West Wing and the 2008 Election

Apparently, Jonathan  Freeland sees  parallels between the last season of West Wing and the 2008 election:

For what those West Wing fans stunned by the similarity between the fictitious Matthew Santos and the real-life Barack Obama have not known is that the resemblance is no coincidence. 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.’"

Random comment on a Matt Yglesias thread about this:  A friend, who was stationed abroad during most of the Democratic Primary, responded to the news of the Clinton campaigns inner failings by saying: How is it possible that they didn’t see this coming? Didn’t these people watch Season 6 of “The West Wing?”