Life in the First Person and the Art of Political Storytelling:The Rhetoric of Andreas Papandreou

This essay analyzes Andreas Papandreou’s skill as a political “storyteller.” For a great majority of the Greek population, it is his narrative, his tale of modern Greece, the essay argues, that has become the accepted one. It was his narrative that helped bring and keep him in power for eleven years. One of the building blocks was an innate talent to draw conclusions and persuade the audience using events from his own personal experience – life in the first person. Another element was his academic background and a natural linguistic fluency. The analysis emphasizes his rhetorical devices and draws from the tropes of literature (metaphor, simile, suspense) to complete the standard portrait usually provided by political scientists and historians.