Trump's message beat Hillary's message.
This blog as repeatedly used the metaphor of politics as professional wrestling.
It may appear to further trivialize an election noteworthy for how little it focused on policy issues and how much it focused on cartoonish versions of both Trump and Hillary. One insight I gained from watching presidential candidates up close was that their actual message and communication with voters was essentially non-verbal and it was most certainly not about policy details.
Professional wrestling takes place as a mostly non-verbal contest between characters playing out an outline script. There is some shouting of pre match and mid match position statements to establish what role each wrestler takes, but the contest is carried out by bigger than life bodies. The role each plays--pretty boy, mean dude, bad boy rule breaker, foreign interloper--is communicated with grand gestures and few words.
Political scientist Sanford Borins of the University of Toronto will be delivering a paper that looks closely at the archetype characters defined by the candidates. (This blog will show a link to the paper when it is available for public review.) Borins continues his work examining the basic thematic roles or archetypes which he calls "fables". Political fables include a hero who saves his country, a knave who saves himself at the expense of his country, and a fool who hurts his country and himself through his incompetence. As Borins notes, through careful analysis and quantification of YouTube commercials, both Hillary and Trump had competing Big Picture fables to promote.
Trump's hero story was that he was the successful businessman outsider who knew the tricks of the trade including buying political influence, using bankruptcy laws who enjoyed richly the fruits of his success, and who could use those skills to save the country from the "carnage" of the status quo. Meanwhile, he said, Hillary was a knave who let others die in Benghazi and was out to help herself with her close ties to Wall Street, plus she was incompetent and physically weak, a fool.
Hillary positioned herself as a public spirited advocate for the disadvantaged with years of experience--a hero--while Trump was a self serving con man knave whose temperament made him incompetent, a fool.
Their advertising messages did not discuss real issues. Instead, they reiterated their fables pounding in the simple story. Trump-the-hero; crooked Hillary. Experienced and compassionate Hillary; temperamentally un-presidential Trump. Hillary says Trump is a knave; Trump counters by saying knave is good because it takes a knave to understand knave. There was a competition between fables, promulgated by greater than life characters, professional wrestlers each trying to write the ending of the script.
Understanding the candidates as cartoonish archetypes help explain why Hillary's attacks on Trump didn't stick well enough. She attacked him for being a "bad boy" but Trump's version of his heroism was not that he was virtuous and abstemptious but rather that he was a hero who knew the ropes and understood and appreciated the pleasures of winning and therefore he could lead America to winning. He used the bankruptcy and tax laws to his advantage, which made him smart, not selfish. Women were attracted to him, sure, that is one more of the advantages of winning. The "pussygrab" tape reinforced his reputation; it didn't destroy it. Had he been a Jimmy Carter pure-virtue candidate it would have hurt, but Trump was a bad boy character bringing worldliness and greed and experience as a player in a dirty swamp as his weapons on behalf of his country.
Therefore, Hillary's critism of Trump as knave did not hurt Trump. However, since Hillary was selling compassion and virtue as her tools of heroism then Trump's attacks on her (Benghazi, Goldman speeches, ties to Wall Street, Bill's dalliance with Monica) all undermined her narrative story of virtue.
That was the critical asymatry: trump's attacks on Hillary hurt far more that Hillary'on Trump. Hillary was not consistent in being good but Trump was consistent in being bad, and for Trump naughtiness was a qualification, not a disqualification.
Sanford Borins' work gives an academic structure and--I believe--validation to a central theme of this blog over the past 18 months: that the campaign was a nearly nonverbal contest between two cartoonish archetypes, and Trump--notwithstanding his vulnerabilities--won because his narrative fable was a clearer, mor persuave message then was Hillary's.
This blog as repeatedly used the metaphor of politics as professional wrestling.
It may appear to further trivialize an election noteworthy for how little it focused on policy issues and how much it focused on cartoonish versions of both Trump and Hillary. One insight I gained from watching presidential candidates up close was that their actual message and communication with voters was essentially non-verbal and it was most certainly not about policy details.
