The great showdown

The West Wing's final episodes mirror the real presidential campaign so closely that even its writers admit it's 'creepy'. But will the finale be the same?

Have your say: What can Obama learn from The West Wing?
Jimmy Smits with Barack Obama in September 2005
Jimmy Smits, who played the West Wing's Matthew Santos, with Barack Obama in September 2005. Photograph: Chris Greenberg/Getty

The oracle told us that Barack Obama would eventually defeat Hillary Clinton and win the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. But what does the oracle predict for next Tuesday? Can it tell us what the whole world wants to know: who will win the race for the White House?

The oracle is, of course, the astonishingly prophetic sixth and seventh series of The West Wing, the multiple Emmy award-winning television drama that hooked a generation of political obsessives on both sides of the Atlantic as the Clinton era turned into the age of George W Bush. In its final two seasons, originally broadcast between 2004 and 2006, The West Wing focused on the battle to succeed President Jed Bartlet, a contest whose early stages at least seemed to prefigure, with uncanny accuracy, the real-life primary campaign of 2008.

The fictional race pitted a veteran member of the Democratic establishment, who had loyally stood at the side of a popular two-term president, against a young, inexperienced and super-charismatic member of Congress who talked of change and hope - and was seeking to become the first non-white occupant of the Oval Office. On television the veteran was vice-president Bob Russell and the newcomer congressman Matthew Santos, but their 2006 battle came to seem like a prescient dress rehearsal for the 2008 clash of Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama.

There were dozens of similarities, but the core one turned out to be no coincidence. As the Guardian revealed in February this year, Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, was eerily like Obama for a reason: the writers of The West Wing had actually modelled their presidential hopeful on the man who was then a mere state senator from Illinois.

They had their candidate starting out as an underdog, but eventually overcoming the party warhorse in a desperately close and long primary campaign. That much they got right. But what about the next stage? What did The West Wing foretell for the final battle between Democrat and Republican?

At first glance, it looks as if the Hollywood crystal ball got a little cloudy. Sure, they rightly predicted that the Republicans would nominate a long-serving senator from the west who prided himself on being a maverick ready to buck the party line. But where Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda) was a masterful campaigner who stayed neck-and-neck with Santos to the bitter end, McCain has proved hapless, behind in the polls now as he has been for a month or more.

Ah, but look closer. Both Vinick and McCain were chosen because they were candidates deemed to have a good shot at beating the Democrats, in part because their appeal extended beyond the conservative core vote. In Vinick's case that was because he was from a "blue" state, solidly Democratic California, and chiefly because he was in favour of abortion rights, enabling him to appeal to women voters who had long eluded the Republicans' reach.

McCain is "pro-life" and from staunchly Republican Arizona, but back in the winter he was viewed in much the same way as Vinick. He had stood up to the evangelicals, famously describing their leaders as "agents of intolerance", and had regularly adopted moderate stances on immigration, campaign finance and healthcare that endowed him with all-important crossover appeal.

But look what happened to Vinick. The Republican base, especially the Christian right, could not warm to him: they could not see him as one of their own. When he tried to ingratiate himself with them, it undermined his own authenticity. When he tried to shift towards the centre, as past form suggests all nominees must in a general election, the base did not forgive him.

According to former West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie, who scripted several of the pivotal Vinick episodes, "Vinick seemed threatening [to the Democrats] from a distance, but really he exposed the fault lines in his own party."

Nowhere was this clearer for the TV senator than in his choice of running mate. To placate the Christian base, he had to pick a pro-lifer. He tried first to nominate the televangelist Rev Don Butler, but was rebuffed. Vinick settled eventually for the anti-abortion West Virginia governor, Ray Sullivan. But that he had to pick someone who disagreed with him on abortion rights was never in doubt.

McCain was similarly hemmed in. It is widely known that his first choice for vice-president was his good friend and fellow senator, the Democrat Joe Lieberman. But Lieberman's pro-choice position made that impossible. McCain was threatened with a floor fight at the Republican convention, a rebellion by the faithful. To placate them, he lurched to the other extreme, picking Sarah Palin, who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest - a decision which, given Palin's cratering poll numbers, appears to have cost McCain dear.

In other words, this year's Republican nominee, like his fictional counterpart, has been hobbled by the deep divisions within the Republican coalition and especially by the veto power now exercised by what some call the Christianist wing of the party. Both McCain and Vinick needed to look towards the centre, but were held back by their base. Says Attie: "McCain has been even worse at trying to have it both ways. But both were trying to hold together disparate, far-flung elements of a fractious party. Both found that you can only please one side by insulting the other."

Attie also sees a deeper similarity between the two campaigns. McCain, most pundits agree, was derailed by the financial crisis that broke in September. Suddenly all the petty, diversionary issues that can dominate an election campaign seemed petty and trivial. It was back to being a battle on substantive issues and on those McCain suddenly seemed to be not only on the wrong side of the argument - tied to the Republican ideology of unfettered free markets - but even on the wrong side of history.

There was no Wall Street collapse on The West Wing - they were not that psychic - but there was a similarly defining moment. It came with an accident at a nuclear power plant in Vinick's own state, a plant he had supported and even helped to build. Santos had no involvement in the plant, but he had long opposed nuclear power and therefore found himself on the right side of the issue of the hour. Suddenly Santos surged in the polls, just as Obama did in September. Neither had to do much except appear steady and calm, while their opponent floundered to explain a policy stance that had immediately become poisonously unpopular. In one scene, Vinick tells an aide that "history decides, circumstance decides" who wins an election. "True for Vinick and I think also true for McCain," says Attie now.

There have been differences, to be sure. The writers of The West Wing had turbo-charged imaginations, but even they never dared conjure up a moose-hunting, lipstick-wearing governor of Alaska who channels the spirit of Joe McCarthy with a wink and a "you betcha".

Still, they got more right than they got wrong. The TV debate between The West Wing candidates was short on high drama with no memorable gaffes or zingers - just like the three serious if not stodgy encounters between Obama and McCain. Mind you, Vinick and Santos seemed to respect and even like each other - and few would say that of this year's contenders.

So what of the denouement? How did the fictional battle end? It was close, much closer than current polls predict for the 2008 race. There was talk of legal challenges to the tightest results and the entire election came down to two small states out west, Nevada and Oregon. But, at long last, both those states went for Santos - and the young challenger, whose bid for the White House once seemed impossible, ended election night as president-elect.

Is that how the real story will end next Tuesday? So far The West Wing has got so much right, even the show's own writers say it's "creepy". Those writers did finally give their viewers a happy ending. There are many millions around the world who hope that, next week, the US electorate will do the same.

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