Obama/Santos: life imitating art imitating life

Seems I'm not the only one to have noticed the similarities between Obama's candidacy and the fictional presidential campaign of The West Wing's Matt Santos. Jonathan Freedland mentions some of the coincidences I highlighted back in January: 'a young, charismatic candidate from an ethnic minority, daring to take on an establishment workhorse with a promise to transcend race and heal America's partisan divide', and on the Republican side 'an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base'. And Freedland adds a further coincidence that I missed: both John McCain and his fictional counterpart, Arnie Vinick, have to battle for the nomination against a preacher from the Christian right.

But here's the twist. Rather than this being a case of life imitating art, as we all thought, it turns out it's actually the other way round. According to Freedland:

When the West Wing scriptwriters first devised their fictitious presidential candidate in the late summer of 2004, they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician - not yet even a US senator - by the name of Barack Obama.

"I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character," West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie told the Guardian. "When I had to write, Obama was just appearing on the national scene. He had done a great speech at the convention [which nominated John Kerry] and people were beginning to talk about him."

Attie, who served as chief speechwriter to Al Gore during the ill-fated 2000 campaign and who wrote many of the key Santos episodes of the West Wing, put in a call to Obama aide David Axelrod.

"I said, 'Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.'"

With the Latino actor Jimmy Smits already cast for the show, Attie was especially keen to know how rising star Obama approached the question of his race. Axelrod's answers helped inform Santos's approach to his own Hispanic identity.

"Some of Santos's insistence on not being defined by his race, his pride in it even as he rises above it, came from that," Attie said.

The scriptwriter also borrowed from Obama's life the notion of a superstar candidate. "After that convention speech, Obama's life changed. He was mobbed wherever he went. He was more than a candidate seeking votes: people were seeking him. Some of Santos's celebrity aura came from that."

But as the real-life battle for the Democratic nomination approaches its climax, life has begun to imitate art, with the story of Obama's ascendancy eerily paralleling the West Wing narrative:

In the TV show, Santos begins as the rank outsider up against a national figure famous for standing at the side of a popular Democratic president. There are doubts about Santos's inexperience, having served just a few years in Congress, and about his ability to persuade voters to back an ethnic minority candidate - even as his own ethnic group harbour suspicions that he might not identify with them sufficiently.

But the soaring power of his rhetoric, his declaration that the old divisions belong in the past and his sheer magnetism, ensure that he comes from behind in a fiercely close primary campaign and draws level with his once all-commanding opponent. Every aspect of that storyline has come true for Barack Obama. Axelrod, now chief strategist for the Obama campaign, recently joked in an email to Attie: "We're living your scripts!"

As Freedland concludes:

Obama aides will be hoping that the West Wing's prophetic streak holds: Santos eventually emerged as the Democratic nominee from a brokered convention - and went on to win the presidency.

Can the excitement of the US election be reproduced in Britain?

"Can we change the metropolitan borough of Wirral? Yes, we can!"

Jonathan Freedland imagines transplanting the American model of party primaries - 'currently catalysing such drama Stateside' - to Britain, with selection processes for local parliamentary candidates thrown wide open:

I can see the appeal of the primary idea. Indeed, I would be delighted to see it extended to the job that matters most: party leader. Imagine how much more solid a mandate Gordon Brown would rest on now if he had had to win the votes of declared Labour voters in successive contests, first in wintry, rural Lincolnshire, then in tiny Rutland before a Super Thursday of contests in sunny Cornwall, delegate-rich London and pivotal Yorkshire.

But Freedland is wary of British politicians 'cherry-picking' the attractive bits of the American system without broader reform:

In the US case, if primaries work, they work not in isolation but because they are embedded in a radically different approach to political parties, and even to democracy and sovereignty. We can't scrape off the tasty icing of primaries unless we're prepared to import the entire democratic cake.

This would include a clear separation of powers, which Freedland believes would 'entail a political earthquake':

Either we would have a directly elected PM, admitting the presidential nature of our current system and letting the Commons act as a check on Downing Street. Or we could fully elect the second chamber, at a time other than the general election, and ensure it acts like a separate legislature, holding the executive to account.

Freedland's argument - with which I find myself in broad agreement - echoes what he wrote last year about government plans for a 'national day' to celebrate 'Britishness'. He suggested then that, in countries such as France and the US, festivities of this kind tend to commemorate political upheavals that have created a sense of shared national identity. As he put it:

We can't just skip that awkward bit and jump straight to the barbecue and bunting. No, first we have to have a political change of our own. That doesn't mean bringing out the guillotine. It could be the bloodless drafting, at long last, of our own written constitution. If such a document established a British republic, so much the better.

