[lit-ideas] Following the Script

From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 08:32:01 -0600

This is both fun and thought-provoking. It raises, once again, the
relationship between art and artist, the issues of a living text, of life
imitating art..

thoughts anyone?
Following the Script: Obama, McCain and 'The West Wing' By BRIAN
STELTER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/brian_stelter/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published: October 29, 2008

When Eli Attie, a writer for "The West Wing," prepared to plot some episodes
about a young Democratic congressman's unlikely presidential bid, he picked
up the phone and called David
Axelrod<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/david_axelrod/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/arts/television/30wing.html?em#secondParagraph>Jimmy
Smits, left, as the Democratic presidential nominee, debating Alan Alda, as
his Republican opponent, in the final season of the NBC series "The West
Wing."

Mr. Attie, a former speechwriter for Vice President Al
Gore<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/al_gore/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
and Mr. Axelrod, a political consultant, had crossed campaign trails before.
"I just called him and said, 'Tell me about Barack
Obama<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,'
"
Mr. Attie said.

Days after Mr. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, delivered an address
to the 2004 Democratic National
Convention<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/democratic_national_convention/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
the two men held several long conversations about his refusal to be defined
by his race and his aspirations to bridge the partisan divide. Mr. Axelrod
was then working on Mr. Obama's campaign for the United States
Senate<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/senate/index.html?inline=nyt-org>;
he is now Mr. Obama'a chief strategist.

Four years later, the writers of "The West Wing" are watching in amazement
as the election plays out. The parallels between the final two seasons of
the series (it ended its run on
NBC<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nbc_universal/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
May 2006) and the current political season are unmistakable. Fiction
has,
once again, foreshadowed reality.

Watching "The West Wing" in retrospect — all seven seasons are available on
DVD, and episodes can be seen in syndication — viewers can see allusions to
Mr. Obama in almost every facet of Matthew Santos, the Hispanic Democratic
candidate played by Jimmy
Smits<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/66622/Jimmy-Smits?inline=nyt-per>.
Santos is a coalition-building Congressional newcomer who feels frustrated
by the polarization of Washington. A telegenic and popular fortysomething
with two young children, Santos enters the presidential race and eventually
beats established candidates in a long primary campaign.

Wearing a flag pin, Santos announces his candidacy by telling supporters, "I
am here to tell you that hope is real." And he adds, "In a life of trial, in
a world of challenges, hope is real." Viewers can almost hear the crowd
cheering, "Yes, we can."

Comparisons between Senator John
McCain<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_mccain/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
the "West Wing" Republican candidate, Arnold Vinick, a white-haired
Senate stalwart with an antitax message and a reputation for delivering
"straight talk" to the press, also abound. Vinick, played by Alan
Alda<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/alan_alda/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
is deemed a threat to Democrats because of his ability to woo moderate
voters. And he takes great pride in his refusal to pander to voters, telling
an aide: "People know where I stand. They may not like it, but they know
I'll stick with it."

Even the vice-presidential picks are similar: the Democrat picks a
Washington veteran as his vice presidential candidate to add foreign policy
expertise to the ticket, while the Republican selects a staunchly
conservative governor to shore up the base.

Certainly some of the parallels are coincidental. It is unlikely, for
example, that the writers knew Mr. Obama had an affection for Bob
Dylan<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/bob_dylan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>when
they made Santos a Dylan fan. But it is the unintentional similarities
that make the DVDs of the sixth and seventh seasons, which at the time
received mixed reviews, so rewarding to watch now. In both "The West Wing"
and in real life, for example, the Phillies played in the World Series
during the election campaign.

As the primaries unfolded this year, "I saw the similarities right away,"
said Lawrence O'Donnell, a producer and writer for the series who has
appeared on MSNBC as a political analyst. Mr. O'Donnell had used Mr. McCain
as one of the templates for the Vinick character in the episodes he wrote,
though he said that "McCain's resemblance to the Vinick character was much
stronger in 2000 than in 2008."

Echoing the criticism Mr. McCain faced during the primaries, a White House
aide in "The West Wing" contends that Vinick is "not conservative enough"
for the Republican base. Sometimes the two candidates' situations are almost
identical: when the press starts asking where Vinick attends church, he
tells his staff that "I haven't gone to church for a while." Asked in July
by The New York Times about the frequency of his church attendance, Mr.
McCain said, "Not as often as I should."

Mr. Alda and Mr. McCain are the same age. When a hard-edged strategist
played by Janeane
Garofalo<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/196031/Janeane-Garofalo?inline=nyt-per>joins
the Santos campaign, she immediately alludes to Vinick's age. "He's
been in the Senate for like 90 years. He was practically born in a committee
room," she says.

In the same way that Obama surrogates have subtly knocked Mr. McCain's lack
of computer skills, the Garofalo character remarks to the Santos campaign
manager, Josh Lyman: "Why are you always talking about high-tech jobs?
Because Vinick uses a manual typewriter."

Conversely, Santos staffers talk about getting video of the candidate with
his "adorable young children hugging their hale and vital dad." The casting
of Mr. Smits introduced story lines about the prospect of a minority
president. But when an aide suggests a fund-raising drive in a Latino
community, Santos snaps: "I don't want to just be the brown candidate. I
want to be the American candidate." The Obama campaign has made similar
assertions.

Still, "The West Wing" — like Mr. Obama — does not ignore racial issues
entirely. In the seventh season Santos delivers a speech on race at a
critical moment for his campaign, and staffers privately worry that voters
will lie about their willingness to vote for a minority candidate.

If the show sometimes seems like a political fantasy — a real debate where
politicians are required to answer questions? a candidate rejecting an
attack ad? — it also reflects the tenor of the real-life campaign season.

Santos wins the nomination only after a lengthy fight on the convention
floor, an inexact parallel to Obama's extended primary fight with
Senator Hillary
Rodham
Clinton<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.
Just as the Obama campaign pivoted to the economy this fall, Lyman tells
Santos staffers that "this new economic message may be our ticket," and he
winds up being right. An economic crisis does not ensue, but back-to-back
emergencies on "The West Wing" — a nuclear power plant malfunction and a
dispute in Kazakhstan — bring to mind the election-defining qualities of the
actual economic crisis.

"Dramatically, they are exactly the same thing: the unforseeable," Mr.
O'Donnell said.

As President Bush did during the bailout talks, Jed Bartlet, the Democratic
"West Wing" president played by Martin
Sheen<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/martin_sheen/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
brings both candidates to the White House for a briefing. Facing the
prospect of deploying 150,000 American soldiers to Kazakhstan three weeks
before the election, Vinick grumbles, "I can say goodbye to my tax cut." He
tells Santos, "Your education plan's certainly off the table."
Santos emerges victorious weeks later, but only after a grueling election
night. Online, some "West Wing" fans are wondering whether the show will
wind up forecasting the real-life result as well. In Britain, where the
series remains popular in syndication, a recent headline on a blog carried
by the newspaper The Telegraph declared: "Barack Obama will win: It's all in
'The West Wing.' "
--
Julie Krueger

[lit-ideas] Following the Script

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