Background

Ron Swanson has been Director of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department for six years.[1] Ron believes in the elimination of government waste and has always brought the department in under budget.[1] Ron believes the government should be privatized and follow the business model of the Chuck E. Cheese's family entertainment chain.[2] He has closed many unnecessary recreational spaces during his tenure, including the Portola Skate Park, the Grice Dog Run, the Morris-Easton Observatory, the Mohanga Native American Heritage Center, and most public drinking fountains.[1] Ron has two ex-wives, both of whom are named "Tammy," which is also the name of Ron's mother.[3] He is usually non-confrontational and gives Leslie a lot of leeway when running the department. He jokingly keeps a claymore and a sawed off shotgun on his desk, so people who ask for things have to stare down the barrel.[4] He enjoys woodworking, breakfast meats, and the works of Ayn Rand.[1] He is also an avid hunter and fisherman, and secretly moonlights as a jazz saxophonist named "Duke Silver".[5] His direct superior is Paul. Ron has at least one unseen brother, who is an officer in the Air Force. He mentioned having at least one other brother, Don, who worked with him at Very Good Construction, and possibly two other brothers as well.[6] He also mentioned an uncle who "does yoga" when asked if his family had any history of mental illness. He has been seen driving a red 1997-2005 Buick Park Avenue and what appears to be a 1978-1979 Ford F100.

Ron starting from an early age loves building things and woodwork, even winning an award for his chairs he makes. He also hates lying to the point he was willing to let Jeremy Jamm win the lawsuit if it meant having his witnesses April and Tom tell the truth. The only thing he hates more than lying is skim milk, which is water lying to be milk as he states.

Ron also is shown to love unhealthy fatty high cholesterol foods like red meat. Ron will rarely eat ethnic foods but will if it contains "meat" in its name. He despises fish and states it only should be used for sport as it is practically the vegetable of meats. Ron openly despises vegetables and vegetarians/vegans alike calling the plants "food that my food eats". He also says that vegetarians are made of glass and had no problem writing his address down when mailing one as he considers them too weak to be of a threat to Ron. Ron goes into shock when he does not regularly consume meat in a certain period of time shown when visiting Chris' house where his home was void of red meat. Due to his high consumption of meat and oils, he has never had a hang over as revealed on Joanne's talk show since he and other Swansons have a very high tolerance for alcohol even drinking an entire jug of Swanson Liquor which is shown to be very strong in one swig. He is revealed to consume one shelf of alcohol a week and usually likes his drinks neat with no ice.

Ron is very patriotic and mocks every other country that is not America, like when he was in London mocking all the sights like a Clock Tower in which he sarcastically states that the USA definitely don't have Clocks of their own and that American Dollars is the most beautiful paper in the world refusing to use the British Currency. He also shown to laugh in disgrace when the country "Canada" is mentioned to him.

Ron knows various self defense techniques and is a very private person not trusting technology or not putting down information about himself even blacking out his records on Government documents and discarding photos of himself. He even trashed his computer at one point after learning about online cookies and Google Earth and also switched to a burner phone so he would not be tracked. In this way he is very old fashioned

Ron does not trust banks and instead invested and saved his money into a form of gold he has stashed in multiple locations in which Tammy One tried to acquire but failed and took the decoy gold. While it is never revealed how much Ron has acquired of wealth in Gold, his will states that giving 5% of Ron's wealth to his step daughters managed to shock the lawyer and Ben into disbelief on how great the amount was even doubting if he was joking but Ron does not want to spoil his daughters so he does not give them the full amount in his will and rather have them be hard workers. Ron himself does not know how much he has truly in gold in a dollar sense but only knows in how much pounds of gold he is rich in. Ron's will also states that his full wealth will be given to the man or beast that kills him and that only they will know what "the symbols" mean.

While at first declining his interest, he then openly admits to loving riddles and puzzles showing talent and giddy when helping Ben and Andy solve Leslie's riddles. Ron even requested Leslie do a riddle and puzzle themed birthday for him in the future. He also congratulated April at one point being impressed that she came up with a riddle even Ron could not solve.

Ron shows that he is extremely capable of handling pain has he once pulled his own tooth with pliers in front of the office in a meeting on a tooth hat did not even hurt but only to show he is capable of withstanding the pain as the dentist already pulled the hurting tooth out the other day. He also once got shot in the back of the head with a shotgun by tom and still managed to be angry and conscious and recovering the same day being able to stand and complain to Tom and Leslie. He also had a giant fireball consume his face when lighting the Lil Sebastian memorial in which he was only slightly irritated.

Ron has super senses when Tammy Two is around being able to smell her "sulfur coming off of her cloven hooves".