Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

Vinick and McCain

February 21, 2008 24:00
1 min read

You can't breathe at the moment without coming across a Barack-Santos article or post.

That's all very well, but how about the other, in many ways still more striking, parallel?

That between this man

and this man.

Indeed, as Jonathan Freedland writes: What's more, the West Wing had the Republicans choose between a Christian preacher - a pre-echo of Mike Huckabee - and an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base: a dead ringer for John McCain.

In the West Wing, the McCain figure emerges comfortably as the party's choice. Apparently the character was not based on the current Republican frontrunner, but was simply a function of the casting of Alan Alda.Forget the liberal dream President, Jed Bartlett. Arnold Vinick would be my dream President. And in the alternative universe of 2008, I'm with McCain all the way - just I was hoping he'd win in 2000.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives." John McCain proves that wrong.