Why Powerful People Overestimate Themselves

"President Barack Obama isn't as great as he thinks he is. To be fair, neither were Presidents Bush or Clinton — or Washington or Lincoln, for that matter. The same can be said for every general who ever commanded an army or every boss who ever ran an office. The fact is, if there's one thing that defines people in powerful positions, it's that they overestimate what they can do with that power. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. And while you may have always suspected that the folks who run the world aren't all they're cracked up to be, don't take too much satisfaction from the fact. It's the rest of us who wind up paying for their overreaching."