Depending on who you talk to, Aaron Sorkin based the character of Josh Lyman from The West Wing on then Clinton staffer, now Chief of Staff-elect, Rahm Emmanuel. I've been rewatching the first season of TWW over the past week, and I can see it. But that's only the start of the parallels between then and now.

In the pilot episode, everyone's convinced that Josh is going to get fired for an angry outburst. A few episodes later, he strong arms a rogue congressman into voting his way on an important crime bill. He's smart, he's tough, and he's mean when he needs to be.

And, of course, by the end of the show, he's mellowed considerably and become the Chief of Staff for the incoming president, who just happens to be a young, handsome, minority candidate, full of conviction, but with limited experience on the national stage.

But I'm getting ahead of myself!

What really interests me are these early episodes. When people think back on the show now, they mostly remember it for its idyllic, even romantic view of politics. The characters are smart and honest and dedicated in precisely the way that real politicians just aren't.

(So we think.)

And there's some truth to that. They are smart, and they're mostly honest, and they're staggeringly dedicated, but they're hardly perfect. There's a lot of arrogance, a lot of pettiness, and a LOT of compromise.

Half-way through the first season, the Bartlett administration is still looking for its first big win. An outgoing Supreme Court justice chides President Bartlett, "Yours was an insurgent's candidacy. Now look at you!"

And I wonder if we're looking at Obama's first term. He talked a lot about hope during the election. He talked about change. He talked a lot about sacrifice and coming together to face big challenges.

But his campaign wasn't about big sweeping changes, so much as it was about a rigorous commitment to playing it safe and straight down the middle. Don't rock the boat. Don't change horses midstream.

(And, under no circumstances, don't rock the boat by changing horse midstream.)

Maybe Barack says to himself, "Self, I've already won the presidency. I've already made history. Maybe I should just play it safe for four years." Or maybe he says, "There's no Red America. There's no Blue America. There's just a Big Fat Couch Potato America that wants it's tax cuts and it's football and it's double cheese burgers, and maybe I should just give them what they want."

For most of its run, the West Wing staffers distinguished themselves as good civil servants, but they weren't transcendent figures. Sam Seaborne could write a good speech, but that speech wasn't going to change the world. Bartlett could quote facts and figures about the number of children starving in America, but he never really did anything about it.

And it wasn't that they didn't try. It's just that being the President is hard. And being the President's staff is also hard. And it's not enough to want to be great.

There's a famous moment when Chief of Staff Leo McGarry gives President Bartlett an all-important piece of advice: "Let Bartlett be Bartlett." So the question of the day is...

"Can Obama be Obama?"

Or, to put it more starkly:

"Is Obama Obama?"

I certainly hope so.