Life imitating art, campaign style?

Is Barack Obama channeling one of liberals' favorite presidents, albeit a fictional one?

The Democrat's stump speech today in Chillicothe, Ohio, had some echoes of the climactic speech given by President Andrew Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas, in the 1995 movie "The American President."

Here's what Obama said today, according to prepared remarks: "Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time; even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent’s campaign announced last week that they plan to “turn the page” on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead. Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” So in the last couple of days, we’ve seen a barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks, and I’m sure we’ll see much more over the next 25 days. We know what’s coming. We know what they’re going to do.

"But here’s the thing, Ohio. They can try to “turn the page” on the economy and deny the record of the last eight years. They can run misleading ads and pursue the politics of anything goes. But it’s not going to work. Not this time.

"I think that folks are looking for something different. It’s easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that’s not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious. The challenges are too great. The American people aren’t looking for someone who can divide this country – they’re looking for someone who will lead it. We’re in a serious crisis - now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics. Now, more than ever, it is time to bring change to Washington so that it works for the people of this country that we love."

Obama is referring to the intensified attacks by Republican rival John McCain over Obama's ties with William Ayers, who led a radical group that bombed government buildings during the early 1970s.

In his speech, the fictional President Shepherd, a widower, talks about the attacks from his Republican opponent, Senator Bob Rumson (played by Richard Dreyfuss) over his girlfriend Sydney Ellen Wade (played by Annette Bening) being at a protest where a flag was burned.

"America isn't easy," Douglas as Shepherd says. "America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.' You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

Then Douglas's character adds: "I've known Bob Rumson for years. And I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it!

"We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it."

A few bloggers have noted similarities between passages in some of Obama's previous speeches and the one that Aaron Sorkin wrote for Douglas in "The American President." But the parallels seem more noticeable in today's version

Sorkin, coincidentally, was featured in a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times last month where Sorkin imagined a conversation between Obama and another fictional president, Jed Bartlet, from "West Wing" that Sorkin created.