Summary: Dana Milbank’s Washington Post opinion column outlining Mitt Romney’s personal shortcomings as a presidential candidate is congruent with my assessment that Mitt Romney lacks the personality qualities necessary for successfully challenging Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. Specifically, Romney’s score of 6 on the Personal Electability Index (which has accurately predicted the outcome of every presidential election since 1996), ranks near the bottom among presidential candidates evaluated in the past four presidential election cycles.

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Summary: Christian cleansing continued in post-Saddam Iraq as a car bomb outside a Christian church in the north of the country wounded 23 people and security forces found and disabled vehicles packed with explosives outside two other churches in Kirkuk. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 3, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: U.S. military planners have little doubt that an Israeli air campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities would provoke Iranian retaliation against Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers allied with the United States. American efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, would come under threat. And there would be no way that any U.S. administration, after so many decades pledging undying support for Israel, could make a convincing claim in Muslim eyes that it was not complicit in the attack. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 21, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that American flags were set on fire to chants of “No, no for occupation” as followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, which had already cost hundreds of billions of dollars — with an ultimate price tag in the trillions — dwarfing the original Bush administration estimate of $2.4 billion.

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Summary: President Barack Obama’s foreign policy appears to be working in one area vital to U.S. national security: Pakistan. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 20, 2009, Aubrey Immelman examined what might have happened if companies deemed “too big to fail” had been allowed to do just that.

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Summary: The suicide bomber behind the Dec. 30, 2009 attack on CIA Forward Operating Base Chapman in eastern Afghanistan, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, claims in a posthumously released recording that he lured U.S. and Jordanian intelligence officers into a trap by sending them misleading information about terrorist targets as well as videotapes he made of senior al-Qaeda leaders. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that two days after calling conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh a mere “entertainer” with an “incendiary” talk show, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele apologized and acknowledged Limbaugh as a “national conservative leader” in a spat that raised questions about the leadership of the GOP.

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Summary: The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, anti-government conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that according to some economists, a Depression doesn’t have to be Great, with bread lines, rampant unemployment, and a wipeout in the stock market; the economy can sink into a milder depression — the kind spelled with a lowercase “d” — and it may be happening now.

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Summary: Conspiracy theories have long been a fixture on the political landscape, with political paranoia most virulent among politically marginalized sectors of the polity. So, with Democrats holding the reins of power, it stands to reason that the right-wing fringe has become the prime repository of collective craziness. … Conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Michele Bachmann. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 20, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, said at his trial that President Bush’s smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq had made him think of “the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women,” and enraged him. “After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction … I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him.”

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Summary: President Barack Obama has recalled his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, and is reconstituting the team that helped him win the White House in 2008 to counter Republican challenges in the 2010 midterm elections and recalibrate after political setbacks that have narrowed his legislative ambitions. … The political psychology of Barack Obama: Obama’s personality profile; Obama’s leadership style; Obama’s decision-making style. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 24, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported on the Iraqi provincial elections and the power struggle among competing Shiite factions in Iraq.

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Summary: Psychological assessment of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, leadership style implications of Kim’s personality profile, and North Korea threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security. … Update: Washington Post profile of Kim Jong-Un.

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Summary: Sarah Moore and Angela Rodgers, students at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., presented their research on “The Personality Profile of President Barack Obama: Leadership Implications” at the 6th annual Minnesota Private Colleges Scholars at the Capitol event, Feb. 19, 2009 in the State Capitol rotunda, St. Paul, Minn. Their research was conducted in the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, directed by College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University associate professor of psychology Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D.

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