For an example of the potential of the US primary elections - and an electrifying candidate - to galvanise popular feeling, take a look at this video. According to The Field:

Texas Republicans have worked overtime to make it harder for key Democratic voting groups to vote and be represented fairly. The redistricting games they’ve played are infamous. And for the Prairie View A&M University precincts, they put the early-polling place more than seven miles from the school.

So what did the students in this video do? They shut down the highway as they marched seven miles to cast their votes on the first day of early voting.

Did they leave the left or did the left leave them?

Among the many things worth reading in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books is Jonathan Freedland's piece on Hitchens, Amis and the 'war on terror'. I like Freedland, and his article is insightful and generally sympathetic to its subjects, but I do wish he wouldn't copy the lazy trope of describing Hitchens as a former leftist. Former Trotskyist, perhaps, but anyone who has read Hitch's most recent work on Paine, Jefferson, et al, can't fail to acknowledge that his sympathies remain with the left-liberal-progressive tradition.

Believing that the neocons might have got it right about the need to confront radical Islam doesn't automatically turn you into a conservative. Nor does supporting the 'right' policy even if you believe it's being pursued by the 'wrong' side. I don't recall Hitchens suddenly coming out in favour of school prayer and tax cuts for the rich. I'm sure he would argue that it's the left that has changed, not him, and I think he'd probably be right (see this post). Falling into the trap of describing Hitchens, or Berman, or Cohen as former leftists is doing the devil's (or Seumas Milne's) work for him.

Gaza catch-up

'If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same.' - Barack Obama, on a visit to Sderot, Israel, July, 2008.

My self-imposed blogging silence over Christmas has meant absenting myself from the heated debate about Israel's military response to Hamas' shelling of its civilian population. In brief, my feelings about the situation (for what they're worth) can be summed up as: certainty about Israel's moral right to defend itself against terrorism, exasperation at the unthinking one-sidedness of much media and 'progressive' comment on events, horror at the loss of innocent life, and acute anxiety that the longer the campaign goes on the greater the danger to Israel's interests and to hopes for peace in the region.

Here are some contributions to the debate that I've found helpful (which isn't to say I agree with every word):

- Norm and George Szirtes on the definition of a 'proportional' response

- the Contentious Centrist on the cynicism of Hamas

- Eric Lee on the predictable response of the pseudo-Left

- David Aaronovitch and Jonathan Freedland on concerns about the longterm impact of Israel's actions

- and this response to Freedland's piece by Eric Lee

Anyone for a British Republic Day?

Government ministers trying to encourage a sense of 'Britishness' make me deeply uncomfortable (with one or two exceptions), for many of the same reasons as government ministers meddling in religion. So yesterday's proposals from Liam Byrne and Ruth Kelly for a tougher citizenship test and a 'national British day' were calculated to make me squirm.

As with the religion issue, I'm sympathetic to the underlying intentions: in this case, to reduce alienation among some migrant groups and encourage them to identify with shared national values. But there are a number of problems. Shuggy suggests a couple: that celebrating Britishness is actually rather unBritish - and that the suggestions for a national day of celebration have a predominantly English rather than UK-wide flavour. Jonathan Freedland identifies another: that the proposed citizenship test expects more of incoming migrants than we do of native-born Britons.

I'd add to this my own sense that national identity is not something that can be imposed from above, and certainly not by ministerial fiat. As Freedland says, countries that successfully celebrate their national identities, such as the US and France, tend to focus their festivities on momentous political events. I like his suggestion here:

July 4 and Bastille day are celebrated because they mark great political upheavals. We can't just skip that awkward bit and jump straight to the barbecue and bunting. No, first we have to have a political change of our own. That doesn't mean bringing out the guillotine. It could be the bloodless drafting, at long last, of our own written constitution. If such a document established a British republic, so much the better. We could even pass it into law on June 15, the same day Magna Carta was enshrined in 1215. Then make June 15 British Day - and make sure we're all invited.

A British Republic day: I'd support that.

One further point: Kelly and Byrne want to make 'volunteering' part of the package both for intending citizens, and for the populace more generally. They even suggest that student loan repayments could be reduced in return for volunteer work. This is in line with other recent trends in New Labour policy, particularly youth policy, which has shown a similar desire to micro-manage citizens' lives and encourage young people especially to be what Nikolas Rose calls 'entrepreneurs of themselves'. Questions: how can 'volunteering' be compulsory, and doesn't 'incentivising' pro-social behaviour in this way deprive it of its very essence...?

We shan't see his like again, ctd.

