Stranger Than Fiction
Here's my sleep-deprived thought of the night. The 2008 presidential race bears some striking similarities to the fictional presidential race in the final season of The West Wing.
In The West Wing's fictional universe, the presumptive front-runner on the Democratic side was Vice President Robert Russell, a rather conventional candidate with a good organization and lots of establishment support (i.e. Clinton). Russell was challenged by an obscure but highly charismatic congressman, Matt Santos, who was vying to become the first non-caucausian president (he was hispanic). The parallels between Santos and Obama are numerous.
The Republican field had no clear front-runner. Arnold Vinick was a popular (especially with the media)governor of Senator from California with a reputation as a "straight-talker," but he was widely seen as too moderate to win the Republican nomination and he had a number of influential conservative detractors. His character was clearly patterned after John McCain. His opponents included a more traditionally partisan Republican candidate (a Romney figure) and a baptist minister who was popular with the religious right (Huckabee).
After losing Iowa and being written off as dead, Vinick (McCain) ended up gaining steam in New Hampshire and sailing unexpectedly to the Republican nomination.
Meanwhile, the Democratic race, which was supposed to be wrapped up early, ended up turning into a drawn out delegate battle between Russell (Clinton) and Santos (Obama). No candidate was able to secure the necessary number of delegates and the result was a brokered convention.
Eventually, Santos (Obama) ended up securing the nomination after giving a spell-binding speech to the assembled convention delegates. He went on to beat Vinick (McCain) in a close general election and become the first minority president.
Again, I'm very tired, so this may well be the stupidest post I've ever written, but so be it. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
In The West Wing's fictional universe, the presumptive front-runner on the Democratic side was Vice President Robert Russell, a rather conventional candidate with a good organization and lots of establishment support (i.e. Clinton). Russell was challenged by an obscure but highly charismatic congressman, Matt Santos, who was vying to become the first non-caucausian president (he was hispanic). The parallels between Santos and Obama are numerous.
The Republican field had no clear front-runner. Arnold Vinick was a popular (especially with the media)
After losing Iowa and being written off as dead, Vinick (McCain) ended up gaining steam in New Hampshire and sailing unexpectedly to the Republican nomination.
Meanwhile, the Democratic race, which was supposed to be wrapped up early, ended up turning into a drawn out delegate battle between Russell (Clinton) and Santos (Obama). No candidate was able to secure the necessary number of delegates and the result was a brokered convention.
Eventually, Santos (Obama) ended up securing the nomination after giving a spell-binding speech to the assembled convention delegates. He went on to beat Vinick (McCain) in a close general election and become the first minority president.
Again, I'm very tired, so this may well be the stupidest post I've ever written, but so be it. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
posted by A.L. at 11:48 PM
20 Comments:
Thanks for presenting the similarities. I've never watched The West Wing (though I've certainly heard about it).
It all sounds plausible, up to a point. What I'm less sure of is that the Santos/Obama candidate will secure the nomination.g Establishment forces (Clinton) seem strong, in part because they haven't been discredited (pace 1968).
Not too stupid. I was thinking the same thing today.
Another similarity: Vinick was actually a Senator from California; not the Governor.
Seems to me it's all over for Obama. It's been a movement, not a campaign, and movements generally don't last. I think he peaked about three days ago, but the Clinton connection with Hispanics has toasted him. A very dreary thought, but one has to assume at this point that the next president is Hillary Clinton.
Will African-Americans' resentment linger? Will the starry-eyed youth come out for Hillary in November?
Arnold Vinnick was principled, genuinely conservative, curmudgeonly, and extremely smart. John McCain is a chatty, press-adored dim bulb who knows zero about economics, and who makes a periodic show of having principles, enough so to offend his base in fact, but still voted FOR the Military Commissions Act (despite himself having been tortured for years in a war) and FOR a Middle East war that by his own account could not be won with anything like the troop amount committed. No similarity.
Barack Obama has an impressive record of bipartisan legislative achievement in Congress (U.S. and Illinois versions both), so that's a much better comp. The several times I've watched him speak, though, I still don't get how you or anyone finds his speaking skills in the same league with Matt Santos's. I mean, I'll take it -- I want him nominated, and I want him to blow the Republican candidate away in the generals -- but his speeches, unlike his actual career, don't seem to me to make a real case for liberalism ... or anything else.
I have been struck by the similarities, as well. NPR had an interview with former West Wing writer Laurence O'Donnell a few days ago that touched on some of them (I think the show was "This American Life," but I'm not certain).
Shorter version: If you live anywhere near a nuclear reactor in California (or Arizona, I guess)... move.
I think ODonnell was actually executive producer for the show. This comparison hadn't occurred to me. Seems apt. The show helped me maintain sanity through the Bush years.
So far...
I subscribe to what one of the talking heads said last night on one of the stations--that the longer this thing goes, the better for Obama. Excellent speech last night from Chicago.
Well, let's hope here is where the similarities end, and Obama doesn't go offering the Secretary of State slot to McCain.
I've got no problem with recognizing that life imitates art, occasionally. To what extent it does so in this case, and what that means for predicting the outcome is an open question.
What is becoming glaringly obvious is that the Democratic party is fast approaching a fork in the road, where they have to decide whether to take the path that leads to a candidacy which energizes a "base", and try to govern from that, or to take the path that energizes a large swath of the population and govern on that basis.
Obama has the flexibility to be elected by a coalition and then govern from his base, ala George Bush, but I find it difficult to imagine that Clinton will be able to be elected by her base and then put together a coalition to govern from the center, much as she might like to try. If he is elected, he'll have to govern from his base to some extent, because he'll be unable to please everybody all the time -- and he's too smart to try.
I don't think the Obama phenomenon has peaked. I think we're seeing a groundswell of support grow for Obama, and it will continue to grow for the next few weeks. Look at the margins for Obama across the country, in states like Idaho, Minnesota, Kansas.
If the super delegates have an ounce of intelligence, they have to recognize that Obama will obliterate any GOP candidate in the general election.
That brings up the issue of coat-tails. Since Obama will bring Democrats out to vote who have never voted and won't come out to vote for Clinton, his candidacy represents an enormous opportunity to sweep a lot of Congress to the Democratic side. If the super delegates don't see this, then they're not paying attention.
According to Marty Lederman at Balkanization, Obama appears to have won a few (9 to be exact) more delegates than Clinton yesterday. That means that Obama has a small overall lead in pledged delegates, but Clinton would be ahead if you add in superdelegates that have agreed to support one of the candidates.
It is surprising that Obama won more delegates given Clinton's fairly sizeable victories in big states like California, NY, NJ. I wonder if this is an unintended consequence of the Democratic rules for apportioning delegates. Unintended in the sense that it is not related to a goal that they were trying to achieve when they adopted the rules.
"...still voted FOR the Military Commissions Act (despite himself having been tortured for years in a war)..."
That strikes me as a stunning non sequitur. The Military Commissions Act is in accord with Article 4 of the Geneva Convention, and in no way authorizes torture of any kind. And three quarters of the US Congress voted as McCain did on the AUMF. At the time he cast his vote neither he nor anyone else knew how many troops would be depolyed, nor whether that number would be sufficient.
I may have been to gloomy at bedtime last night. I see that as of this moment Obama and Hillary are dead even at 50.0 on Tradesports.
Great Post. But in the real world, the forces of reaction may still triumph.In a contest between McCain and either Hilary Clinton or Obama, many will see McCain as the safest choice, especially if he stresses moderation and allies himself with Huckabee to shore up the evangelical base.
The choice of either Clinton or Obama as the nominee is historic and risky at the same time. In the real world, the nuclear accident in California portrayed on THE WEST WING would never have happened and Vinick would have won the presidency.
This year everything is an unpredictable witches' brew- Double, Double, Toil and Trouble!
McCain may well win. His odds are stronger if Huckabee is the V.P. nominee. In the unlikely event that Huckabee is the nominee, I continue to expect that he would be elected. That should be an impossibility, but don't bet the farm on it. tominwindsor
If Obama could get Aaron Sorkin to write some speeches, he would be unstoppable!
One fly in the ointment for me as an Obama supporter... In this new reality series, our Bingo Bob Russell candidate seems to have both debating ability and the Latino vote!
Neutral: The Military Commissions Act denies non-citizens the right of habeus corpus and the right to choose an attorney, and authorizes the U.S. president to interpret the meaning and applicability of the Geneva Conventions. The M.C.A. was passed long after it was clear that Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib (among other locations) were the sites of massive ongoing torture of non-citizens, and after it was known that the U.S. has been passing on detainees to allied governments known to torture officially. Bush had spent five-and-a-half years making it clear that his idea of "interpret the meaning and applicability" of a law is, in his mind, a license to cancel said law.
McCain knew this. McCain had been tortured as a non-citizen himself, and has built part of his political career on that fact. McCain, nonetheless, voted for the M.C.A.
This is hardly his only proof of loss-of-integrity. After having shown temporary courage in voting against the Bush tax cuts twice, in '01 and '03, he now has spent his campaign calling for deeper tax cuts, promising that they'll actually increase revenues. His campaign-reform think tank doesn't need to report its contributions, and Joe Conanson has charged, with evidence, that much of its support is from decidely corrupt sources. McCain is not Arnold Vinnick.
****
And seriously, AL, when it comes to Obama and Santos: the weblog Simply Left Behind prominently quotes Matt Santos: "Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."
When has Obama ever talked like that?
please post this at dkos, and all the comments!
fun friday reading!
OK...I just finished watching all seven seasons of the West Wing. Not in one sitting, but - over the course of several weeks.
It might also be noted that Santos gave a speech where he used the phrase, "Yes, America, we can"...
I thought that was interesting!
I know this is an old thread, but there was an article in yesterday's Guardian, where the scriptwriter for the West Wing stated that he had based Santos on Obama! Thought that might interest you.....
AMERICA is GUILTY (Twin Towers)
I have become a strong beliver that, Bush wanted to go to War and this was all an arranged accident for everyone to point fingers in that direction, but the story has been told long before, its been and always will be
MONEY, he didnt have any so The Towers would also have one big insurance policy and as for the inflation problems thats because he borrowed money from the American Reserve Bank and now he himself has put his country in debt and now feeling the pressure hes not to happy about that. this is why they have kept there own men in the Dark so long. Wake Up America!!!! its not the first time and you know that...
I feel sorry for that MAN he had HUNG..i dont think he was innocent, but he was convicted of something he had no idea of, i wonder if America wouls ask bUSH to do time for the qty he has killed
ZEIGEIST is been made to open your OWN eyes and Based on all your Information filed and documented
Believe it!!!! ZEIGEIST
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