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President Thomas Whitmore

• Ace Pilot
• Badass in a Nice Suit
• Bash Brothers: With General Grey.
• A Father to His Men: Becomes indisputably true during his brilliant Churchillian speech right before the final battle.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Justified, as Whitmore was apparently a fighter pilot in the Gulf War, and is still relatively young at the time of the invasion.
• Badass In Charge: Served during the Gulf War, a skill that comes in handy. Even without this skill, his personality is still pretty badass.
• Chekhov's Skill: See above: Whitmore's tour of duty as a fighter pilot in the Gulf War.
• The Eternal Churchill: And how. Right before the final battle, President Whitmore gives one of the most memorable speeches in movie history, a speech that seems to be deliberately designed to be similar to Churchill's refusal to surrender.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With General Grey.
• President Action

Captain Steve Hiller(aka Will Smith)

• Ace Pilot
• Action Hero
• The Captain: His title, obviously
• The Fighting Narcissist: Jasmine: You are not as charming as you think you are. Steve: Yes I am.
• Improbable Piloting Skills
• Military Maverick
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Welcome to Earth!!! *BAM!*
• Semper Fi: A Marine F-18 pilot
• Will Smith: Nuff said.

David Levinson

• Big Applesauce
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He had the talent and knowledge base to becomes a wealthier engineer, but he was perfectly happy where he was.
• Jeff Goldblum
• Jewish and Nerdy: His nerdiness ends up serving him well by allowing him to save the world.
• A Nice Jewish Boy

General Grey

• Badass In Charge: Of the United States military, especially once the Joint Chiefs of Staff are obliterated at NORAD by the aliens. Gen. Grey, in turn, answers to an even higher-ranking Badass In Charge: President Whitmore.
• Badass Grandpa
• Bash Brothers: With President Whitmore
• A Father to His Men
• Colonel Badass
• Consummate Professional: One of the only officials—besides President Whitmore himself—who manages to keep a cool head.
• Cool Old Guy
• Ensemble Darkhorse
• Four Star Badass: Hell yeah.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With President Whitmore, or as Gen. Grey refers to him, Tom.
• Number Two: To President Whitmore. At the beginning of the movie, he requests to stay at the White House alongside the President (it turns out to be lucky. The rest of American generals were apparently killed by the aliens after they evacuated to NORAD). Throughout the movie, Grey is unfailingly loyal to Whitmore and might be either the new Secretary of Defense or even the new Vice President at the end, given the fact that the former VP is dead and the former Secretary of Defense was unceremoniously fired.
• Officer and a Gentleman: In the sense that he keeps a Stiff Upper Lip through the whole crisis
• Old Soldier
• Semper Fi: A Marine General on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Julius Levinson

• Badass Grandpa
• Big Applesauce
• Cool Old Guy: Gets some of the best lines of the movie, isn't afraid to shout down the freaking President and his staff when he feels that they're being disrespectful and ungrateful to his son, and in general seemed like a character who it'd be pretty fun to be around.
• Papa Wolf: Memorably, he shouts down the country's leaders when they disrespect his son aboard Air Force One.
  Julius: You'd all be dead now if it wasn't for my son!
• Plucky Comic Relief

Jasmine

• Hey, It's That Guy!: Played by Vivica A. Fox
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Well a stripper, but this is probably the closest trope that fits to her portrayal.

Secretary of Defense Nimzicki

• The Neidermeyer
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Does nothing but provide bad advice to the President, and withholds crucial information (regarding the Roswell crash and Area 51) that could have been more useful had it been divulged earlier.
• The Scrappy: Both to viewers, and in-universe, to the point where a furious and exasperated President Whitmore finally fires him.
• What an Idiot: OK, so you're the Secretary of Defense and an entire fleet of alien spaceships shows up and float ominously over the world's major cities. As the former head of the CIA (it's stated somewhere in the movie that Nimzicki was this), you became privy to the fact that Area 51 has indeed been housing a crashed flying saucer and alien corpses and been studying them and their tech for decades. Do you choose to immediately inform the President about everything the research had discovered in order to better inform his decision-making? Apparently not.