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Life imitates art

William Crawley | 20:55 UK time, Wednesday, 4 June 2008

"We can do it!". "Change." Simple aspirational expressions that have proved very successful for Barack Obama in securing the Democratic nomination -- and key elements of the "narrative" of Obama with which the electorate has become familiar. I say "narrative" because this is what a successful candidate has to offer voters as part of the modern race for the US presidency. It's not enough to merely present policy plans; the public want a story they can understand, admire, and embrace. That's what Obama's team offered more successfully than Hillary's campaign. The Hillary Story was more complex in some ways than The Obama Story; it was certainly less attractive. The Obama Story is a variation on America's most admired story: the unlikely rise of the underdog. Hillary's story seemed, to many, a little imperialistic: the story of a presumed manifest destiny.

We shouldn't be surprised by the success of Obama's story, since one of its "authors" was a script adviser for The West Wing. It's said that helped scriptwriters base the character of Matt Santos, the presidential candidate who succeeded President Bartlett, on a rising star of the Democratic Party by the name of Barack Obama. Axelrod is now an adviser to Senator Obama and seems to have drawn from the fictional character of Matt Santos in developing a successful '"public narrative" for Barack Obama.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Obama won the nomination because as an old American saw has it, there's a sucker born every minute. But it was Lincoln who said you can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. Will he win? Lincoln also said you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. I think by election day, there won't be enough voters fooled by Mr. Obama to elect him. By then we will know a lot more about him. What little we know already is very disturbing. His assets are that he is very bright, well educated, and has an outstanding ability to orate. But on the negative side he is very inexperienced in government having served only two years, has a political point of view that is far outside the views of mainstream America and he has surrounded himself by an assortment of detestable people from his obnoxious wife, his racist pastor, a racist mysoginist priest, and even people classified as terrorists, one from the domestic terrorist group of the 60s the Weather Underground and one from the PLO when it was classified as a terrorist organization by the US government. The issue of race is a double edged sword as we saw in the primaries, some will not vote for him because he is half African American and some will vote for him only because he is half African American. It's hard to tell whether that is a net gain or loss for him at this stage. He's also gotten a lot of people angry who supported Hillary Clinton. They feel she was abused by his organization and the press because she is a woman. Some of them will vote for McCain simply because they want to deny him the presidency.

    I think about once in a generation or so, the Democratic party flirts with its extreme left wing. We saw that with McGovern in 1972 and he was wiped out in a political landslide. I think by election day, we will be so disgusted with Obama that we will see the same thing again. His job is to try to divert attention from his negatives and call a McCain presidency a third term for Bush. McCain's job is to focus on Obama's inadequacies especially in a time of war. The Republicans have already failed to point out that in historic terms, the 8 years of President Bush were not so bad. The war as World Wars go has been fought on the cheap both in numbers of casualties and financial cost and the economy did better than expected through most of it. The 4000 dead in five years is about what America loses in 5 weeks in motor vehicle accidents and the trillion dollars the wars have cost are between 1 and 2 percent GDP (closer to 1 percent) while during much of the time, the economy grew around 3 to 4 %. The current problems have to do with the sub prime mortgage fiasco, not the war but at this point, I don't think the electorate will listen to that, they have also been sold a bill of goods by America's largely left leaning news media.

    If by some horrible circumstance, Americans choose Obama as their next President, they will get exactly what they deserve...likely a disaster.

  • Comment number 2.

    That explains Obabama - but Alan Alda played an aging, honourable Republican senator who refused to compromise with the Religious Right. So did "West Wing" put McCain on the ticket?
    It's all very suspicious- I think this merits a conspiracv theory!
    Graham Veale
    Armagh

  • Comment number 3.

    Was Obamama even on the political radar when Matt Santos was introduced as a main character? I thought he only surfaced at the last Presidential election.

    Graham Veale

  • Comment number 4.

    Does graham veale think everyone in the world is pulling the wool over his eyes? This is NOT a conspiracy theory! Follow the links and you'll see that Axelrod is on the record acknowledging that he based Santos on Obama.

    Obama has been a state senator since 1996 and even then people talked about him as a future presidential candidate.

  • Comment number 5.

    Augustine of Clippo

    I. Was. Joking.


    Graham Veale

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