Enneagram of the 2008 candidates and why Obama won

How do you know what Enneagram number a person is?  Throw a dart at the Enneagram chart and see where it sticks?  Nope.  There’s a method to this madness.

Let’s take John McCain, Republican nominee for the 2008 presidential campaign.  If I want to know what number he is, where do I begin?  I’ve got 9 possible choices.  On which of all the weird traits do I focus?

Body shape and size.  This is your first sifting mechanism.

McCain is short.  A shrimp.  Our job is easy when someone is so amenable in his growth pattern.  Thanks, John!  Short men cannot be #s 4, 5 or 9.  Those numbers don’t do short.  Twos, Threes and Sevens are average height, but, again, McCain’s shortness is outside of their range.  So, considering body height alone, we’ve narrowed the choices down to #s 1, 6 or 8.  Now we move on to character traits.

What do we know about McCain?  He’s a war veteran, a former Navy pilot and POW.  Sixes are physically very cautious, so doubts about his being a Six begin to form.  Going upside down at Mach 1 (or whatever) would not interest a Six.  Odds are greater that a pilot would be a One or an Eight.

Okay.  What kind of senator has McCain been over the years?  Well, he likes to reach across the aisle.  This is what a Six would call living in a gray zone.  (Remember, Sixes are all about black and white.)  This is also what a Six would call “anathema”.  Horror!  A Six would rather commit hari-kari than reach across the aisle.  And co-sponsor a bill such as McCain-Feingold?  Not in a million years.  McCain is no Six.

That leaves us with #s 1 or 8.  Ones are extremely money conscious.  McCain tends to be fiscally restrained.  He abhors pork barrel spending.  However, Eights can be good money managers, too, so let’s keep looking.  What was the defining moment for McCain’s campaign for president?  When did all his forward momentum evaporate?  The economic crisis in Washington.  McCain suspended his campaign in order to help solve the bank crash, right?  What did he achieve?  Nothing.  Under no circumstances whatsoever would a One not know what to do in a monetary crisis.  This is their bread and butter.  Grand visions are their expertise.  If McCain were a One he would have locked away the presidential campaign right then and there by his mastery of the situation.

Let me take a sorrowful pause to contemplate how different America would be right now if McCain had been the man for that moment.

So, he’s definitely not a One.  By process of elimination, we are saying that McCain is an Eight.  Is that plausible?  Quick temper . . . check.  Known as a Maverick . . . check.  Battles for what he believes in . . . check.  Credentials for Commander-in-Chief never questioned . . . check.  An all-around son-of-a-gun . . . check.  Love him or hate him, or sometimes love him and hate him, that’s our man.  We will call McCain an Eight.

See how we got there?  Eliminate the obviously mismatched numbers and start winnowing from there.  Now, let’s turn to the ‘08 campaign.

On the Republican side we had McCain the 8, Huckabee the 2, and Romney the 3.  (If you would like me to go into my reasons for why I chose these numbers for them, I will, but let’s pretend I know what I’m talking about and move forward for now.)  On the Democrat side we had Obama the 5 and Hillary the 4.  Please don’t make me talk about Biden.  I can only take so much delving into someone’s idiosyncracies.

Republican feeling about our candidates ranged from unenthusiastic to resigned to (sometimes) excited.  Yes, Romney was a successful businessman and handsome family man, but did he really mean anything he claimed?  We never were sure, because as a Three he is always willing to stretch the truth if it makes him look better.  Huckabee was hugely personable and a proven governor, but could we trust him with decisions about funding government welfare programs and enacting foreign policy?  As a Two, would he be prompted to give out money (as he sometimes did in Arkansas) or give ground about sovereignty (as he sometimes did in Arkansas), instead of saying “no” and standing firm?  McCain, with whom many of us had a beef, started to look like the most trustworthy of the bunch.  He was the “lesser of two weevils.”

Democrat feeling about their candidates was very excited.  First Black man!  First woman!  Dems had hated George W for eight years, and the country at large was mostly tired of him.  How could we not be?  Anyone at the helm during 9/11 and its aftermath would come to represent all the drama and anguish of that event.  All of us could dream that if we replaced Bush we could replace our problems, too.  No one is immune to wishful thinking.  This was the atmosphere as Obama and Hillary campaigned, and this is what doomed Hillary’s campaign.  A Four is a Drama Queen.  With all the emotions coursing through them they can’t help it.  A Five is Mr. Freeze.  Emotions are restricted and contained.  If you’re Democrat America watching a debate between a Four and a Five, with the 9/11 Bush years behind you, the Four exhausts you and the Five, with his cool demeanor, feels refreshing.  As I said last time, Hillary didn’t stand a chance.  Yeah, you’ve got a whole host of complicated issues in the mix, but trust me.  Hillary was too high maintenance for this time and place.

McCain’s Eight-ness would run a similar parallel.  Eights, who will not back down to anyone, make their own drama.  Eights are trouble magnets.  Americans were sick of that!  And in the other corner is the cool customer, Obama.  No-drama Obama.  He looked good to a tired America, and he was elected.

Now that we’re stuck with him it’s a little late to ask if we should have ever elected a Five as president.  No, you should not!  A Five is a lovely person to have locked away in an ivory tower.  Put a Five in an observatory and let him gaze at outer space until the aliens arrive.  Let a Five contemplate the intricacy of Anglo-Saxon dialects for many years until he can write a masterpiece titled “The Lord of the Rings.”  For crying out loud, never ask a Five to make authoritative snap decisions that affect the fate of the world! Especially don’t entrust the presidency to a big-brain thinker who has only been exposed to Marxists his whole life.  As we’ve already seen, Obama is an immovable force headed in the wrong direction, and he’s trying to take America with him against her will.

Would we have been happy with the Eight as our president?  Hell, no.  We’d have hated him more than we loved him.  But he would have kept America on course, and he would have absolutely punched back at the world’s crazies.  Israel wouldn’t be abandoned.  Iran’s Green Revolution would have been loved by an Eight.  Russia, instead of being “reset,” would have been smacked around a time or two.  And an Eight would never, not in this life or the next, have returned the bust of Churchill to England.  Yes, McCain would have made a lot of people mad.  As an Eight he would be unable to do otherwise.  But he would have our allies’ backs.  And, if faced with a Tea Party, he would not have even considered selling out the expressed wishes of the American people.