On the front page of Thursday's Los Angeles Times was a story about John McCain. It was not really a news article but a story that could have begun: "Once upon a time ... "
We were told McCain's history, from his parents' romantic elopement to Tijuana to his earliest memory: "Jack, the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!" to how he stood up for a Philippine steward while his classmate "stormed off in embarrassment and anger." The writer's purpose undoubtedly was to make the candidate come alive for us -- to make him as real in the almost hyper-real way that a character is in a crafted fiction.
Humans have a fundamental need for story. The three-act structure -- beginning, middle and end -- is found in every culture and across every class. Lord Vishnu and Brahma. Leda and the Swan. Moses and the tablets. We need stories to tell us who we are, where we belong and where we should end up. A story is based on cause and effect. It reveals all we long to know: a past, a present and a future. There is security in happily ever after.
Politics and story go hand in hand. Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan, "It's Morning Again in America," was the narrative Americans wanted. It implied a dark and scary past. It told of a present in which the sun is rising. And it promised a brighter day in the future. The American people bought it.
Bill Clinton took it one step further when he hired TV producers Harry Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Masters at popular narrative, they could not have embellished a better candidate character than Clinton. He really was from a small town called Hope. His single mother taught him the value of hard work and determination. He worked his way through college and into public service.
Sound familiar? It is Barack Obama's story and Sarah Palin's story and at the heart of every dime novel Horatio Alger wrote. It is the quintessential American story, from nowhere to the American dream.
George W. Bush did his best to rewrite his story to fit the mold, creating a persona as a good ol' boy from a ranch in Texas when he was actually one of the country's elite, attending Andover Academy in Massachusetts, Yale University and receiving his MBA from Harvard.
Early in Obama's convention speech, he said, "Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story -- of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well off or well known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to."
