A collaboration between the Joseph Campbell Foundation, OPUS Archives, and Pacifica Graduate Institute. Join the conversation, create the vision, deepen the study of myth.
In “Race for President Builds Characters,” (Opinion, LA Times, September 28, 2008) Todd Gitlin observes that presidential campaigns are as much concerned with American myths of self and country, as they are policies and issues. This is an important point, and Gitlin goes on to describe the primary myths or archetypes, embodied by McCain and Obama. McCain and even Palin are easily recognized as archetypal figures of the American West, but Gitlin has a harder time locating Obama, calling him “elusive, Protean, a shape-shifter.”
Obama cannot be easily categorized because we are not witnessing a collision between two myths so much as we are participating in the protracted birth of a new one. The impetus towards a new myth is apparent in the campaign slogans of the two candidates. McCain has struggled to find one. At one point, he adopted a version of Obama’s ---A Leader You Can Believe In. Now his website proclaims “Country First: Reform, Prosperity, Peace,” a fitting motto for the new sheriff in the Wild West, violent refuge of outlaws and scoundrels. Obama offers Change. The word “believe” in his slogan, “Change You Can Believe In,” is especially potent, the promise of a new social contract at a time when trust and confidence between the people and their government is almost nonexistent.
The drive towards a new paradigm is also apparent in the generational differences, which brings to mind the archetypal pattern for this mythmaking process. In mythology, and in the mirror of human history, there are many stories about societies in distress, plagued by natural disasters, war, and internal discord that can only be relieved by the ascendance of a youthful hero who breathes new life into the body politic. It is time for the old king, literally and metaphorically, to step down.
