It seems like whenever an election comes creeping around, the internet can’t help but ask
who the cast of King of the Hill would vote for.
More specifically, who Hank Hill would vote for.
As the protagonist and voice of reason in the show, people on both sides of the aisle
claim the propane salesman for their own party.
But who would he really vote for this election?
Is he Team No Malarkey, or dang’ol MAGA man, I tell you what man.
[laughs] I just had to do it once lmao
Hank: That boy ain't right.
Now the problem with trying to find out who Mr. Hill would vote for is that he’s a cartoon
character on a show that featured a number of different writers during its 13 years on
the air.
While the underlying motivations for Hank Hill and the rest of the cast remain consistent,
their actions are a bit of a mixed bag.
In one episode, Hank Hill’s unionizing the workers of Megalo Mart and in another he’ll
be nostalgic about voting for Reagan.
He respects former Democratic President Lyndon B Johnson while simultaneously discriminating
against religious minorities in the hiring process.
Hank:We're all Christians here, how about you?
He’s politically scattershot and if you cherry-pick examples from the show, you can
make a convincing case for any outcome.
Despite this, there is a pretty clear through line to Hank’s character.
He’s old school, culturally conservative, religious, he cares about his family and in
the words of Bobby Hill, “Why do you have to hate what you don't understand?”
Hank Hill is a repressed individual stuck in the turbulent and confusing turn of the
millennia.
A time where extremes coexisted.
We had both an infamously promiscuous president. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
As well as a rise in Christian fundamentalism.
And so every episode has Hank Hill confronting a new form of change, whether its hipster
gentrifiers, big government or misandrist feminists, by the end of the episode, Hank
has to come to terms with his prejudices and learn that the right answer usually lies somewhere
in the middle.
For example, in the season 2 episode Peggy’s Turtle Song, Peggy becomes a stay-at-home
mom to support Bobby with his newly diagnosed ADD which is music to Hank’s ears.
Over the course of the episode, Peggy picks up guitar lessons and becomes friends with
some radical feminists.
While performing a song that’s a metaphor about how she feels oppressed by her home life [clip].
Hank learns to accept that Peggy just isn’t happy without her career, and Peggy
turns away from the men-hating feminists and the two find peace in their own middle-ground.
This formula is what gave the show such immense cultural staying-power among people from all
political persuasions.
And it’s not just limited to Twitter discourse and memes, former Democratic governor of North
Carolina Mike Easley based his campaign’s messaging off King of the Hill, even going
so far as to separate voters into two camps: those who watch the show and those who don’t.
It’s centrist approach to politics made it so appealing to a wide audience that the
The Atlantic proclaimed it the the Last Bipartisan TV Comedy.
But while it could appeal to both liberals and conservatives, it wasn’t exactly the
even-handed show news outlets would have you believe.
King of the Hill was a conservative show through-and-through.
From the very first episode to the last, the show’s antagonists are liberal caricatures.
Meek paper-pushing bureaucrats, men-hating feminists, crazy environmentalists, and in
one of the show’s most bizarre episodes, the writers take aim at the American with
Disabilities Act, portraying it as an undue burden on business that makes workers lazy.
Instead of being, y’know, a pretty essential piece of legislation for people with disabilities.
While the Hill’s conservatism is a far-cry from the World War II era machismo and racism
of Hank’s shinless father, it’s not a complete departure.
A lot of Hank’s patriarchal and authoritarian tendencies go either unchallenged, or worse,
validated when juxtaposed against the loony liberals that the show presents as the alternatives.
A lot of this can be attributed to show creator and voice of Hank Hill himself, Mike Judge.
Known for creating hits like Office Space and Idiocracy, Judge has a knack for biting
social commentary.
But while he claims he doesn’t like getting too political with his work, there’s pretty
obvious conservative undertones and messages.
He’s even gone on the Alex Jones show and had this to say…
[Hank Hill clip].
Okay I expected that out of Dale but Hank?
C’mon!
If this is canon, then Hank is Team Trump all the way.
