Who’s Winning the Presidential Election ‘Game of Thrones?’

Mitt Romney/Stannis Baratheon

Let’s start with the obvious point – in “Game of Thrones,” Stannis Baratheon has the best claim to the throne. The problem is: no one really wants him to get it, even though it’s his by rights, because he’s not all that likable, personally. Moreover, to make matters worse, Stannis has allied himself with Melisandre, a priestess of a foreign and widely mistrusted religion, who may or may not have demonic powers. Nevertheless, people don’t count him out because Stannis is a proven battle commander, and has a ruthless approach to warfare. “They’ll bend the knee or I’ll destroy them,” he says in Episode 1 of Season 2.

This, in effect, sums up the initial response of the Republican electorate to Mitt Romney, and Romney’s approach to campaigning. Most people will admit that Romney has the best organization and the strongest message discipline, and, also, many establishment Republican figures would argue that it’s “his turn” to be the party’s standard bearer. In other words, Romney’s supporters contend he’s the rightful leader of the GOP in 2012. The problem is that the base doesn’t like him, viewing him as inauthentic and stiff – words that also could be applied to Stannis. His Mormonism has been an albatross similar to Melisandre, in that many people mistrust Mormonism as a “cult” that’s foreign to their understanding of Christianity. But not to worry, Romney is a proven campaigner, and he certainly has been applying Stannis’ scorched earth approach to politics effectively with his negative ads. “They’ll bend the knee or I’ll destroy them,” indeed.

Newt Gingrich/Robb Stark

Robb Stark‘s rise to becoming the self-proclaimed “King in the North” in Season 2 has more to do with the missteps of his opponents than with his own victories. He is consistently underestimated due to his age.  He only makes his bid for succession because the ruling family cuts off his father’s head (Spoiler alert!), and is proclaimed king by his bannermen as a giant “F— you!” to everyone else. He only has regional power and, as far as anyone can tell, only wants regional power. When one of his opponents reminds him snidely that “three victories don’t make you a conqueror,” Stark snaps back, “It’s better than three defeats.”

If Stark is the “King in the North” in “Game of Thrones,” Gingrich is the “King in the South” of this Republican primary season, at least if his few victories are any guide. Gingrich, like Stark, sees himself as the victimized heir of an assassinated leader – in Gingrich’s case, Ronald Reagan. Gingrich believes the Republican party has been trying to kill Reagan in order to bolster its appeal among independents, while taking conservative loyalties for granted. Moreover, like Robb’s father Ned, who accuses the Lannister family of trying to usurp the throne by pretending an incestuous bastard child is the true heir, Gingrich thinks the GOP is trying to foist false heirs to Reagan’s legacy – especially Mitt Romney – on the conservative base. His support from figures like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has openly made remarks flirting with secession, only bolsters the idea of him as a regional leader trying to command his own independent kingdom. Unfortunately for him, rather like Robb, he would need the support of another claimant for the throne to be a credible threat to his rivals. Robb chose to try to negotiate with Renly Baratheon, but it remains to be seen who Newt will go for. And speaking of Renly…

Rick Santorum/Renly Baratheon

Unlike his brother Stannis, Renly Baratheon has no claim to the throne whatsoever, except that people like him. He’s not a battle commander, and sees himself explicitly as the remedy to a long line of good soldiers who have made mediocre kings. Renly uses his clout to call in favors with a lot of people and get a massive army, but there are still problems for him.  Firstly, he’s secretly gay (not an asset in a medieval society), and secondly, because he’s not a hardened commander, he doesn’t particularly know how to win a war. Robb Stark sees him as the best option for an alliance, but as to whether that will be successful, the show hasn’t presented an answer yet.

Santorum has also managed the incredible feat of winning multiple primaries using nothing but his own personal likability and appeal to the GOP base. He’s the most credible threat to the “presumptive” Romney, and also terribly unlike him. However, much like Renly, Santorum has problems – for one thing, his ability to win elections is mixed at best, and making himself the primary target for the Romney juggernaut has reduced him to a position of marginal influence. Moreover, similar Renly, whose homosexuality makes him a pariah in a medieval society, Santorum’s beliefs on homosexuality are widely seen as too medieval for the modern GOP. They’re both out of step with their time, and despite enormous likability, he might not have the skills necessary to do the heavy lifting in a war.

Ron Paul/Viserys Targaryen

Viserys, by the time Season 2 starts, is already dead. The reason he is dead, and the character arc in Season 1 that leads him there, would be tragic if he wasn’t such a jerk. The last male scion of a family that was in charge of the Iron Throne for centuries, Viserys longs to reclaim his place as the supposedly rightful King of Westeros. To that end, he marries his seemingly marginally important sister Daenerys off to the formidable Dothraki horse lord Khal Drogo in an effort to gain an ally in his effort to take back the throne. Drogo doesn’t oblige, and Viserys’ abuse of his sister eventually results in her standing by passively while Drogo melts his head off with a pot of molten gold – an ironic reference to the “golden crown” Viserys wanted. In the end, it is his sister, Daenerys, who becomes the powerful claimant to the throne that Viserys himself wanted to be.

Ron Paul’s campaign is also effectively dead, as I’ve contented previously. However, much like Viserys, he leaves behind a more capable relative who could achieve what he did not – namely, his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Also like Viserys, Paul sees himself as the only true heir of the conservative movement, invoking a tradition that he argues was the dominant one in the GOP up until the election of George W. Bush, but which really ended with the nomination of Barry Goldwater for President of the United States in 1964. Viserys’s obsession with a “golden crown” mirrors Paul’s obsession with the gold standard, and like Viserys, he has ended up marginalizing his own claim by basically behaving like a spoiled brat to all his potential allies. He won’t be the one to take the throne, even though it badly needs to be taken from its current occupant. And speaking of…

Barack Obama/Joffrey “Baratheon” Lannister

Joffrey is probably the most hated character on the show. A sadistic, inexperienced, dimwitted tyrant who is technically the byproduct of brother-on-sister incest, Joffrey is infamous largely for ignoring advice from wiser, more experienced people, for frivolously executing politically relevant hostages in order to curry favor with crowds of peasants and for letting his own people starve while enjoying a lavish lifestyle. He viciously abuses his advisers, his mother, his intended fiance and everyone lower on the social pecking order than he is, even going so far as to attempt to mutilate a young boy’s face for pretending to be a knight because “you’re not a knight, only a butcher’s boy.” He is petty, short-sighted, completely oblivious to his own political vulnerability, pointlessly cruel and unwilling to listen to anyone around him.

This might be a bit of an unfair comparison to Barack Obama, but not by much. Like Joffrey, Obama is the center of a controversy surrounding his birth (though in Obama’s case, it’s been disproved). Obama also has proven notoriously unwilling to listen to his advisers, constantly believing himself to be the smartest person in the room and refusing to cooperate with anyone who believes things he doesn’t like – just as Joffrey ignores his mother and his uncle’s advice at the start of Season 2. His attempts to bully the Supreme Court, the banks and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan in order to score points with progressives ring eerily of Joffrey’s pointless and capricious beheading of Ned Stark near the end of Season 1. Moreover, much as Joffrey continually repeats “The Throne is mine,” Obama’s response to his critics as recently as early 2010 was “I won the election.” He stubbornly refuses to revise his economic policies, and while he doesn’t try to scar anyone’s face, he certainly doesn’t get tired of reminding everyone around him that they’re not fluent in Constitutional law/math/morality the way he is.

So who’s going to win the real life “Game of Thrones?” Who knows. Rather like the series, it’s up in the air. However, those who read this site probably already know who they’re rooting for.