The Making of a President: How Presidential Candidates Become Who They Are in Biographical Campaign Materials

ABSTRACT

This article examines how presidential campaigns claim that candidates became who they are by looking at biographical campaign materials through the lens of biographical reasoning. Biographical reasoning is the process of connecting the experiences in someone’s life to his or her identity, often by treating those experiences as either a cause or an illustration of characteristics. An analysis of biographical reasoning in presidential campaign materials from 1952 to 2016 reveals three key themes in how campaigns portray candidates’ development: (a) Early in life, candidates mostly acquire, rather than illustrate, positive characteristics; (b) candidates mostly improve as people without major characterological setbacks, going from good to better; and (c) candidates benefit very little from economic advantages. The consistency of these themes suggests that the conventions of biographical campaign materials include specific assumptions about how presidents should become who they are, some of which help campaigns connect candidates to important American myths.

Acknowledgments

I thank Kathleen Hall Jamieson and two peer reviewers for their help with this article.