Which President: Obama or Santos? Quiz

Answer: Obama

Barack Obama served as United States Senator for Illinois between January 2005 and November 2008, resigning his position upon being elected President. Before Obama, John Kennedy was the most recent Senator to be elevated to the Presidency. Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson were both former Senators but had a break in their careers before being elected to the highest office in the land.

The fictional Matthew Santos served three terms in the House of Representatives, representing Texas' 18th congressional district. A minor plot point during his primary campaign is made of Josh (Santos' campaign director) trying to get people to refer to him as "the Congressman" instead of just "Matt".

Answer: Obama

According to his official West Wing biography, Matthew Santos was born in Houston, Texas in the early 1960s. His stated age on the show is inconsistent.

On the other hand, Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961. Debates about whether his official birth records are part of an elaborate conspiracy will not be entered into!

Answer: Santos

Matthew Santos attended the United States Naval Academy before serving as a Marine Corps pilot. After leaving full-time military duty he had roles in local government, including as mayor of Houston.

Barack Obama's pre-politics career included roles as a community organiser, attorney and constitutional law professor.

Answer: Both

Barack Obama is the father of Malia and Sasha, who were ten and seven years old, respectively, when he became President.

Matthew Santos also has two children, Peter and Miranda, who like the Obama girls were in elementary school when their father was elected to the presidency.

Answer: Matthew Santos

"The West Wing" shows that Matthew Santos is fluent in both English and Spanish, being from a Hispanic Texan family. On the other hand, while President Obama is familiar with Bahasa Indonesian and Spanish, he has admitted that his skills fall short of fluency.

At a town hall meeting on the campaign trail in 2008 he went as far as to exclaim "I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!"

Answer: Neither

Matthew Santos appealed to his party's founding principles in an impassioned nominating convention speech in the concluding episode of the show's sixth season ("I am a member of the DEMOCRATIC Party"). While fictional Presidents are often not identified with a specific partisan group, the West Wing placed its characters in the context of the real political world.

In 1996 Barack Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for the Illinois State Senate, and was subsequently elected three times in a row before moving to the United States Senate.

Answer: Neither

In "The West Wing" Matthew Santos is Catholic. Religion features in some of the campaign-based storylines, most notably the episodes "In God We Trust" and "The Al Smith Dinner" in seasons 6 and 7, respectively. However, in "The West Wing" what is notable is not the historical rarity of Catholic presidential candidates; rather, that the Republican nominee (played by Alan Alda) does not practice any faith.

Barack Obama has spoken about his religious faith numerous times since entering public life, partly in response to persistent rumours that he is a Muslim, atheist, opponent of Christianity and various other claims. Having grown up in a family that did not attend any church regularly, he was baptised into the United Church of Christ denomination in his 20s, and later moved to attending services in the Southern Baptist denomination.

Answer: Santos

The final general election of "The West Wing" universe was, fittingly, a nail-biter. The outcome wasn't known until late in the counting process, with Nevada ultimately becoming the state to push Congressman Santos over the required 270 electoral college votes. However, Republican Senator Arnold Vinick received roughly one million more votes from the American people at large.

There was no such dramatic tension for Barack Obama, who scored a comfortable majority on both counts in the 2008 and 2012 races.

Answer: Both

When Congressman Santos first appeared on "The West Wing" he was pushing a bill known as "Patients' Bill of Rights". As a presidential candidate, affordable health care was a key part of his policy platform. A memorable scene showed clips of Santos refusing to engage in commentary on his political opponents in media interviews, instead hammering home "health care, health care, health care".

Similarly, Barack Obama focused on health care in the lead up to his election, proposing a comprehensive reform package that came to be colloquially known as "Obamacare".

Answer: Obama

Hilary Clinton's first attempt to secure the Democratic Party's nomination for President ran until June 2008, when she formally ended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy. Following Obama's election victory later that year he named Clinton as his choice for one of the most senior roles in Cabinet, the Secretary of State. Clinton held this office from January 2009 until February 2013.

Matthew Santos also chose a former rival to serve as his Secretary of State; however, in the universe of "The West Wing" this position was offered to (and accepted by) Arnold Vinick, the Republican presidential candidate who Santos had just defeated.