LOS ANGELES -- KNBC political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe wrote a column in the autumn of 2006 comparing the show "West Wing" with the presidential primary campaigns in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Given the sequence of events since then, and given the prescient nature of her column, we are reprinting it here.

Is It Life Imitating Art?

To contact Sherry, you can email her here.

The other day, cable news was cluttered with Inside-the-Beltway talking heads debating the viability of Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as a Presidential candidate. He'd just begun a nationwide tour to plug his new book, The Audacity of Hope, which had hit the cover of Time and -- perhaps more importantly in this celebrity-obsessed environment -- had been featured on the cover of Men's Vogue.

"He's just the Democrats' flavor of the month," harrumphed some pundits.

"He's a bona fide political rock star," cooed others.

"Enough of this uninformed blather!" I cried, and flipped the channel. I found a re-run of the final episode of "The West Wing."

It chronicled the Inauguration of the new President of the United States, Matt Santos, who had come out of relative obscurity as a Texas mayor and then three term-Congressman to win election as the Leader of the Free World.

Santos announced his T.V. candidacy saying:

"Hope is real..... I am sure I will have my share of false starts. But there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope."

Obama, riffing off his book title, told the crowd at a Democratic rally on the USC campus: "Ultimately, what this is going to depend on is your belief that it can happen, your hope that it ... can happen." Hmmm, I thought, it's funny -- the parallels between the fictional Santos and the very real Obama.

The Washington Establishment's early line on Santos was that he was too young and inexperienced to make a Presidential run. That's the current rap on Obama, only 2 years into his first Senate term.

Santos himself hit another problem that both the fictional and real-life politicians face: the blowback of racism.

Said Santos, in a fictional debate, "... Ask yourselves if you're ready to give Matt Santos the Presidency of the United States ... In newspapers all over the world, people are asking, 'Is America ready for a Latino President?'"

Similar questions are being raised in the media today about Obama, only the fifth African-American to serve as U.S. Senator and just the third to be popularly elected.

In the "West Wing" Presidential election, Santos finds himself up against Arnold Vinick, the Republican Senator from California. Vinick is a highly respected Capitol Hill veteran, known for his principled stands and ethical behavior.

Vinick is more moderate than his conservative party base—he'd have to be, to win high office as a Republican in California. But Vinick winds up bending to political necessity, courting the GOP Right in his V.P. search and tweaking his stances to campaign to the base.

Scratch the California reference and you've got a character who sounds a bit like a certain real GOP Senator -- John McCain of Arizona. There's a glimpse of that in McCain's strategy, as he explores his own Presidential run.

McCain is still smarting from then-Gov. George W. Bush's 2000 primary campaign against him; he got trashed by Bush and his Religious Right allies in conservative South Carolina. So, preliminary to a possible 2008 run for the White House, McCain is "reaching out" to that base, hanging out with Southern Religious Right leaders.

There is one major difference between the Santos and Vinick candidacies and possible Presidential runs by Obama or McCain. It's the difference between fantasy and reality.

Hollywood got to write the "West Wing" ending. On Nov. 8, 2006, the 2008 Presidential campaign will gear up, but Central Casting won't have the last word on how it all comes out.

It'll be the voters who write that script.

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