How Does President Trump Have An Active-Negative Personality

The role of a presidential candidate since Washington has been seen as one that can only be fulfilled by those with a strong yet graceful sense of leadership. Current President Donald Trump has quickly risen through the ranks of politics and straight into the white house. With no political background experience, one would think that this candidate came to office by possessing those same active positive characteristics as our first president. However, Trumps character can be seen as compulsive, aggressive and power driven. These characteristics have placed President Trump in the active negative category which I will explain through direct examples.
As a person, Trump is described by his close friends and colleagues as a hard worker and a man who is driven for success. Being categorized as an active-negative, we can see how our candidates early childhood has an impact on his political career today. His own family exiled Trump at the age of 13 due to his compulsive and aggressive behavior by enrolling him in a very rigorous military academy (Frontline, 10:37). This in return has shaped Trumps presidency by becoming power hungry in order to make up
or escape from his childhood. An example of this during his presidency is his persistence in wanting to build the wall along the Mexican-American border and have Mexico pay for it, which has been a huge platform of his political agenda. (BBC News, 2017). Although personality does not necessarily imply a person’s character, as an active-negative character, aggression has played a huge role in Trumps career.
This aggression can be seen as a result of his father’s parenting strategies. We learned that Fred did not like “losers” which established a principal within Trump that we see play out during his presidency (Frontline, 10:00). Therefore, Trump uses his aggressive behavior to obtain what he wants in order to come out as the “winner”. An example of this is the current situation we are undergoing with North Korea. As Kim Jong-Un and Trump argue back and forth over social media, we see that Trump is not willing to retreat due to it seeming like a loss. Furthermore, this can prove to be very problematic behavior due to it potentially causing a nuclear war (Independent,
2017). Lastly, as part of the active-negative category, Trump shows great signs of being compulsive which is what drives him to make many of his presidential decisions. We recollect that as a child Trump was very compulsive, however as an adult, this compulsiveness could be further traced to his lawyer Roy Cohn. Trump’s lawyer was an aggressive and far more compulsive man than Trump and according to family and friends had a huge influence on the President’s decision making strategy (The New York Times, 2016). Since the beginning of his presidency, we have seen trump actively making compulsive decisions such as; enacting the travel ban and removing DACA. Note, all of these decisions have been posted on social media which is another source used to contribute to his compulsiveness. By doing so, Trump not only shows that he is being active as a President, but also in a negative way which is why he was placed in this category. President Trump along with other presidents before him, have been held to certain characteristic standard most do not fit. We expect our presidents to be active-positives, but as we can see with Trump and former active-negatives, this may not always be the case. This is because no president shares the same background and ambitions as the previous, which leaves each with a unique leadership style, even one which we cannot agree with most of the time.