearly every U.S. president was a slave owner, which meant that they were compromised on the issue of slavery, and that had repercussions that, you know, redounded through history. So it’s really critical, I think, that we have that acknowledgment, because we grow up, we go to school, we have history classes, and none of that history is told to us.

AMY GOODMAN: So, give us a black history of U.S. presidents, as you call it.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, in looking at the White House—and I use that as the prism to try to look at this longer history that basically led up to President Obama—one of the things that we find that’s missing in that history is the voices of people, particularly African Americans, who were enslaved during that long, long, long history. And that was critical because when you think about George Washington, Madison, Monroe, all of the early presidents, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, they wrote the Constitution, they wrote the Articles of Confederation, all of these documents, these founding documents that extol the principles of democracy, liberty, equality, they were living a contradiction. And that contradiction is that every single day of their life, every moment in their life, they were surrounded by people who were enslaved.

Now, fortunately, because of some of the historic records that have been kept, we now know who some of those people were. George Washington, for example, when he was president and his presidency was in Philadelphia, had at least nine individuals with him who were enslaved—Oney Maria Judge, for example, who was a young woman of about 22 who escaped from George Washington. She escaped—this was in 1796, when she found out that Martha Washington was planning to give her away as a wedding gift. And she made contact with the free black population in Philadelphia, was able to escape. Now, this is remarkable because we’re talking about a young woman who basically traveled nowhere by herself, who escapes from the most powerful person on the planet, pretty much, certainly most powerful person in the United States. Her story is important because she lived—she outlived Washington. She lived to be, I believe, in her eighties and lived a life where she learned to read, became active in her community. You also had Hercules, who was Washington’s cook, who also escaped from Washington.

So there are people who we were in and around the White House who had stories to tell that are part of that history that we literally were never taught about for all of the years that, you know, we took schooling and we took classes in history. And so, I thought it was important, and there are others who have written to re-enter into the historic narrative the stories of these individuals, because they really are critical if you really want to understand the politics of George Washington or the politics of Thomas Jefferson or any of the other presidents who held slaves.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about Paul Jennings.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Paul Jennings, again, is another fascinating character. He was enslaved to the Madisons, to James and Dolly Madison. He was, in fact, the first individual to actually write about working in the White House. He published a memoir—this was in the late 1860s—that talked about the time when he was in the White House. And he was there in 1814. He was there when the British literally were burning down the city, and was part of the contingent of folks who were attempting to get materials out of the White House and preserve them before the British came. So he really had a fascinating history.

He was supposed to be free when James Madison died, but Dolly Madison basically reneged on the deal. So he—it took him a few years to buy his freedom, which he eventually did. And then he actually came to help Dolly Madison. She fell on hard times. She wasn’t wealthy. She wasn’t a wealthy person, and she wasn’t part of the social elite of Washington. And so, when she fell on hard times and her family and friends abandoned her, Jennings would often bring her food and bring her money and basically would look after her. But what was also important about James Jennings is that he also was—

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Jennings.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Paul Jennings, I’m sorry, is that he was also central to the largest attempt at escaping from slavery that happened in Washington, D.C. This happened in 1848. For a number of reasons, the escape attempt failed, but Jennings was never brought in. He was never seen as being part of it. And it was only literally after his death that it was revealed that he had played a very critical role in that. So, my point is that you had these individuals who were enslaved to presidents, who really had fascinating kinds of stories and fascinating kinds of lives that we should know about, because they really are also a part of the history of the White House and the history of the presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play a clip from the trailer of the film Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, released last year, about President Abraham Lincoln and the fight to end slavery in the United States. In this clip, you first hear Abraham Lincoln, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, followed by the voices of Thaddeus Stevens, the congressmember from Pennsylvania, and Mary Todd Lincoln, the first lady. Let’s go to that clip.

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN: [played by Daniel Day-Lewis] We’re stepped out upon the world stage now, the fate of human dignity in our hands! Blood’s been spilt to afford us this moment! Now! Now! Now!

THADDEUS STEVENS: [played by Tommy Lee Jones] Abraham Lincoln has asked us to work with him to accomplish the death of slavery.

MARY TODD LINCOLN: [played by Sally Field] No one’s ever been loved so much by the people. Don’t waste that power.

