Charismatic rhetoric, integrative complexity and the U.S. Presidency: An analysis of the State of the Union Address (SOTU) from George Washington to Barack Obama

This study advances Thoemmes and Conway's seminal work on integrative complexity (IC) of U.S. presidents by examining the relationship between IC and charisma in the State of the Union address. I examined a census of SOTU addresses given from George Washington to Barack Obama using Boas Shamir's self-concept based motivational charisma construct. IC and charisma were positively related for presidents in the first terms in office; however, this relation only held for presidents who eventually won reelection. Data also confirmed a positive correlation between charisma and the likelihood of reelection. I describe various trends in the data with respect to charisma and IC for time in office. Overall, findings show that using IC in leadership studies may be a worthwhile endeavor, as is measuring charisma by computer given that this measure correlated reasonably well with measures of charisma derived from other sources.