Aragorn Elessar vs Stannis Baratheon

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The rightful King of Arnor and Gondor from The Lord of the Rings versus the arguably-rightful-but-definitely-more-rightful-than-the-person-currently-on-the-throne King of Andals, Rhoynar, and First Men from A Song of Ice and Fire.

Both candidates are given strong, functional, well-funded campaign teams familiar with American politics and society as well as the contenders' strengths and weaknesses. Will Aragorn's idealism and record of reconciliation win out over Stannis's chilly public image and penchant for burning people alive, or will Stannis's experience in a more realistic political landscape and probably more detailed policy positions carry the day?

You choose the parties and political climate.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

He's Aragorn, duh! Anyway, yeah that's my vote. I haven't heard of the other guy, so I see him as more likely to lose.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Stannis is from A Song of Ice and Fire, which is an ongoing, very good but very grim, fantasy series by George R.R. Martin, which is being made into an HBO series called Game of Thrones (also the title of the first book in the series). Stannis is widely seen as being more legitimate than the actual king, with good reason, but he's personally unlikable and more than a bit of a stilted technocrat. A Time review of the most recent book compared him to Al Gore. Stannis is definitely one of the plot's closer analogues to Aragorn but this being A Song of Ice and Fire he loses more battles than he wins, is more than a little off his rocker, and follows a bizarre religion that was introduced to his court by his sorcerer-adviser, the Red Priestess Melisandre (who fills the Gandalf role in the story and has been identified as such by the author, the difference being that Melisandre is an absolute maniac who among other things births magical shades with Stannis as their template and sends them out to assassinate people). I think what would work in his favour in most scenarios is that his world runs on sleazy politics (he's actually fairly clean aside from the assassinations but his older and younger brothers are both very, very slick operators and he survived in that family), so he might be able to pillory Aragorn as soft, particularly if Aragorn is the Republican and can be painted as a generic but weak conservative who lacks strong support from his base. And yes, possibly because I'm a cynic, Stannis is the Democrat in most of the scenarios I've been running in my head. His actual politics in the context of the story are very strict law-and-order at home combined with an attitude towards the barbarian cultures to the north that's surprisingly even-handed and tolerant for a mediaeval fantasy world and an almost psychotic dedication to what he sees as fair and just. Stannis would probably be a big, if closeted, fan of at least rough equality of outcome as a benchmark in addition to equality of opportunity. I see him as sort of like a reverse Scoop Jackson, with a foreign policy typical for a liberal Democrat but a very robust and sort of culturally conservative domestic policy.