Which West Wing--fact or fantasy?

I found a cafe with wifi here in CT (Thank you "Brew") and couldn't resist blogging about a New York Times article that talks about the fictional West Wing and the current election we have going on, especially because David Axelrod (Obama's chief strategist) was contacted by one of the head writers for The West Wing in 2004 when they were developing the character of Matt Santos, a non-white, "minority" senator with a mixed-race family background who is going head to head against his Republican challenger, a senior senator from a Western state who is known for telling it like it is.

[click here for the article]


[That's Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda), Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), and Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) on the campaign trail]

For those of you who aren't West Wing fans, I can only tell you that the parallels are downright eerie. And I didn't even KNOW about the Phillies connection.

I only hope that our current election has as happy an ending as the fictional one (albeit without the tragedy of the V.P.--but they had to build that in since actor John Spencer did die in the middle of the series).