Deep Thought II: Truth is BETTER than Fiction

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?

RIP Ron Silver

Actor and political activist Ron Silver died yesterday. Silver was an interesting and smart man - a fervent liberal who became more conservative after the events of Sept 11 and wound up supporting both the Iraq war and President Bush's 2004 re-election. Obviously, I disagreed with him on both points!

But I did have the chance to see Silver at an event last year in the House of Commons, and I have to say he struck me as sincere, thoughtful and very intelligent. We chatted briefly after the event and he told me that he had mixed feelings about Obama, but thought he would almost certainly win (according to his obituaries, it looks like he wound up voting for him).

Silver was clearly a complicated guy. Socially very progressive but positively militiaristic on foreign policy, he didn't really fit in anywhere. Still, he was a great actor, and if he did nothing else in his life I'd still consider it a life well-lived just for Bruno Gianelli: