Too Much Nick

McCain is Tigh, Palin is Roslin. OLD JOKE. But it’s spread through the sci-fi community because it’s so surprisingly accurate: It’s not just that they’re doppelgangers, it’s that McCain shares with Tigh a history of torture by the enemy that many of his constituents feel could have ruined him as a leader, though no one dares to openly suggest this. Palin, like Roslin, an unexpected leader brought to power out of mundanity, abuses her power and defends traditional religions convictions that make her a mockery while endearing her to other believers.

And in all this, no one mentions Adama. A Tigh/Roslin power axis doesn’t even make sense in science fiction without the tempering wisdom of Admiral Adama. He is the sure hand on the trigger that keeps Tigh from sacrificing humanity in order to avenge the dead. He is the only one strong enough to imprison Roslin for abusing her power. His son is a young version of himself, the one willing to treat the demonized Gaius Baltar as a person deserving rights despite his sins. Young Adama is only considered a possible politician after a stirring speech. He’s so idealistic that the lawyer who could make him president nearly shoots him just to spare humanity from a false hope.

If the parallel only applied to the Republicans, this story would be worthless. But even a fictional government facing an enemy of its own creation needed a leader who would not sacrifice his humanity for victory, who even reconsidered whether his inhuman enemy wasn’t in fact human. The Battlestar comparison reveals the necessity of a cool head like Obama’s and provides an image of how that leadership would play out.

Because America can’t have a triad like the Battlestar society, it must make a choice that even the war-torn fictional version of humanity never had to face: A hard line against the enemy and a tendency toward corruption and bad bets, or a compassion toward the fallen that many fear will put the citizenry in danger?