A Guide To Candidate Archetypes, part 2
People talk of candidates needing to ‘define themselves’. Well, that’s what this is about. An ‘undefined’ candidate can’t get media coverage, can’t win the ‘hearts’ (or ‘gut’ depending on how base you want your metaphor to be) of the voters, can’t get momentum, and can’t win.
Being ‘defined’ means being cast in the role of a specific character in the minds of voters. It doesn’t have to be true, and it certainly isn’t rational, but it drives politics as much as any other factor. The character they are cast as can be defined positively or negatively, but any definition is better than no definition at all. A totally undefined candidate simply doesn’t exist in the minds of voters and stands no chance.
Recap:
Barack Obama: The Stern Parent, Black Ops, The Domestic Infrastructurer, The Do-Gooder
Sarah Palin: The Rock Star
Newt Gingrich: The Trail Blazer
Archetype 7: The Eccentric
Appeal: A unique perspective. Has a take on things you won’t hear from anyone else.
Must guard against: Seeming (or being) crazy.
2012 Exemplar: Ron Paul. Wants to eliminate 5 cabinet-level agencies (Education, Interior, Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development), eliminate all foreign aid, cut the top corporate tax rate to 15% (down from 35%), and much much more!
2008 Exemplar: Dennis Kucinich. A vegan who wanted to reduce the voting age to 16 and was the only member in the House of Representatives to condemn US interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
Pop Culture Exemplar: Many Woody Allen characters. Like in this scene:
Party Advantage: Democratic, simply by not demonizing things like art and science. Those so-called ‘cultural elites’ invented all the stuff you love, or will love sometime in the future.
Archetype 8: The Ambassador
Appeal: Expert at foreign relations. An advocate for the USA to places that aren’t the USA.
Must guard against: Seeming like a bureaucratic drone who spends too much time palling around with foreigners.
2012 Exemplar: Jon Huntsman. An Eagle Scout who served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Speaks Mandarin.
2008 Exemplar: Bill Richardson. A Catholic Democrat who spent a lifetime in politics and was born in the US, raised in Mexico, his father a Bostonian born in Nicaragua, his mother Mexican and his grandfather Spanish.
Pop Culture Exemplar: Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket. A more passsive variation on Graham Greene’s Quiet American, he tours a foreign land on behalf of Uncle Sam.
Party Advantage: None. Republicans are too xenophobic to even talk to foreigners and Democrats too suspicious of an advocate of the US’s raison d’État.
Archetype 9: The Grouch
Appeal: We are all grouches. We are born crying. We all want all the things we don’t like to just fuck off. If only someone in the news would give voice to our rage, so we don’t have to go to the trouble.
Must guard against: Everyone hates a grouch. In fiction, monsters or the devil often play a very scary version of the grouch associated with base animal instincts that human society strives to transcend.
2012 Exemplar: Rick Santorum. Search ‘Santorum opposes’ in Google News, but only if you have time to read 1500 articles.
2008 Exemplar: Fred Thompson has a bone to pick… from his stuffed leather chair while smoking a cigar.
Pop Culture Exemplar: Eric Cartman in “South Park”
Party Advantage: Republicans. Sitting in a comfy chair in a comfy home imagining all the ways they’d totally kick everyone’s ass with their fantasy fists of fury is the GOP pastime.
Achetype 10: White Collar
Appeal: Blue collar admiration. Seems like the guy your working-class parents made you go to college to become.
Must guard against: Blue collar envy. Seems like the guy that fired your working-class parents so they couldn’t afford to send you to college.
2012 Exemplar: Mitt Romney
2008 Exemplar: Mitt Romney
Pop Culture Exemplar: Russell ‘Stringer’ Bell in “The Wire”. Thanks to Romney, one is tempted to equate White Collar with boring, so here’s a more interesting incarnation of the White Collar type:
Party Advantage: Republicans. No matter the Republican, White Collar is either who they are, who they wish they were, or who they get paid by.
Archetype 11: The Lover
Appeal: If loving America is wrong, they don’t want to be right. The Lover really splits into two sub-archetypes depending on whether they can get votes or not: The Doomed Lover, the rejected candidate who’s driven by a call to service even if voters fail to return his calls; and the Spouse, the accepted candidate that voters want to marry.
2012 Exemplar: Buddy Roemer. As a potential third-party candidate he falls into the Doomed Lover side of it. He’s convinced America needs him, though America disagrees.
2008 Exemplar: Joe Biden. Never securing his party’s nomination made him the Doomed Lover, but his time as VP has moved him into the Spouse category.
Pop Culture Exemplar: Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, the first class girl who falls for the third class boy. Despite the restriction of her family and class, her heart will go on.
Party Advantage: Democrats have a solid tradition of success with Lover candidates such as Franklin Roosevelt (Spouse for richer and for poorer during the Depression and then Doomed Lover, literally, when he died in office), Harry Truman (Spouse via shotgun wedding, the later Doomed Lover that barely managed to get re-elected and was despised for decades after), Lyndon Johnson (another shotgun wedding (or, more accurately, a 6.5 mm Carcano Model 91/38 rifle wedding) then Doomed Lover as his Great Society love letter to America was returned to sender by the war in Vietnam), and Bill Clinton (in every possible way).
Archetype 12: The Wizard
Appeal: Don’t worry; they’ve got this. You don’t know how they do. They just do. The same way Fonzie controls a jukebox.
Must guard against: Toto pulling back the curtain.
2012 Exemplar: Barack Obama. The President can speak extemporaneously with the best of them, but get pelted with cries of ‘Teleprompter!’ because, after carefully crafting a meticulous oratory, he’s determined to get the words right.
2008 Exemplar: Barack Obama. He seemed to drive his campaign forward with charismatic stump speeches, but behind the scenes they had a data-entry and shoe-leather ground game going in every nook and cranny of every state that was remotely in play. See Indiana.
Pop Culture Exemplar: Professor Julius Kelp/Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor (1963). The nerd Julius Kelp concocts that magic potion that results in uber-cool Buddy Love.
Party Advantage: None. The Democrats are Professor Julius Kelp and the Republicans are Buddy Love.