THAT INCOMPREHENSIBLE "X" FACTOR

THAT INCOMPREHENSIBLE  “X” FACTOR

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© August 14, 2011

Charlie Rose had Arnold Palmer on his television show for the hour the other day (PBS, August 4, 2011).  Palmer will soon be 82.  He had a conversation with Rose, accompanying him through his home, rich in memorabilia of a long and successful career with mementos on display of his many close relationships with people he called his “buddies.”  This included Hall of Fame golfer, Jack Nicklaus, and president, Dwight David Eisenhower.  Nicklaus won a record setting eighteen major golf tournaments, while Palmer won eight.

Rose asked Palmer if he thought Tiger Woods, who has won fourteen major PGA tournaments would equal or surpass his friend.  Palmer rubbed his chin, furrowed his brow, and hesitated with a twinkle in his eyes. 

They had been discussing the “x” factor, that incomprehensible component that champions possess, if tentatively, that separates them from the pack, that has far less to do with raw talent, and much more to do with hard work, passion, sacrifice and an indomitable spirit to win.

Once that spirit is broken, that sense of invincibility, chances of regaining it, Palmer and Rose agreed by mirroring smiles, is between remote and never.   

Those thoughts occurred to me as I was reading Drew Westen’s piece from the New York Times.  Westen  had been a guest on the Charlie Rose Show recently, and cut up pretty badly by Fareed Zakaria of the Times, and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic (see blog: “Conceit on Display – The Charlie Rose Show,” August 11, 2011). 

Westen writes in his piece, “There was a story the American people were waiting to hear, and needed to hear, from their new president, but he didn’t tell it.  And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.” 

Westen is a psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia with clearly a political orientation.  While reading his piece, an article I didn’t think deserved the kind of abuse that he suffered from Zakaria, Chait and Rose, I thought what must have gone through the mind of the new president. 

Here he was a man who had beat the odds by being the first president of color, a long shot with no discernible executive experience, but a professorial background where his ideas and opinions were unlikely to be challenged, a man who was riding the Camelot chariot created by John and Jacqueline Kennedy, only to forget the “x” factor that deposited him into the presidential suite. 

Barak Obama did everything right as a campaigner, and began doing everything wrong as a president.  It would seem with hindsight that he or someone in his immediate circle of advisers told him that this was his moment in history to do what no other president had done in one hundred years.  It was his moment to put through a national health insurance program to cover everyone whether they liked it or not. 

The healthcare program had been given a push as far back as Wilson, some attention by FDR, Truman and even Nixon.  But it reached a bureaucratic crescendo during the Clinton Administration as Hillary Clinton headed a taskforce that created a weighty and cumbersome tome that couldn’t get out of committee. 

With both houses of Congress in his pocket during his first months in office, President Obama did the impossible.  He got healthcare legislation through Congress, which he signed into law.  Some say he did this at the expense of a sick economy, rising unemployment, soaring national debt, and an even weaker global economy that was now an unavoidable factor in America’s national economy. 

When the world of Tiger Woods crashed to earth with the crumbling of his vehicle on his estate with the added symbolic nuance of a golf club taken to his windows, it would seem his “x” factor disintegrated as well.  Obviously, something has crippled him as he most recently missed the cut at the PGA Championship.

One wonders if President Obama’s failure to take care of jobs, first, will be his “Waterloo.”  Could it be that his dalliance with the siren of history is not unlike the siren of the flesh that seemingly sullied the “x” factor of Tiger Woods? 

Time will tell.  You can beat up on the messenger, as Westen clearly has been, spend a $ billion in a reelection campaign, and still not regain the “x” factor.  Success is tenuous, and continuing success is unlikely without it.   

A word to the wise, this “x” factor doesn’t apply only to great athletes and great leaders, but to us all. 

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