In his account of Michael Foot's funeral, Jonathan Freedland reports that Peter Jones, the former vice-chairman of Plymouth Argyle, spoke of Foot's stedfast devotion to the team, 'through thick and thin' , and shared this anecdote:

Arriving for a recent away game at Selhurst Park, a steward asked the ninetysomething Foot whether he was carrying an offensive weapon, whereupon he produced a battered copy of Milton's selected poems, explaining that Milton's poetry represented one of the most potent weapons in English history.

Freedland comments: 'Lying silent in his wooden box, Foot seemed to come alive once more.'

Republicanism: an idea whose time has come?

Following on from my last post - and Jonathan Freedland's suggestion that Britain needs a republican revolution before we can be sort out what we mean by 'Britishness' - I see that Stuart White is suggesting (in the latest Renewal) that republicanism may be the Left's 'big idea'. Though not starry-eyed about the history of actually existing republics, White argues that:

an adequate social democratic philosophy of the state should incorporate some basic republican ideas. These include the value of procedural goods in political life; the need for a wide participation of citizens in public decision-making; the importance of attending to inequality of wealth (as well as income); and a way of thinking about national identity based on republican values rather than ethnicity, religion or imperial history...the idea of grounding social democracy in a republican conception of citizenship and the state is one we urgently need to rehabilitate.

Amen to that.

Mottos, monarchy and muddling along

Having chastised Tristram Hunt here for his sneering at the 'new atheist orthodoxy' and his quivering excitement at the 'radical energy' of religious faith, I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with most of what he has to say about the search for a 'national motto'. It certainly seems like a cart-before-the-horse way of bolstering British identity. As I said here, I agree with Jonathan Freedland that national identities tend to crystallise around moments of political and constitutional change and can't be imposed from above.

At the same time, I don't accept Hunt's claim that the monarchy and 'muddling along' are somehow essential to any notion of British identity. Nor do I like his sneering at the US constitutional model, or his inevitable poke at current foreign policy: 'Britain has been gripped periodically by an evangelising impulse to stuff religion, empire, free trade, and now democracy and human rights down the throats of foreigners.' We can all agree that imperialism was a bad thing, Tristram, but do you really think democracy and human rights should be confined to our own shores?

A cautious welcome for Brown's constitutional plans

Even if it was inspired more by party politics than by republican sentiment, Gordon Brown's decision to 'pre-announce' the contents of the Queen's Speech to Parliament today at least showed that he is serious about constitutional reform. It followed in the wake of the shopping list of constitutional changes that he delivered to Parliament a few days after becoming PM, which included plans for a bill of rights and a written constitution.

I'm cautiously optimistic about all of this, especially as it appears that Jack Straw will have a major role in implementing the plans. As I've mentioned before, Straw's ideas about 'Britishness' seem more rooted in our radical and liberal traditions, and less obsessed with monarchy and flummery, than those of some other leading politicians. However, any attempt to draw up a charter of basic rights for the UK may run up against the problem identified by Jonathan Freedland in relation to the Britishness debate: the absence of a 'republican moment' in our history that transferred power unequivocally from the monarchy to the people.

Charters of rights and written constitutions tend to emerge from these key moments of political change, and are usually inspired by a tide of enthusiasm for new and radical ideas. Since we're certainly not living through such a moment in our history, one does have a slight concern about the kind of ideas and values that might get reflected in Brown's planned bill of rights. There's a danger that it will simply reflect the concerns of the moment (my hackles rose when the PM talked about a charter of 'rights and responsibilities', for example), rather than values rooted in the long history of struggles for freedom. What counts as 'British values' is bound to be contested and there's a worry that the government might indulge in a process of consultation in which (for example) unrepresentative 'faith' and 'community' leaders have to be given a voice and seek to water down commitments to rights such as freedom of expression.

One idea that I wouldn't like to see implemented is the plan for more 'citizen's juries' to debate key issues. Although the idea sounds nice and empowering, it's actually the opposite. As with other experiments in 'direct democracy', it's not really democratic, but populist: government by focus group. Members of citizens' juries speak for no one but themselves, so politicians are able to listen earnestly and then ignore the results. As with government attempts to appeal 'over the heads' of the unions to individual members, it undermines the whole notion of representative democracy.

People who volunteer for things like citizen's juries tend to have an unusually wonkish interest in political meetings, or have an axe to grind, or have a lot of time on their hands: in other words, they tend to be unrepresentative of the majority of the population. That's why representative democracy works: it enables the busy majority to elect others to represent their collective interests. Of course, Brown's proposals are a response to a sense that people are disillusioned with representative politics. But the answer isn't to abandon it in favour of 'government by consultation' that treats people as disaggregated individuals and therefore actually entrenches the power of politicians, but to find ways to reinvigorate it: that's the challenge.

There's more on all of this at Shuggy's blog