Clinton Vs. Trump: Profs On Leadership Styles

TRUMP LEADERSHIP STYLE EARNS PLAUDITS — FROM VOTERS

Perceptions of Trump changed recently, Hennessy says, and the Republican National Convention in Cleveland is the likely cause. In March, she says, the top words associated with Trump were negative: arrogant, racist, crazy, idiot.

After the convention, which concluded July 21, positive associations leapt to the top three or four.

“If you look at the data coming out of March, while people thought he had a can-do sort of attitude, the commentary of being incredibly arrogant or actually racist coming through from consumers was a lot more dominant than the commentary on ‘He can get stuff done,’” Hennessy says. “After the convention, we saw perceptions of ‘Great leader’ and ‘Honest’ up there above ‘Racist,’ ‘Rich’ and ‘Arrogant.’

“People hope that Trump’s simple solutions, while probably unrealistic — they don’t really believe that he can build a wall and get the Mexicans to pay for it — but none of the other folks would lay out anything that simple.”

She says Trump’s slogan, Make America Great Again, has actually bled into voters’ perceptions of him. The top associations for the Republican candidate are, in order, “Great,” “President,” “America,” and “Honest.” Even “Arrogant” can have positive connotations for Trump, Hennessy says, making him perhaps the only person in the world for whom that’s the case.

“Arrogance for Trump has a little bit of a positive thing in that people believe that he believes that he can do something,” she says, “and people aren’t sure that the other folks, on the Republican side or the Democrat side, are sure they can do things.”

But, she’s quick to add, “Lower down on the scale of associations you also get a fair amount of ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Scary.'”

GRIDLOCK: GOOD AND BAD

Democracy is messy, Hennessy says. Political scientists — and, on some level, members of the public — have long known that the best government for getting things done is a monarchy with a benign ruler — a “great king,” she says. The problem with that sort of system, she adds, is “the possibility of a bad king.”

“So if you get somebody in there that people don’t like, suddenly people are going to love gridlock,” Hennessy says. Witness the last seven-plus years of Barack Obama: liberals and Democrats bemoan what they see as obstructionism of Obama’s agenda, while conservatives and Republicans cheer Congress’s ability to slow and even halt the president’s plans.

“Gridlock is really bad when you like the leader that can’t get their ideas through,” Hennessy says, “and gridlock is really good when you don’t like the leader and they can’t get their ideas through.”

Yet on another level, voters want something, anything to happen. “Whether people like Obama personally or not, a lot of people are really frustrated that he wasn’t able to get a lot of the things that he wanted to get done, done.”

HURDLES FOR HILLARY

Which brings Hennessy to Hillary Clinton. People see Hillary as tied to the current government — specifically, the Obama administration — so while voters across the spectrum see Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as outsiders, Hennessy says, Hillary is seen as the ultimate insider.

“And so if people have perceptions that the government is kind of stopped up and gridlocked and nobody can make anything happen, it’s hard for her to make the case that she’s going to be really different than the gridlock that is perceived to have been a problem with Obama.”

Besides that, Hennessy says, Clinton has had other lead perceptions that are quite negative. “When you go before the conventions, when Ted Cruz was in it and Bernie Sanders was in it, it was really striking that all four of them had dominant associations that were negative.”

For Sanders it was “Old.” For Trump it was “Racist,” but that changed recently, following his convention speech.

For Hillary the dominant association was “Liar.” “Now we’ll see if that changes (following her convention speech July 28),” Hennessy says.