If Presidential Canidates Were Stocks…

 From slate.

• Barack Obama is the alternative-energy sector. Hybrid, next-generation upstart, unafraid of entrenched market leaders, and embraced by corn-growing Iowans, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and East Coast moneymen.

• Mike Huckabee is Chick-fil-A. Cheaper, healthier Southern alternative to steak and prime rib dished up by urban rivals. Explicitly fuses religion into business strategy in a way that no competitor does.

• Hillary Clinton is Citigroup. New York-based, enormously well-capitalized, longstanding market leader whose name is synonymous with the sector it dominates. A powerhouse in the 1990s is having difficulty reclaiming past glory.

• Mitt Romney is the Blackstone Group. Insecure private-equity player that tries to wow the masses with ostentatious displays of wealth—kitted out Mitt-Mobile for Romney, $3 million birthday party for Blackstone head honcho Steve Schwartzman.

• John Edwards is McDonald’s. Disdained by the media elite as déclassé, shunned by the fashionable as too populist and unhealthy to body politic, manages to thrive by working hard and dishing out cheap meat and potatoes to working-class patrons.

• Rudy Giuliani is Bear Stearns. New York-based firm spent years since 2001 raising easy money and globe-trotting. Initials of both should be B.S. Questions raised about judgment and adolescent personal behavior of standard-bearer—alleged dope-smoking for Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne, sex on the city for Giuliani.

• John McCain is General Motors. Old warhorse with solid reputation as patriotic brand takes repeated kicks but refuses to give in. Buoyed by poor performance of two top domestic rivals and by positive developments overseas—Iraq for McCain, growth abroad for GM.

I should do one of these for the next Australia election. Could be fun!