The actual antecedent to Sen. Obama as Head of State is President David Palmer.
If Obama takes this across the finish line, he'll owe a debt of gratitude to Dennis Haysbert, who convincingly portrayed a black politician you actually believe had won, and who's smarts and steadfastness have stood in stark contrast to our current Republican President.
In fact, he'll really owe the debt to the men who created 24, and in particular to first-listed creator Joel Surnow, a self-described "right-wing nut job" who's buddies with Rush Limbaugh and a GOP supporter. Tick-tick-irony-tick-tick...
Will Surnow come out in support of Obama? There's already one old-style Conservative, Andrew Sullivan, who made up his mind for Obama early and quite correctly makes the connection between Obama's rhetorical style with not MLK, JFK or RFK so much as with Republican godhead Ronald Reagan. Writes Sullivan:
The analogy that worries Republicans the most is a more recent one. Could Obama be a potential liberal version of Ronald Reagan? Could he do for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans a quarter century ago?
It’s increasingly possible. Reagan was the cutting edge of the last realignment in American politics. With a good-natured, civil appeal to Democrats who felt abandoned by their own party under Jimmy Carter, Reagan revolutionised the reach of his own party.
He didn’t aim for a mere plurality, as Bill Clinton did. Nor did he try for a polarising 51% strategy, as George W Bush has done. He ran as a national candidate, in search of a national mandate, a proud Republican who nonetheless wanted Democrats to vote for him.
He came out of a period in which Americans had become sickened by the incompetence of their own government. Reagan shocked America’s elites by pivoting that discontent into a victory in 1980. And by his second term, he won 49 out of 50 states.
From Reagan Democrats to Obama Republicans?
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