...Would the Santos strategy work in the real-world?
The campaign to replace President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) marches on. The show has used elements of the past Democratic Primaries in order to portray the campaign of Texas Democrat Matt Santos & the rest of the Democratic contenders. The main theme of the show's Presidential campaign has been a struggle between being right, & winning. Would the public respond to a candidate that spoke "real" to them & delivered hard truths, or would they rather have the poll tested candidate that tells them what they want to hear? Last night saw the struggle come to a head.
Spoilers After The Jump For Those That Haven't Seen The Episode
- The turning point for the episode comes when Santos is looking into the abyss. With bad poll numbers & no money, he refuses to run an attack ad on the current (Bob Russel) & former VP (John Hoynes) for locking him & the rest of the field of Democrats out of Debates. Instead, he uses the last of the campaign's money on 60 seconds of prime-time coverage to sit live in front of the WMUR cameras & tells the voters that he wants to solve issues, & he won't attack anyone in an ad without the words coming out of his mouth. I would guess that this is based on John Edwards' "sunshine" campaign during last year's primary. One wonders whether something like this would work in the "real-world". We just went through a Presidential Campaign with Swift-Boat Attacks.
- The attack ads run by the Russel (Gary Cole) & Hoynes (Tim Matheson) campaigns seem to be based on the war between the Dean & Gephardt campaigns in Iowa. With the mutual annihilation, Kerry & Edwards was able to move to the top in Iowa & never look back.
- If you look at the 3 major candidates to replace Bartlet on the Democratic side, they each represent a different political philosophy. Santos is the idealist who says to hell with the way things are always done, Russel is the poll driven pragmatist candidate who talks a lot without saying anything, and Hoynes is the Machiavelian realist candidate who is trying to scheme his way to the nomination.
- I would guess that the 2 guys in the chicken suits are based on 1992. George Herbert Walker Bush didn't want to debate Clinton. Democrats then sent a guy in a chicken suit to Bush events, with a sign that said "Chicken George Won't Debate". If you watch THE WAR ROOM, you can see it in action. It's not as good as Donna's little scream fest last night though.
- The unrequited love of Josh & Donna seemed to get more complicated last night. It may have went to a triangle & possibly a rectangle. The reappearance of Josh's former girlfriend Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker), & Will Bailey's interest in having dinner with Donna seems to be setting the stage for something in this tangled web.
- Speaking of Amy Gardner....This may have been the writers critique of Consultants who work for everyone & no one. Amy belittles all of the candidates calling them the "7 Dwarfs" & publicly saying that they're not any match to any of the Republicans. Amy's main theme that Democrats need "Strength" is similar to President Clinton's warning that voters will vote for "...strong & wrong over weak & right".