James David Barber is rather famous – or about as famous as professors of political science can get in the Real World – on account of his landmark study and classification of presidential personalities. Since you're not my damn students I won't sit here and lecture you at length about his work. Let me give you the brief version before explaining why you might care.
You and I have no contact with presidents or presidential candidates. We can't get to know them or understand their personalities. All we get are carefully staged, often scripted words and images through the media. So it's not possible to engage in armchair psychology and claim that we can assign some personality disorder or qualities to George W. Bush. But what we can do is observe them and get a basic sense of what kind of person we're dealing with based on two simple questions: is he a positive or negative person? Is he active or passive?
On this basis he created a four-part typology (active-negative, active-positive, passive-negative, passive-positive). Long story short, active-negatives are the folks to watch out for.** Examples include George W. Bush, Nixon, and LBJ. Because of low self-esteem, they crave power, surround themselves with toadies, and are psychologically incapable of admitting that they are wrong. They're paranoid, seeing threats everywhere, and often consider themselves to be above the law. Barber wrote his book right before Watergate broke, and his description of Nixon as a classic active-negative was soon borne out by the events of the day. Hence Barber's fame.
Active-negatives are not always "bad presidents." One could argue that Nixon, W, and LBJ accomplished some valuable things in office. But they have obsessions – Vietnam, Iraq, or a list of "enemies" – that bring out their bat-shit insane side and their eventual downfall. Self-esteem is the fundamental concept in Barber's opinion – active-positives have it, and thus they quickly rebound from embarassing failures (Clinton, FDR, Lincoln). Active-negatives don't, and they are too insecure to admit defeat or accept criticism. They develop an Ahab-like obsession with proving themselves right. Hence the years of hemmoraging lives and money into Vietnam long after Johnson stated that the war had become a lost cause, for example.
Why do you care? Maybe you don't. But as someone who is very familiar with the analysis, let me offer you two cents on what we're dealing with right now.
Barack Obama is a classic active-positive. Relentlessly optimistic, ambitious but not craven, able to move past his fuck-ups, and utterly undaunted by the fact that going from State Rep to President in 6 years is ludicrous. One thing that many people misunderstand about Barber – active-positive does not equal "good." Clinton wasn't that good of a president. But he fit active-positive to a tee. Obama does too.
John McCain is the classic passive-negative.
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Military men turned politicians usually are. He's not energetic and doesn't look like he's really enjoying what he does. He does it because of a sense of duty (snicker…"duty.") He's not chock-full of ambitious ideas (most of his platform appears to be recycled, standard GOP fare). He lets the action come to him, choosing to react rather than act. Note that passive-negatives are not "bad." Washington and Eisenhower did alright.
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Hillary Clinton is pure active-negative. Her win-at-all-costs mentality, and a complete inability to accept defeat, officially scare the shit out of me. She baldly craves power and appears to be willing to behead her own mother to get it.
When it became mathematically impossible for her to defeat Obama in the delegate count, her immediate reaction was to unveil a new strategy of trying to corrupt pledged delegates. How, she does not say; threats, bribery, coercion, pleading….there doesn't appear to be a depth to which she will not go to win. And she isn't stupid, so certainly it must be clear that doing something so inimical to the democratic process will devolve the nomination into a months-long circus of disorder and bad publicity. 1968 all over again, while McCain sits back and smiles. Hillary Clinton understands but does not care; the attitude is simply "If I can't have it, no one will."
Maybe I'm wrong; people frequently disagree about something as subjective as Barber's psychology-from-afar analysis. If I'm right, the best-case scenario is a Lyndon Johnson-type presidency; that is, one marred by a single fatal flaw. The worst-case scenario is a woman who, denied the power her ego needs, salts the Earth behind her.