Yes, Barack Obama was the model for Matt Santos on NBC's West Wing.

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Mon Apr-05-10 10:36 AM
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Yes, Barack Obama was the model for Matt Santos on NBC's West Wing.

Edited on Mon Apr-05-10 10:54 AM by Pirate Smile

Imagining Obama on 'The West Wing'

There's always been a fair amount of chatter about the obvious resemblance between candidate Matt Santos on "The West Wing" and candidate Barack Obama.

I hadn't realized, though, how deliberate it was. David Remnick (whose extremely good book I finished over vacation) reports that "West Wing" writer Eli Attie starting writing Santos soon after the 2004 convention speech.

"Attie wanted the new character to be no less a liberal ideal (than Jed Bartlet), but this time he wanted someone of the "post-Oprah" generation, as he put it, someone black or Hispanic, but not an older figure closely tied o the rhetoric of the civil-rights movement and identity politics. ...

So Attie, who had worked in Democratic politics, called David Axelrod and grilled him about Obama.

"Those early conversations with David turned out to play a huge role in my shaping of the character," Attie said. "One of the main things was Obama's attitude about race, his almost militant refusal to be defined by it, which became the basis for an episode I wrote called 'Opposition Research,' in which Santos said he didn't want to run as the 'brown candidate,' even though that's where all his support and fundraising potential were....

A couple of years later, those seasons of "The West Wing" proved so eerily prescient that David Axelrod sent Attie an e-mail from the campaign trail reading, "We're living your scripts!" And yet, while he was making those shows, Attie thought there was "no way" that the real character, Barack Obama, could go much farther than the Senate. "I just didn't think he could be the President of the United States in my lifetime, given the color of his skin," he said.

UPDATE: The Guardian wrote this long ago. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/barackobama.uselections2008

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0410/Imagining_Obama_on_The_West_Wing.html#comments

edit to add:

From West Wing to the real thingScriptwriters modelled TV's ethnic minority candidate on young Barack Obama

-snip-
"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 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."

The result is a bizarre case of art imitating life - only for life to imitate art back again.

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!"

What's more, the West Wing had the Republicans choose between a Christian preacher - a pre-echo of Mike Huckabee - and an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base: a dead ringer for John McCain. In the West Wing, the McCain figure emerges comfortably as the party's choice. Apparently the character was not based on the current Republican frontrunner, but was simply a function of the casting of Alan Alda.
"It was always an inside joke on the West Wing that the show had a prophetic quality," recalls Attie, now a writer and producer of House, starring Hugh Laurie.

Various political scenarios sketched out on the programme would often materialise within weeks of airing. But the 2008 campaign, Attie concedes, is in an entirely different league.

There are small differences of course. Santos had a white wife - stressing, says Attie, Santos's standing as a "post-racial figure" - while Michelle Obama is African-American. Ms Obama is the more outspoken, but with two young children each, both are equally photogenic.
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.

Barack Obama v Matt Santos
Barack Obama

Young, handsome and charismatic member of Congress, attempts to become America's first non-white president.
Began political career as a community organiser in a big city (Chicago) before winning first election at local level. Married, with two young children.
Faced stiff opposition in Democratic primary against occupant of the White House during previous Democratic administration (first lady Hillary Clinton)
Rivals attack him as inexperienced after just four years in Congress, but triumphs through grassroots support, inspiring speeches and message of change.
Republican opponent is veteran moderate senator from a western state, unpopular with conservative base (John McCain of Arizona).

Matt Santos

Young, handsome and charismatic member of Congress, attempts to become America's first non-white president.
Began political career as a community organiser in a big city (Houston) before winning first election at local level. Married, with two young children.
Faced stiff opposition in Democratic primary against occupant of the White House during previous Democratic administration (vice president Bob Russell).
Rivals attack him as inexperienced after just six years in Congress, but triumphs through grassroots support, inspiring speeches and message of change.
Republican opponent was veteran moderate senator from a western state, unpopular with conservative base (Arnie Vinick of California).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/barackobama.uselections2008