Who anointed Beto O'Rourke to be our political saviour? He did

Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso Congressman and failed Texas Senate candidate who announced his presidential run last Thursday, named his first son Ulysses. It’s a Latinized name for the hero, Odysseus, in the Homeric epic The Odyssey. This is typical of Beto: he likes heroes, and the stories of their discovery, trials, and triumphs.

One of Beto’s favorite books is The Hero’s Journey, an overview by the literary theorist Joseph Campbell of Campbell’s theory of heroic myth. In Campbell’s work, the hero story, or “monomyth,” can be broken down into component parts, genre conventions that reappear in myth after myth: The hero ventures forth from the common world into a more significant world of wonder; he is tested, but wins a decisive victory. Then, he returns, with the power to bless and lead the little people who stayed behind.

A lot of Beto O’Rourke’s more puzzling decisions, like his choice to run for president, make sense once you learn that he is a fan of Campbell’s work. He sees himself as a hero, anointed for greatness as if by divine or supernatural forces, and he feels a deep conviction that he is destined for bigger things. This is why, in the fawning Vanity Fair profile that heralded his presidential announcement, Beto made numerous references to film and literary epics.

Famously, of his run for president, Beto said, “Man, I’m just born to be in it,” a statement of his own sense of anointedness that sounds less like a serious assertion of political purpose and more like the kind of faux profundity that a teenager would say after a gurgling bong rip.

This is why, when expounding upon his own talent for speaking at rallies, Beto, who does not prepare his remarks in advance, seemed to understand himself as a channel for divine inspiration. “Every word was pulled out of me,” he said. “Like, by some greater force.” And this is why he said that going up against Donald Trump was a battle of good versus evil, akin to, “every epic movie you’ve ever seen, from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.” In his mind, Beto is flying the spaceship; he is carrying the ring to Mordor. His primary preoccupation seems to be with his own journey, his own sense of destiny.

It is staggeringly egomaniacal for anyone to think of themselves this way, but Beto’s defenders may point out that this is the sort of grandiose narcissism that is required of anyone for them to want to run for president. Fair enough. What is perhaps more telling is that Beto’s sense of being a fated, chosen hero has been and visibly enabled by his whiteness and his maleness. The only way you can think of yourself like this—as in league with every hero from Odesseus to Christ to Luke Skywalker—is if every hero in every story you have ever heard has been a white guy, like you.

In the logic of the hero stories of which Beto is so fond, these mythic great men with great destinies are always, well, male. Women are seen not as heroes but as accessories, obstacles or support staff, They are there to delay and test the hero, like the Sirens, or to help him on his way, like Athena. They are not protagonists in their own right, but minor plot points in men’s great adventures.

After his announcement, Beto made a weak little joke about what his wife, Amy, has taken on for the sake of his political ambitions. “She is raising, sometimes with my help,” their three children, he said. The remark was supposed to be self-deprecating, but it underscored the phenomenal maleness of Beto’s vision, and resonated bitterly with many women who find themselves doing a drastically unequal share of housework and childcare. Amy also stayed home with their children when, after Beto’s narrow senate loss to Ted Cruz, he decided to go on a Campbellian road trip to find himself, writing indulgent, navel-gazing blog posts along the way and making the great discovery that he wants to be president. In The Odyssey, Penelope stays home, too.

Beto’s personal tendency toward myopic focus on self-aggrandizement is in line with his policy positions, of which he seems to have few. Compared to wonkish, detail-oriented candidates like Elizabeth Warren, he seems shockingly feeble in his command of actual issues. His main belief seems to be in his own good intentions, and his primary political commitment is to the idea that he, personally, should be in power.

Since his announcement, he has hedged on everything from Medicare for All to the Equal Right Amendment, which would guarantee equal legal status for women. From his congressional record we can discern that he is a compromise-oriented Blue Dog, a purveyor of the kind of contentless centrism that usually winds up serving to maintain the status quo. Which makes sense, for Beto: why would he want to make big, structural changes to America when he is precisely the sort of person—a white man—that the status quo is meant to benefit? Why would he want to change the American story, when it’s a story in which he gets to play the hero?

Beto is beginning to show some signs of self-awareness, of understanding how all of this personal myth-making appears to others. He has made comments admitting to his white and male privilege, and has offered that he would prefer a woman to be his vice presidential running mate, helping him along on his journey. “The government at all levels is overly represented by white men,” he told Vanity Fair. “That’s part of the problem.” But his actions belie these statements. If he really thought that white men’s disproportionate power in government was a problem, then he wouldn’t be running.

Still, there could be worse outcomes, for the party and for the country, than a Beto O’Rourke presidential nomination. For all his obliviousness and self-aggrandizement, Beto does not seem craven or calculating. He has the high energy and wholesome enthusiasm of a golden retriever. He does not give the impression of trying to deceive or pull one over on you, as Donald Trump does, and he has shown some early signs that he is willing to be pulled to the left on policy—he has endorsed a Green New Deal. He appears to have good intentions, if not humility or expertise. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this is how frank he has been about seeing himself as a chosen hero, an anointed savior who was “born to be in it.” A more cynical politician would be better at hiding his flaws.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist