Eerier and eerier
Lastish I expressed doubts about the lessons that could be drawn from the 2006 presidential election on The West Wing, saying in a glib way that none of the candidates had the intellectual gravitas of "Jeb" Bartlett or Matt Santos. And by doing so I missed the real story: just how close the main narrative of the 2008 Presidential is proving to be to the fictional one.
On the Republican side, the fictional candidate was a secular tax-cutter, alienated from his conservative base by his refusal to conform to their views on church-going and on social conservative issues, who, in the primaries, finally eliminated his last opponent, a Bible-bashing reverend. The maverick Republican was an older Senator from a western state and impressed with his slick campaigning style, even though he didn't win over the base. It's not hard to see "Beltway Arnie" Vinick (R, Calif) as an analog for John McCain (R, Arizona); nor Rev. Don Butler as a fictional version of Rev. Mike Huckabee. In the Presidential election, Vinick ran into trouble when he was shown to have used influence to clear the way for a nuclear plant; McCain has continued to maintain complex relationships with lobbyists like Vicki Iseman, at whose request he wrote to the FCC urging a speed-up on decisions affecting her clients.
On the Democratic side, the fictional campaign saw two candidates go to the Convention almost equal in votes. This was good drama but unlikely in the current Primary/Caucus system. One was a party senior, with the backing of a large number of insiders; the other was a relatively junior Congressman, of an outsider ethnic group, with a slick campaign relying on lots of young enthusiasts. While Hilary Clinton is not an exact analog for "Bingo" Bob Russell; Barack Obama is the black equivalent of Matt Santos' Hispanic insurgent, with a similarly short time in the Congress, after years of political activity at the local level. After Texas and Ohio, the two are almost equal in the number of committed delegates, and no-one can tell who'll win (although for various reasons you'd have to favor Obama at this stage, with more delegates, more states won and more votes garnered). In the television version, the San Diego Convention eventually elected the insurgent ethnic outsider on the fourth ballot, after a third candidate allowed himself to be 'drafted' on the floor of the convention.
The fictional mob never envisioned anything as unbelievable as the fact that neither Florida nor Michigan has as yet elected acceptable delegates to the convention;or that the superdelegates (previously elected politicians and party elders) themselves not selected by either caucus or primary in 2008, might hold the balance of power at the convention; or that Obama's preacher would become a campaign issue, leading to the best speech (on the on-going impact of 'race' on US society) that I have seen/heard (thanks to YouTube I could see the whol;e thing) in yeah these many years.
The media select the president
One of the interesting sidelights to the 2008 primary/caucus season has been the influence of political reporters. From this distance, reading largely the highlights packages on a couple of American political websites (Politico and Real Clear Politics), it seems to me that the media pack has selected the candidates that it favors. Certainly McCain has benefited from a friendliness with his reporters that none of the other Republicans could replicate. On the Democratic side, it has been even more obvious. The media love Obama, because he is the fresh story and there is a heap of political journalists who cannot wait to do the dirty on the Clintons. Hillary is being dissed on the basis of Bill's record - or a perception that the Clinton campaign is somehow more arrogant or aloof than the Obama team. What is allowable for the insurgent is somehow not acceptable for the more experienced Hillary, so she is accused all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors: playing the race card, sometimes being too emotional and at others too reserved, and so on. The media have decided who they want as the candidate - and many are getting what they see as some revenge on the Clinton for whatever imagined slight occurred during Bill's presidency. The question is: what will happen once Hillary is out? Will we see a repeat of 2004, when the press, after enthusiastically promoting John Kerry during the primaries, allowed itself to be used by the Republican attack dogs to undermine him in the General? Will they similarly turn on Obama in 2008? Or will the Republicans find, as Hillary has, that attacks on him are all too easily portrayed as racist and have a tendency to rebound.
The boring man makes it even more interesting
Lastish, I suggested that Australian politics, now under new management, would be more interesting than what promised to be a very boring cricket season. Then the summer was replete with scandals arising from the confrontation between the Indian and Australian XIs. The cricket was, as predicted, fairly dire, but the on and off-field clashes were numerous and became front-page fodder. But, just because the Aussie cricket teams is composed of boors, and because Harbhajan Singh was out to demonstrate that an Indian could be just as boorish as any Aussie - an attempt that was incredibly successful - it doesn't mean that anything emerging from that brou-ha-hum was of any interest. To me, stories about sportsmen behaving badly are in the dog-bites-man category. Who cares? On the other hand, national politics has provided many man-bites-dog stories. There has been all the interest in the new national opinion polls, which have shown that the voters regard Brendan Nelson with the same disdain as political professionals. His first couple of comparative results, showing him to be in single figures in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, have been the cynosure of much interest. They come at a time when the new guys have shown an unexpected acumen in controlling both the agenda and the news cycle. Kruddy's handling of the National Sorry Day was masterful. His 30-minute speech neatly summarised all the reasons that an Apology was due to the Indigenous People (and the reaction in the gallery and in the streets showed why) while Nelson hit a series of wrong notes by trying to compromise his support of the Apology with an attempt to appease his backbench by implying he really didn't mean it. The Gillard's proposals to wind back WorkChoices were originally opposed by the relevant Opposition spokespeople, especially Julie Bishop, who were forced by their own party to change their position and say that they would support the abolition of AWAs after all. The only positives for the Tories, and negatives for the Krudites, has been a series on stumbles by new the Treasurer Swan, who hasn't quite adjusted to the Treasury benches, and the failure of the proposal to have pseudo-sittings on Fridays. Nonetheless it has been a fascinating time for national politics and anyone who thought that the cricket scandals were of equal interest hasn't been paying attention. (And I'm going to ignore the less salubrious goings-on among the members of the NSW government, which would by now be on its last legs were it not for the fact that the Opposition appears at times to be worse.)
Sorry
13 February should become out national day. The observance of Australia Day on the anniversary of Invasion Day 1788 doesn't quite work and the observation of a National Holiday to remember the 2008 Sorry/Reconciliation Day is apposite. Cath and I marched across the Sydney Harbor Bridge in May 2000; and we listened to and admired Paul J Keating's speech at Redfern Park in December 1992. We agreed with the Mabo and Wik decisions that the High Court presented in the 1990s, establishing a legal basis for land rights claims for the Indigenous People. And we had waited for the national Parliament to catch up. It did so on 13 February with a vengeance. Now that is an event to be recalled perennially.
First written: April 2008
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