But, Judge wasn’t the only voice in the writers room.
While we have a lot of reasons to suspect that Hank would vote for Trump, overall, Hank
Hill sits in an uneasy political middle ground.
Take Season’s 5, The Perils of Polling, which is probably as political as the show
gets.
After experiencing Bush’s limp handshake, Hank is mortified.
He studies the President's handshake and learns he's not the man he thought he was.
Disillusioned with his hero, he goes so far as to skip
the election entirely by driving to Mexico with Dale.
Ultimately, it’s his sense of civic duty that gets him to race back to the US to cast
a ballot, with his decision being left ambiguous.
Applying this episode and the rest of the show’s lore to Trump, it’s likely Hank
would have a similar crisis of faith if he ever met Trump.
The 45th is infamous for his horrible handshakes, even the New York Times has written a story
on it.
Beyond that, Trump has gone on record that he likes his steaks well-done which would
be a problem [clip].
Bobby:What if somebody wants theirs well done? Hank: We ask them politely yet firmly to leave.
Overall, Trump’s big city phoniness would ring massive alarm bells in Hank’s no-nonsense mind,
especially if he watched any of his debates.
Peggy: Okay Hank try turning it back on. [Trump interrupting Biden in debate] Hank:GUAHH!
I can say confidently that if Trump ran in the 2000 election, Hank would be repulsed.
{Future Daniel here, I looked it up and apparently he DID run in 2000 with the Reform Party before
dropping out in February, huh the more you know]
Over the show’s 14 year run, the cast remained frozen in time in a pastiche of the late 90’s
and early 2000’s.
But we’re in the 2020’s now and the simple conservatism of small Southern communities
isn’t quite so simple anymore.
Over the decades, stratification among both sides of the aisle has increased dramatically.
And if Hank Hill was around today, he’d be 67.
His politics, like everything else, would transform with the passage of time.
And if we’re talking demographics, Trump is the clear winner here.
Middle class families from small towns in East Texas who have been affected by globalization
and immigration are the exact demographic that carried Trump to victory in 2016.
A big contributor to the rise of Trump has been his ability to tap into deeply-rooted
dispositions voters have towards themselves and the world around them.
A minor, but sizable group of voters in the United States have what the philosopher Erich
Fromm coined the “authoritarian personality.”
Individuals with this personality type have extreme obedience and respect for authority
figures.
This is a submission that’s historically weaponized to oppress minority groups.
Researchers have found that a voters authoritarian tendencies is the best predictor on whether
they’d vote for Trump in 2016, stronger than race, class, age, gender and location.
In the book, The Authoritarian Personality, philosopher Theodor Adorno measures authoritarianism
based on an individuals responses to a set of questions, and while it’s not exactly
fool-proof science, it’s a solid basis to determine whether Hank Hill would vote for
Trump.
And when I was writing this script, I for sure thought Hank wouldn’t check enough
boxes to be considered an authoritarian personality.
He’s against corporal punishment, he isn’t hostile towards minorities, and he’s a free-thinker
He’s a leader, not a follower.
But looking at the list, and referencing it against his relationship with his boss Mr.
Strickland, a Clinton/Trump-esque figure, and his son Bobby, the evidence is pretty damning.
Blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong, submission to acknowledged
authority, Belief in aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking,
a belief in simple answers, resistance to creative ideas, a black and white worldview
and a tendency to project one’s own feelings of inadequacy onto a scapegoated group.
Combined with all the other evidence we have, it's hard to argue that Hank wouldn't be a Trump voter.
Maybe he wouldn't be donning a red MAGA hat, but his sense of civic
duty would keep him from abstaining, and he'd have
to swallow any disagreements he might have with the candidate and vote for him anyway.
As for Peggy Hill, it's like that she'd follow the patriarch and vote alongside him.
Just as the majority of white women did in 2016.
And as for the rest of the cast, outside of Bobby and Luanne, it's all but a foregone conclusion.
But what do you think?
Let me know in the comments down below!