This essay argues against the conventional wisdom that the results of the 1998 elections reflect the triumph of 'personality politics' and pathological features of Filipino 'political culture'. Instead, the essay situates the recent elections within a historical and institutional context and locates the role of 'personality' within a complex nexus of money and machine politics. Changes in local and national politics are linked to gradual processes of capitalist development and subtle shifts in the linkages between the state office and capital accumulation. Both the role and the discourse of 'personality' in Philippine politics, the essay concludes, have served to sustain rather than challenge the entrenched system of bossism in the country.