Life Imitates Art?

Well, maybe not exactly.

I was just thinking about "The West Wing" and the fictional presidential campaign that consumed most of the final two seasons of that program -- and its similarities to our current presidential campaign.

Devotees of the series already know how that campaign turned out -- while the first vote has yet to be cast in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Still, we can paint this one in fairly broad brushstrokes. We don't need to know how the story ends right now.

For starters, Rudy Giuliani may not be the only Republican candidate who is pro-choice, but he's really the only one who hasn't run away from that position. And he's been leading in most Republican polls for most of this year, although Christian conservatives have been looking elsewhere.

On "The West Wing," Alan Alda played a pro-choice Republican who won the nomination but struggled to get the support of Christian conservatives and even put one on his ticket to make his candidacy more palatable to Christian conservatives.

Now, on "The West Wing," Alda's character was from California. Giuliani, of course, is from the opposite coast, the former mayor of New York. But Giuliani's nomination would put a large Democratic state in play, much as Alda's character did.

On the Democratic side, it now appears that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will be nominated. If that happens, we will have the first woman or the first black at the top of a national ticket. On "The West Wing," the Democrats nominated the first Hispanic candidate -- played by Jimmy Smits.

The fly in the ointment looks like it could be Mike Huckabee, who is now leading in Iowa polls and has pulled into second place, behind Giuliani, in the latest national poll from CNN/Opinion Research Corporation.

Huckabee is a former Baptist minister. "The West Wing" had its Christian conservative making an unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination -- and then declining to be considered for the No. 2 spot. It's far from clear whether Huckabee would accept or reject the No. 2 spot if it is offered to him.

If the rest of the story follows the lead of "The West Wing," it will be a cliffhanger of an election. As divided as the country seems to be politically, it's not much of a stretch to predict that.

It could be a bumpy ride!