For eight long years the TV show The West Wing was my survival mechanism - the fantasy Presidency I was vicariously living through because I could hardly stand to look at the real one.
But recently I've been re-watching old West Wings on DVD and it keeps hitting me: I'd take Barack Obama over Jed Bartlett any day. Bartlett's crotchety and moody; Obama's calm and reflective. Bartlett is theoretically liberal, but prone to symbolic gestures rather than taking on massive policy re-thinks (he toys with ending the war on drugs but doesn't, plays victim time and again to Republican tax cut proposals and in the eopisode I just watched actually allows a 25% cut to his foreign aid budget); Obama is theoretically a pragmatist but is pushing progressive policies pretty effectively so far on the grounds of that very pragmatism.
Plus - the kids are cuter, there's a dog, and even Stockard Channing (before whom I bow) is at least equalled by the amazingness that is Michelle Obama. So if you gave me the choice of my fantasy President and my real one... I'd take the reality. How weird is that?
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