AMY GOODMAN: That was an excerpt of Lincoln. Clarence Lusane, talk about Abraham Lincoln and slavery.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Lincoln was—the Lincoln administration was a turning point in terms of the history of the relationship between African Americans and the White House. It was during Lincoln’s tenure that the first meeting took place between a U.S. president and leaders of the black community. This happened in 1862, I believe. Now, this was critical because up until that point, although African Americans, particularly free African Americans in the North, had been organized and had been raising issues, policy issues, issues around slavery, they simply had no access to the White House or to policymakers. Lincoln, however, opened up some of that space.

And part of what I think moved Lincoln from being not just simply anti-slavery, but ultimately to recognizing that you had to eliminate slavery, that abolition was the only path forward, in part, came because of his discussions with black leaders, not only church leaders, but people like Frederick Douglass, but also—and this is in the film—discussions with Elizabeth Keckley. In the film, she’s the woman who’s often seen with Mary Lincoln. She’s played by Reuben, Gloria Reuben, in the film. And the film is a little bit disingenuous in that you could think that maybe she was a servant, but in fact she was an independent businesswoman who had become basically best friends with Mary Lincoln, but also she spent a great deal of time at the White House having discussions with Abraham Lincoln about race, about slavery, about the future of the country. And again, her story is important to be told because she, again, was part of a contingent of African Americans who thought to influence the presidency and to address issues that needed to be dealt with. And so, the movie Lincoln doesn’t quite take you there to show you that side of the people who influenced Lincoln, but it’s an important part of understanding what happened in the Civil War and how Lincoln actually got to the point where he said the only way out of this situation is that slavery has to end.

AMY GOODMAN: Then that moment, that meeting, August 14th, 1862, Abraham Lincoln does something unprecedented: He meets with a small delegation of black leaders, clergy.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Right. And at that point, Lincoln had already decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. There was some debate about which date to issue it on, but he was already moving in a position where he saw the country’s future as a future without slavery. And these leaders that he met with were people who mostly were tied to the black church community, but people who also had ties to abolitionists, to people who were active in the other kinds of issues around the country. So that really was kind of a turning point. And since that point, there has been a considerable amount of effort on the part of African Americans to negotiate and to meet with and to lobby not only in Congress, but the president themself.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the buildings, these iconic structures that kids, adults go to in Washington, D.C., to honor this country—the White House, the Capitol. Who built it?

CLARENCE LUSANE: This is really important, because I think there may be some sense, more generally, that Washington owned slaves and Jefferson owned slaves, but I think there’s a general ignorance about the role of people who were enslaved in actually building the nation’s capital. In 1790, after the country was founded, the Congress passed legislation to build a capital. Washington, D.C., did not exist. And so, there was a decision that land that was ceded from Maryland and from Virginia would become the nation’s capital, and it had to be built, and it would take 10 years. This is why Washington spent all of his presidency either in New York or in Pennsylvania. But to build Washington, D.C., you needed labor. And George Washington, who was more or less in charge of the project, initially wanted labor to come from Europe, but it was very, very difficult to get people to come all the way over on these really harsh trips to work in basically a jungle. So they basically relied on enslaved labor, which meant cutting down trees, moving rocks, digging holes—you know, all of the harsh, harsh labor that had to be done literally to clear the area. But it also included skilled labor, people who were carpenters and plasterers. We know for a fact that both at the White House and—the building that became the White House and the U.S. Capitol, there were at least five highly skilled carpenters who worked for years to build those two buildings.

And again, this needs to be acknowledged, because it reflects that ongoing contradiction, what President Obama talked about with President Hollande, of this conflict between the principles of equality and democracy, and the reality of slavery. Now, in the Capitol a few years ago, there were two plaques that were put up to honor or to acknowledge the people who were enslaved that built the Capitol. One is on the House side, and one is on the Senate side in the Rotunda. And in Philadelphia, at the pavilion where the Liberty Bell exists, the new Liberty Bell Pavilion was actually built over the old house where—or the land where George Washington lived when he was president. There is also a plaque there that acknowledges the people who were enslaved to Washington during the time of his presidency. What we do not have yet, and it actually may happen, is something in the White House that will have that kind of acknowledgment.

AMY GOODMAN: Final comment, Clarence Lusane, about what you think we should understand on this Presidents’ Day? And take it all the way—you write about Teddy Roosevelt.

