It's been said that Abraham Lincoln suffered from serious depression, and that was precisely what made him such an excellent president. He was deeply troubled by injustice, and never took issues facing the nation or its people lightly. Compare that to President Bush, the CEOs of corrupt corporations on Wall Street and elsewhere, and now, Rod Blagojevich, and we have a fascinating study in political psychology. Considering that Lincoln lived a century and a half ago, and that his temperament would likely preclude him from even making it to the primaries in a Presidential election today, we're left to do our best to understand why so many powerful people commit such stupid, selfish acts. After all, that's our status quo.

People close to Blagojevich are saying he'd been acting erratic and delusional for months. According to some experts, those are nice words for Blago's state of mind.

Lizzie Stark, reporting for News Shrink on Daily Beast, interviewed renowned scientists of the mind to try and get a handle on what could have convinced the governor that it would be OK to sell the most talked about senate seat in Washington. (The italics are mine, just to underscore the absurdity of the effort, and the hubris behind it.)

Renana Brooks, a psychologist and director of The National Institute for the Study of the American Unconscious, suggests that his intentions overshadowed the reality of what he did. "I want to do good, so what I'm doing is good," may have been his train of thought, she told Stark. This would jibe with the governor's own admission that he was trying to provide for his family since, as he put it, he was "hurting" financially. (I'd like to see this man's definition of "hurting.")

Jack Dovidio, a professor of psychology at Yale University, told Stark that the old adage "power corrupts" is not even precisely true. The power merely allows people to take action, whether that action is good or bad. But power also makes a person's inner seed of morality or immorality grow, Dovidio says, and an inflated sense of power can cause a person to lose their sense of wrongdoing.

Justin Frank, a psychiatrist and author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, says Blagojevich suffers from a kind of "magical thinking," common to young children. According to Frank, the thrill of getting elected to a powerful position can "reactivate childhood fantasies of being a star, of being invincible, of being able to do whatever you want."

And finally, we need to consider our own role in scandals like this one, says T. Byram Karasu, a professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "We as a society (with great help from politicians themselves) define politics as a profession with questionable honesty," he says. "We expect a politician to promise and not deliver, to lie, line their pockets, make quid pro quo deals, and mainly to do whatever is necessary to assure their election."

As Stark suggests, these low expectations are part of what allowed Blagojevich to brazenly declare, "I've got this thing and it's f*cking golden, and, uh uh, I'm just not giving it up for f*ckin' nothing," even while he knew he was being investigated. "For a seasoned prostitute, there is no shame or guilt associated with their being merchants of the flesh," says Karasu. "If caught, they spend a night in jail. Similarly, a politician who is caught for fraud/bribery will spend a few years in one of those Federal hotels and go back to their lives. It's part of the game."

I hope for his sake, and for that of his family, that Barack Obama doesn't suffer from depression like Lincoln did. But I do hope he will show the same degree of consideration and care that made our 16th president such an esteemed historical figure. At the moment, I believe that he will. Let's just hope he remains immune to the influences of power described by the experts above.

[Image: AP via Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune]