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I was thinking today about how much actor Dennis Haysbert’s role on the extremely popular Fox series ‘24′ played in helping Barack Obama get elected.

On the show, Haysbert played African-American President David Palmer.

In Googling this, I found out its obviously been discussed before, and that Haysbert has indeed noted that his role ‘paved the way’ for Obama, and that he was asked ‘every day’ on the street to actually run for office in real life.

Which is unsurprising, as President Palmer was young, good looking, honest, practical, liberal, fearless, effective, patriotic, intelligent, a great speaker and live presence. He could also kick some ass when need be. In later seasons he was contrasted against his conservative successor, who was an evil Bush/Nixon mashup.

In short, David Palmer was a fantasy president.
Who happened to be black.

Its no wonder that Insurance Company State Farm chose Haysbert for its spokesman - his character background exudes trust. This has only been reinforced in his role as an exceptionally adept special forces commander on the CBS show ‘The Unit’.

Although Barack Obama does not have the impressive physical presence of Palmer (I hope he never actually has to kill a terrorist with his bare hands), he otherwise plays to most of Palmer’s strengths.

Millions of Americans watched Palmer for a few seasons of ‘24′ - it seems unlikely that this mediated reality of having a model black president didn’t substantially help America turn that into reality.

Well done Mr. Haysbert.

Maybe Obama’s election will see a future return of President David Palmer to 24 - that would be great, because he was a cornerstone of the show’s appeal.

Update: As a side note, I just remembered that actress Geena Davis helmed the oval office about the same time in the ABC series ‘Commander In Chief’ , which was cancelled after one season. Had it lived on, perhaps we would be crediting Davis with Hillary Clinton’s election.

Nah.