CLARENCE LUSANE: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to understand that there is a long and rich history of African Americans in the White House long before President Obama. And all of that history tells us a great deal, I think, about the current situation we face, where we continue to see racial disparities and racial discrimination pretty much across the board. The story you did earlier about the shootings in Florida, for example, I think, in part, reflect an unawareness of this history and the degree to which the country still has not acknowledged and reconciled this past. A year ago, I went with students to Rwanda, and we visited a great—a large number of memorials. And it became so clear to me that the degree to which the country acknowledges its past in an honest and straightforward way goes a long way towards healing and reconciliation. It doesn’t necessarily end up with all the justice that needs to be happening, but it certainly is a first step, that acknowledgment and recognition of your history becomes really important.

AMY GOODMAN: Thanks so much for being with us, author of The Black History of the White House . We’ll link to your piece, "Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved" at democracynow.org. Clarence Lusane is also a professor at American University. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.

How The White House Was Won

Were American Voters Presented With A Real Choice?

This episode of Fault Lines takes viewers through a tour of the US 2012 presidential campaign, from the high and low moments, to the Spin Room, to the noisy campaign ads that blanketed swing states. 

We ask whether voters were presented with a real choice between the candidates, and whether the system truly is democratic.

How Far Is America From Electing A Muslim President?

By Daniel Tutt,

Closer Than You Might Think

As someone deeply engaged in combatting Islamophobia, one of the highlights of the 2008 Presidential election was when General Colin Powell denounced the myth that President Obama is Muslim on Meet the Press. General Powell, a senior statesman respected across partisan lines managed to clear a decade of post 9/11 Islamophobia in a single sentence: “So what if he was?”

So what if President Obama was Muslim?

Of course President Obama is not a Muslim, despite a sizable bloc of the American public still believing that he is. While he may not have realized it, Powell’s statement was more than just a statement in support of then Sen. Obama for president. It told every young American Muslim that they are a part of what it means to be an American. Powell’s statement said that no Americans faith should be a barrier to them holding the highest office in the land.

I’ve never been an advocate for identity politics, but America is a country that thrives off of its diversity, and as the browning of America increases, bringing minorities into positions of power may matter less and less. The election of the nation’s first African American President has not realized Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community,” nor has it ushered in greater civil rights for African Americans. It certainly has not ended racism. But its symbolic value is important and it shows that the principle of equality enshrined in the American constitution still means something.

Like race, the religion of a presidential candidate matters. Despite the climate of increasing islamophobia in America, America very well could elect a Muslim for President sooner than many think. If we look at American religious history, we find that perceptions towards religious outsiders change rapidly and surprisingly. It happened in 1960 when the nation elected John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President, less than 60 years prior anti-Catholic sentiment was so vociferous that many Catholics were murdered.

To gauge whether America might elect a Muslim to be President, we should look closely at the “Islam of America:” Mormonism. Ever since its founding, Mormonism, the first American-born religion, has been portrayed as foreign and often defined in opposition to the Protestant majority. Even today, 16% of Americans say that they would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate due to their suspicion of the religion’s influence on the country.

In a recent policy brief for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding entitled, “Beyond the Stereotype: The Shared Story of Muslims and Mormons in America,” I examine the shared history of Mormons and Muslims and present suggestions for how policymakers and leaders from both faiths can move past prejudice towards mutual understanding.

Throughout American history, Mormonism has been culturally and theologically conflated with Islam to paint Mormons as foreign and to drum up xenophobic attitudes against them since Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in 1833 including wholly unflattering comparisons in popular culture.

The similar patterns and frames used to denigrate Mormons and Muslims historically are still with us today. The recent conflagration over the anti-Muslim film “The Innocence of Muslims” highlights how extremist Evangelical groups direct their bigotry at both Muslims and Mormons. Sam Klein, the alleged co-producer, is a former Marine and extremist Christian who has helped train militiamen in California churches and led “protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.” While the vast majority of Evangelicals do not openly participate in such activities, Mormons and Muslims often internalize these movements as verification of a generally negative and widespread reaction to their respective faiths.

How Far Away Are We from a Muslim President?

Muslims belong to the country’s least favorable religion, and 42 percent of Americans claim that they would not vote for a Muslim presidential candidate. 63 percent of Americans claim to have never met a Muslim, but despite rising levels of Islamophobia in America, majorities of Americans don’t express anxiety with Muslims building a mosque in their neighborhood, or with having a Muslim as their neighbor. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s recent findings, few Americans report having much knowledge about who Muslims are and what they believe. Only 14 percent of Americans say they know a lot about the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims, and 57 percent say they know only a little.

