Christian Schneider has, shall we say, an interesting theory:

One year ago, before facing a recall election, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker traveled to Chicago to give a speech to the Illinois Policy Institute. Following his talk, Walker fielded a question from a woman who, citing a recent movie on education reform, asked whether Walker was the “Superman” she was waiting for. Walker chuckled, then said he was more partial to Batman.

With this admission, Walker stepped squarely into a debate that takes place exclusively in the dark corners of the Internet, where politics nerds and comic book dorks meet to clandestinely debate the political ideologies of superheroes. Which superhero a given politician idolizes may actually tell us a little bit about his or her political philosophy, given one undeniable fact:

Superman is a liberal, and Batman is a conservative.

As noted in Glen Weldon’s superb new book “Superman: The Unauthorized Biography,” the Man of Steel has deep roots in FDR’s New Deal era. Just start with a comparison of the two heroes’ professions: Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent, is a member of the dreaded liberal mainstream media, and his father, Jor-El, was one of Krypton’s most noted academics and scientists. Bruce Wayne is a Scarlet Pimpernel-esque billionaire playboy whose father made his money in the real estate market before the economy collapsed (sound familiar?) and whose company, Wayne Enterprises, manufactures military weapons. Superman hangs out with reporters; Batman’s best buddy is a cop. …

Sometimes, Superman gets directly involved in Democratic politics – in the early 1960s, he befriends President John F. Kennedy and trusts him enough to divulge his real identity. Kennedy goes so far as to disguise himself as Clark Kent to fool Lois Lane while Superman rushes off on a mission. (In 1986, Superman meets Ronald Reagan, but the storyline makes Reagan seem like a buffoon.)

Batman, on the other hand, is less of a believer in the inherent good of man. In the early Bob Kane comics, Batman was cruel, often mutilating his opponents before killing them.

And Batman’s opponents are illustrative, too. Ra’s al-Ghul is an environmentalist who wants to destroy humanity and its inherent decadence. By fighting him, Batman is essentially defending wealth and free markets. Other notable Batman foes include a who’s who of lefty bad guys, including another tree hugger (Poison Ivy), a college professor (the Scarecrow) and an occupier with a respiratory problem (Bane).

The most recent slate of Batman movies from director Christopher Nolan are seen by many as sympathetic to Republican politics of the past decade. In “The Dark Knight,” Batman is reviled by the public as he wages a “war on terror” to keep Gotham’s citizens safe. (Nolan might as well have called the hero “Bat W. Man.”)

In “The Dark Knight Rises,” Batman takes on a gang of filthy hippies who occupy the stock exchange and fight for the “oppressed” against the 1%. We find out that Gotham fell into disrepair because Bruce Wayne’s profits were down and he didn’t have enough to spend on charitable activities to keep at-risk youths out of trouble. Batman cherishes order; his opponents relish revolution.

(What if you’re a reporter who hangs around cops? What’s your ideology then?)

On Facebook Schneider added to his righty-superhero list industrialist Tony “Iron Man” Stark and Spiderman. He added today:

First, it is true that each superhero morphs over time.  Different writers and illustrators bring different sensibilities.  As Glen Weldon points out in his book, by the 1950s, Superman had morphed from an FDR New Dealer to more of an Eisenhower Republican. (Known these days as a “Democrat.”)  By the 1970s, Superman was seen as part of the “Establishment,” and his writers struggled to keep up with the revolutionary times – often attempting ridiculous storylines dealing with racial issues.  In the days of counter-culture, Superman was the “culture.”

But that doesn’t change the fundamentals of who each character is and how their origin stories depart.  There are simply too many political differences between each superhero for this all to be mere coincidence.

And then Superman switched from being an Eisenhower Republican to a Kennedy Democrat. Really.

Schneider quotes the New York Times’ Ross Douthat:

Across the entire trilogy, what separates Bruce Wayne from his mentors in the League of Shadows isn’t a belief in Gotham’s goodness; it’s a belief that a compromised order can still be worth defending, and that darker things than corruption and inequality will follow from putting that order to the torch. This is a conservative message, but not a triumphalist, chest-thumping, rah-rah-capitalism one: It reflects a “quiet toryism” (to borrow from John Podhoretz’s review) rather than a noisy Americanism, and it owes much more to Edmund Burke than to Sean Hannity.

My personal favorite, of course, comes from journalism as does Clark Kent, but at the top of the management chart: