There has been chatter throughout the campaign about the television show West Wing and the similarities to the Obama campaign.   The Jimmy Smits character as Obama, for example.  And we all remember that Smits beat the Alan Alda character in that election.  Maureen Dowd even wrote a fictional account of a meeting between Barak Obama and the fictional President Jed Barlet. But the endless talk about Hillary Clinton as a possible Secretary of State brings to mind another fictional example.

Andrew Greeley wrote a mystery story The Bishop in the West Wing about an Irishman from Chicago elected President in a long-shot campaign.  The Bishop in the story is Greeley’s on-going character, Bishop Blackwood Ryan who comes to solve a mystery in the White House.  The interesting part is not that the fictional President, Jack McGurn, is from the South Side of Chicago but that his Secretary of State is Bill Clinton who is also the former President.  Father Greeley, who was recently injured, in a fall was a guest of the Clintons at the White House several times during the Clinton administration.  The book is dedicated to William J. Clinton.