In this commentary, Tom Guarriello explains that modern political communication is built around narrative storytelling, specifically a victim‑villain‑hero framework. He breaks down the classic three‑act story structure as applied to politics: Act 1 introduces the audience (the "small‑h" hero) as ordinary workers who become victims of a villain (e.g., illegal immigrants, al‑Qaeda, the healthcare system). Act 2 brings in the politician as the "capital‑H" hero who promises to rescue the victims by defeating the villain. Act 3 delivers the politician’s promises as the means by which the villain will be slain, leading to a happy ending for the audience. Guarriello urges viewers to watch upcoming debates and speeches, counting how often this motif appears and noting how different politicians select different villains to suit their narratives. The piece serves as a guide for listeners to dissect political rhetoric and recognize the storytelling tactics used to shape public perception.
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Well, hi, it's Tom. You know, here in the United States, for the next about 36 days, we're going to be engaged in some pretty interesting political drama. Tonight, the Republican CNN YouTube debate will be televised, and I started thinking about what's going to happen over the next 5, 6 weeks, and it got me thinking about a very interesting development that's taken place in politics this year, one that I haven't heard before. If you'll notice, often when you're listening to political analysts today, you will hear them begin to talk about the— they'll use the word narrative when they're talking about politicians. About how what politicians are trying to do is to shape the narrative. Now, what are they talking about? Well, a narrative is a story, right? And so, if you think about politics as theater and the politicians as telling a story, I think it helps us to, to figure out what each of the politicians is trying to accomplish when they're giving a speech or engaging one another in what we're calling a debate, which is actually— I don't even know what it is. But let's think a little bit about narratives and about stories. There are two important things we have to remember about stories. All stories have to have characters, and all stories have a structure. Now, what kind of a structure does a story have? Well, in its simplest form, Every story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So when politicians are telling a story, the kind of story that they're usually telling goes something like this. And the structure of the story and the characters in the story are often similar, but the plot is frequently very different. Let me tell you what I mean. So if we take the beginning of the story, what usually happens in the beginning of a story? Well, we're introduced to a character who is the main focus of the story. Let's call that character the hero. Now, in a political story, that hero— I'm gonna use hero with a small h in the beginning of the story because that hero is usually us. What the politicians are trying to do is to tell a story in which we, the voters, are caught in a moment of our lives. We are workers in an industry that is under attack by illegal aliens, right? So right there we have ourselves, the hero. In the beginning of the story, they kind of set it up, frame it, as you will. Frame the story as, here we are, workers just going along trying to do our jobs and live our lives, and we are now under attack by illegal aliens who are coming in to take our jobs, to use our healthcare, those kinds of things. So we have the hero, ourselves, and suddenly, by virtue of this other character who— if we have a hero, we usually have a villain, don't we? So now we have a villain, and suddenly I, the small age hero, have become a victim. I've been identified now as a victim, and as a victim, that kind of ends the beginning part of the story, right? Act 1, we see this hero who before was just kind of going along suddenly has been attacked by illegal aliens and is going to lose his or her job. And now this person, we— has been victimized. And now we move to Act 2, the middle part of the story. And in the middle part of the story, we see the victim and the villain, you know, kind of drawn in very stark terms. And who appears on the scene but the real hero, the capital H hero. And guess who that hero is? We know who that is. It's the politician. I am the hero. I am here to save you. So the politician has come in and told us that we as victims of these villains are about to be saved by he, or in this case even she, the hero. So that moves us through Act 2, as the— as we get introduced to the capital H hero. Act 3. In Act 3, the end of the story, what happens? The hero, the politician, rights the wrong by slaying the villain. Well, they can't really slay the villain because they're politicians, and so all they can do is tell us how they're going to slay the villain. See, this is what the promises are. All the promises that politicians make us are ways of telling us how they are going to be heroic in solving our problems, the victims, by attacking the villains. And so the end of the story, we all live happily ever after because the hero has taken care of all of our problems. We're no longer victims. We are great. We have, we have slayed. They have slayed. We don't ever slay anything. We, we're just always the victims, and then we become saved by the heroes. The hero has saved the day by slaying the villain. Be gone, illegal aliens! Be gone, war on drugs! Be gone, all of these other terrible things! I, the hero, am here to save you. So when you're listening to the debates tonight, and for those of us who are going to follow this interesting drama over the next 36 days, When we're listening to all these political speeches and so on that are about to happen, let's see how many times the victim-villain-hero motif of storytelling actually gets used. And watch how each politician changes the nature of the villain depending on his or her narrative, how they want to tell the story. We know that certain politicians want the story to be about some kinds of villains like al-Qaeda. Others want it to be about other kinds of villains like the Republicans. Others want it to be about other— still other kinds of villains, the healthcare system and all of the evil providers of healthcare and health insurance. So let's watch and see how many of those kinds of stories we can identify over the next few weeks. I'm gonna do that because this is the kind of stuff I love. So take care, I'll see you guys soon. Bye-bye.