Professional wrestling takes place as a mostly non-verbal contest between characters playing out an outline script. There is some shouting of pre match and mid match position statements to establish what role each wrestler takes, but the contest is carried out by bigger than life bodies. The role each plays--pretty boy, mean dude, bad boy rule breaker, foreign interloper--is communicated with grand gestures and few words.
Political scientist Sanford Borins of the University of Toronto will be delivering a paper that looks closely at the archetype characters defined by the candidates. (This blog will show a link to the paper when it is available for public review.) Borins continues his work examining the basic thematic roles or archetypes which he calls "fables". Political fables include a hero who saves his country, a knave who saves himself at the expense of his country, and a fool who hurts his country and himself through his incompetence. As Borins notes, through careful analysis and quantification of YouTube commercials, both Hillary and Trump had competing Big Picture fables to promote.
Trump's hero story was that he was the successful businessman outsider who knew the tricks of the trade including buying political influence, using bankruptcy laws who enjoyed richly the fruits of his success, and who could use those skills to save the country from the "carnage" of the status quo. Meanwhile, he said, Hillary was a knave who let others die in Benghazi and was out to help herself with her close ties to Wall Street, plus she was incompetent and physically weak, a fool.
Hillary positioned herself as a public spirited advocate for the disadvantaged with years of experience--a hero--while Trump was a self serving con man knave whose temperament made him incompetent, a fool.
Their advertising messages did not discuss real issues. Instead, they reiterated their fables pounding in the simple story. Trump-the-hero; crooked Hillary. Experienced and compassionate Hillary; temperamentally un-presidential Trump. Hillary says Trump is a knave; Trump counters by saying knave is good because it takes a knave to understand knave. There was a competition between fables, promulgated by greater than life characters, professional wrestlers each trying to write the ending of the script.
Understanding the candidates as cartoonish archetypes help explain why Hillary's attacks on Trump didn't stick well enough. She attacked him for being a "bad boy" but Trump's version of his heroism was not that he was virtuous and abstemptious but rather that he was a hero who knew the ropes and understood and appreciated the pleasures of winning and therefore he could lead America to winning. He used the bankruptcy and tax laws to his advantage, which made him smart, not selfish. Women were attracted to him, sure, that is one more of the advantages of winning. The "pussygrab" tape reinforced his reputation; it didn't destroy it. Had he been a Jimmy Carter pure-virtue candidate it would have hurt, but Trump was a bad boy character bringing worldliness and greed and experience as a player in a dirty swamp as his weapons on behalf of his country.
Therefore, Hillary's critism of Trump as knave did not hurt Trump. However, since Hillary was selling compassion and virtue as her tools of heroism then Trump's attacks on her (Benghazi, Goldman speeches, ties to Wall Street, Bill's dalliance with Monica) all undermined her narrative story of virtue.
That was the critical asymatry: trump's attacks on Hillary hurt far more that Hillary'on Trump. Hillary was not consistent in being good but Trump was consistent in being bad, and for Trump naughtiness was a qualification, not a disqualification.
Sanford Borins' work gives an academic structure and--I believe--validation to a central theme of this blog over the past 18 months: that the campaign was a nearly nonverbal contest between two cartoonish archetypes, and Trump--notwithstanding his vulnerabilities--won because his narrative fable was a clearer, mor persuave message then was Hillary's.
1 comment:
I guess so...for sure Trump was the perfect candidate for the Republican plurality, who embrace all things vulgar.... but it seems to me that this election was essentially a fluke, with the Democrats caught flat footed, immersed in the Bernie/Hillary drama, while the Republicans sunk to a new low appealing to the worst in the electorate (see previous blog). Democratic overconfidence with a defensive posture and a murky message didn't help, either. I have to say watching the Republicans lord over their deplorable constituency is pretty creepy.
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