THE ACTIVE-POSITIVE SEARCHING

By Hugh Sidey

James David Barber is getting a bit weary of people coming up to him and telling him their mothers-in-law are "active-negative" types. But the burden is borne genially by this Duke University political science professor who devised his special psychological measurement for Presidents, not for mothers-in-law.

From detailed study, Barber rates the energy a President puts into his job as either "active" or "passive," and he catalogues how a President feels about what he does as either "positive" or "negative." The combination of these elements of energy and attitude places the man in one of four categories ranging from passive-negative to active-positive, with active-negative producing the greatest potential for tragedy, active-positive the best hope for progress. Already some observers have rated Ford passive-positive and Carter a near active-negative who by the grace of God slipped into the active-positive category.

Any popularized academic theory of this kind inevitably gets distorted, and Barber's certainly will this week as the most massive character analysis in all history gets under way following the Ford-Carter debate. But the guideposts that Barber established in his psychological assessment will also give more stability and meaning to this national exercise than we have had in the past. Barber's book, The Presidential Character, codifies and explains the importance of presidential character in national leadership. Character is only one of five elements Barber cites (the others: world view, style, power situation, climate of expectations). But character is the crucial one, the compass setting for an Administration, often the element that tips the balance between success and failure.

With the differences between Ford's and Carter's programs narrowing and with the world relatively tranquil, the big issue before the American house is simply what kind of men these two are--character. In 1960 Barber watched the powerful fusion of John Kennedy and television and decided political psychology was one way to get a glimpse of how Presidents might perform in the future.

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Carter has studied Barber's theories and pronounced them among the most important he has read; Ford's researchers have pawed through Barber's pages. Barber's text is used in dozens of major universities. He gets calls from broadcasters, reporters, politicians and even mothers-in-law who seek his expert assessments. Barber is deep into an academic study of this election and its participants, and he is pledged to restraint until it is over. Sometimes perched in an old-fashioned barbershop chair he has in his office, he turns away pleadings to rate the men by his scale. But he thinks every voter should do his own analysis.

"The real presidential task is not dashing from shopping center to shopping center making the same speech," says Barber, explaining why it is healthy to view campaign rhetoric with skepticism. In those shopping centers, Lyndon Johnson promised to keep the U.S. out of the Viet Nam War and Nixon spouted all the American ideals that he systematically violated. A close look at their lives showed both men almost programmed by birth and background to do what they did.

"Had Nixon gone into some other kind of work," muses Barber, "he probably would have done just fine." But the singular pressures of the presidency magnified Nixon's flaws (like his self-doubt). In contrast, John Kennedy's shortcomings were often obscured, his strengths (combativeness, style) enhanced by the office.

Ernest Hemingway's definition of courage--"grace under pressure"--is as good a yardstick as any for Americans to use as Ford and Carter march through this campaign, says Barber. But it will be up to each person to devise his own definition of both grace and pressure. A campaign is but the tip of the mountain, the debates just a small part of that. Yet, says Barber, the character clues will be there for us to see, even in the debates, though those constitute a mere 4/^-hour capsule of more than half a century of living.

Barber does not scoff at any detail. He believes everything about a man is revealing--the veins in his forehead, his eyelids, his hands, his body language. This week Barber is pondering how inspiring, articulate, wordy, clever, devious, plain-spoken and hesitant each man emerged. Most important to Barber is how the substance of what Ford and Carter said relates to their pasts. What Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter promise for America is apt to evolve in some proportion to how firmly these ideas are rooted in their lives so far.

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