TV presidents led way for Obama - no, really

President-elect Barack Obama stands on the shoulders of giants. No, not Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, silly, but David Palmer, Mackenzie Allen, Laura Roslin and Jed Bartlett.

Those are the fictional TV presidents who paved the way for Obama, making it seem not so unusual or threatening for a black man to serve as president. And no, really, I'm being semi-serious for a change.

There were no movies about a black baseball player before Jackie Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Hollywood was even more fearful of agitating white racists in the heartland than baseball was.

Yet Hollywood, being now far more liberal than the general populace (I think we can all agree on that), has been eager in recent years to advance the office far beyond the usual wishy-washy mainstream politicians we get (and perhaps even much of the time deserve). That is, when it hasn't been going far in the other direction, as in Gregory Itzin's "24" President Charles Logan, a creature so evil and duplicitous he made Nixon look like Gandhi.

Look, I'm not suggesting that Dennis Haysbert's earlier President David Palmer in "24" made it directly possible for Barack Obama to follow in his footsteps. But he did prove to be a very capable president, and that was after, like Obama, first appearing on the national stage as a senator. After President Palmer dealt successfully with terrorists - with the help of Jack Bauer, of course - why shouldn't Obama be capable of the same?

It's a pity that D.B. Woodside's Wayne Palmer didn't turn out to be nearly as decisive or effective as president, and who knows if that didn't raise some qualms amid the public as Obama ran for the office. "Gawd, all we need is another President Wayne Palmer!"

Perhaps Hillary Clinton encountered more resistance to her candidacy this spring because women presidents, although present in fictional TV series, generally haven't fared as well. Geena Davis' Mackenzie Allen in "Commander in Chief" was, not unlike our own real-life Sarah Palin, plucked from an unlikely office to serve as vice president for cynical symbolic reasons. When she became president and declared herself politically independent, she encountered opposition in the form of Donald Sutherland's inherently corrupt Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton. When "Mack" prevailed, it inevitably was by acting like a mom and shaming political opponents, here and abroad, into submission.

Ever so slightly better is Mary McDonnell's President Laura Roslin in "Battlestar Galactica." She too had leadership thrust upon her (funny how female presidents don't seem to get elected on their own merits, unlike even Wayne Palmer, not to mention real-life world leaders like Margaret Thatcher or Benazir Bhutto), and due to the thorny moral nature of the show has been less than ideal. Yet she's struggled almost, um, manfully with the task at hand, and has been an entirely believable and quite capable president, for all her occasional mistakes - not unlike the real things. If "Mack" and Roslin can do the job, why not Barack Obama - or Hillary Clinton, for that matter?

Yet, racial color entirely aside, Obama's best TV role model might have proved to be Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlett in "The West Wing." Aaron Sorkin's presidential drama was an idealized vision of a liberal administration, first produced in the waning days of the Clinton presidency. It was what Hollywood dreamed politics to be, only it ran into inevitable problems when the country ran right and elected George W. Bush president just a year later. In order to make it seem believable in that political environment, Sorkin had to create new difficulties for his president, only the moral complications never seemed to really take, not even when Bartlett ran for re-election without disclosing his multiple-sclerosis condition. Still, Bartlett behaved the way we hope our politicians behave, and no doubt made many voters in the heartland more comfortable with the notion of a liberal in the White House.

That said, Obama lives in a real world, and he's a political animal. He is going to have to do things out of expediency at various points. Let's hope when that happens voters and TV viewers don't hold him to an unrealistic standard, like that of a Jed Bartlett.

In the air

Remotely interesting: In the 10 o'clock hour last Tuesday night, when President-elect Barack Obama was being declared the winner and making his victory speech downtown in Grant Park, WLS Channel 7 led all Chicago stations with a 17.6 local Nielsen rating, good for almost 600,000 households, or a 25 percent share of the viewing audience. WMAQ Channel 5 was second at 11.7/17, and CNN, which was the station on the giant-screen TVs at the Obama rally, did a 10/14. MSNBC did a 4.9/7, ahead of WBBM Channel 2's 4.3/6 and Fox News Channel's 4/6. ... PBS' "Frontline" keeps playing politics with "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," about the Republican strategist, airing at 9 p.m. today on WTTW Channel 11.

Howie Long plays host to the Veterans Day special "Heroes at Home," about troops returned from Iraq, at 7 p.m. today on WPWR Channel 50. ... "The Sopranos" is out in a complete-series DVD set with a list price of $400 today.

End of the dial: Dean Richards, of WGN 720-AM and Channel 9, has been given this year's Award of Honor from the Illinois Theater Association.

WFMT 98.7-FM will tape today's performance of the Jerusalem Symphony at the Harris Theater downtown for broadcast at 8 p.m. Wednesday.