According to the Pew Forum’s extensive studies of attitudes towards Mormons, Romney’s Mormon faith should not make a substantial difference in his chances at becoming president. Many analysts pointed out that Romney’s inability to court Evangelical Christian voters would present the gravest threat to his chances at getting elected based on his faith. However, with the presidential election less than a week away, Billy Graham a leading evangelical figure in the U.S., removed the word “cult”from his association’s description of Mormonism, although some conservative Christians saw the move as partisanship.

Despite rising levels of Islamophobia, majorities of Americans don’t express anxiety with Muslims building a mosque in their neighborhood, or with having a Muslim neighbor. In other words, most Americans are more and more able to separate their anxieties about the religion Islam from American Muslims civic and political rights. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s recent findings, few Americans report having much knowledge about who Muslims are and what they believe. Only 14 percent of Americans say they know a lot about the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims, and 57 percent say they know only a little.

In the same study, a majority of Americans claimed that American Muslims are an important part of the religious experience in America, even though a majority does not know a Muslim personally. As Muslim Americans grow in population prejudice will transform as people come into contact with Muslims and form more personal relationships. If Mormonism is any example, the day will soon come when a Muslim will be able to run for president and America will have grown out of its petty prejudices and stereotypes.

Daniel Tutt is a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Outreach Director of Unity Productions Foundation.

This article is part of the “Election 2012 – American Muslims VOTE!” series, which is running on Altmuslim at Patheos, Altmuslimah, Illume, and Aziz Poonawalla’s news and politics blog on Patheos. Click on this special topics page to view all articles in this series and add your comments. Tweet your thoughts on this article, on the series, and on the 2012 elections at #MuslimVOTE.

Via: "Alt-Muslim"

Fearless Dominance: Just One Of Many Traits U.S. Presidents Share With Psychopaths

Our Most Fearlessly Dominant Leader:  Wikimedia Commons

Rebecca Boyle writes:

Call it swagger, cojones or just plain nerve, but there’s a certain kind of confidence required to run for the highest office in the land. It’s pretty bold to think that you and you alone are best equipped to lead this country, and that you can convince everyone to agree with that assessment. But that confidence could also be helpful in a time of crisis, according to a new study. A psychological trait called “fearless dominance” is common among our nation’s past leaders. You know who else shares this trait? Psychopaths.

A new study suggests that some personality traits that would be maladaptive and psychopathic in most people could be beneficial in others — like our commanders-in-chief. “Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and allied variables,” the study authors write.

Psychologists at Emory University psychoanalyzed the 42 past presidents through George W. Bush and ranked them according to his level of “fearless dominance.” No. 1 is Theodore Roosevelt. He’s followed by John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Zachary Taylor, Bill Clinton, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.

LBJ Gives The Treatment President Lyndon Johnson gives the nonverbal "Treatment" to Sen. Richard Russell on Dec. 17, 1963. This was a Johnson intimidation and persuasion tactic. Wikipedia

It’s not that all presidents are psychopaths — it’s that psychopathic traits are not always bad, the study suggests. “Fearless dominance, for example, may contribute to reckless criminality and violence, or to skillful leadership in the face of a crisis,” said lead author Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory.

To come up with the dominance ranking, the authors relied on personality assessments in a book called “Personality, Character and Leadership in the White House.” Those assessments were developed by scholars and journalists — more than 100 experts in all — who used standardized psychological measures of personality, intelligence and behavior, according to an Emory news release. Then the study examined how these presidential personalities correlated to the presidents’ experiences and job performance. For that measurement, the study looked at two surveys of presidential historians, one from 2009 and one from 2010.

There was a linear correlation between the fearless dominance of a president and his political performance, according to the study.

Teddy Roosevelt was indeed pretty fearless — the guy once explored an uncharted Amazonian tributary, for crying out loud — and he certainly had a large, bullish personality. Lyndon Johnson was famously dominant, staring down his opponents and close-talking them so much that they literally bent over backward. And so on.

It’s important to note that psychopathology is a “constellation” of traits, so fearless dominance alone does not a psychopath make. But the findings suggest more research is needed into the implications of boldness in leaders — and what that boldness can mean. The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Via: "PopSci"