Off-topic, but what would be Palpatine platform?
I love that Luceno pretty much made him a liberal: wanted open borders for Naboo, played both for and against corporate interests, appealed to lower classes while benefitting to higher classes. Opposed his CHUD trad dad and his friend.
I think Padme is supposed to be the lefty/progressive politician. Palpatine allied with her, manipulated her and used her when his previous puppets got too broken or unruly.
He acts like an establishment Democrat.
Now then, Anakin is a fucking CHUD and Palps also managed to appeal to him.
It's a great question but my personal answer might be a little boring. I don't believe you can do an easy mapping from Palpatine to a modern Western democracy. The biggest reason being one that
@MTN Dew Rat immediately gravitated to which is the modern association between Social Conservatism and the economic Right. These are not intrinsically associated things but have become so, arguably have been
made so, for particular reasons in the real world. Basically Socially Conservative and Economically Left is such a dynamite combination in terms of popularity that most of the Western powers and their academic proxies have spent the last seven decades trying to eliminate it as a thing, if not downright make it illegal where possible (Germany).
Much of Progressivism is a tool to undermine nationalism and populism and prevent exactly what I just talked about. But Palpatine utilises popular opinion against the establishment, discrediting the Jedi and the Republic government, so he doesn't want tools that undermine populism. So he doesn't map onto Progressives or the modern Left. Nor does he map onto modern Right of economic liberalism or capitalism. He brings the banking clans under his direct control - there's even a mini-arc in TCW covering this - and the trade federation ends up as a puppet shell by the end of his rule.
I'd say he is
primarily a fascist but having dropped some of the more populist elements of fascism - socialised healthcare, etc. Unless that exists but off-screen. He's squeezing many systems pretty tightly to fund his military and the Death Star. By the end, he's pretty much become pure autocracy-bureaucracy.
But sorry, the question was what platform would he run on before he got that far. He seems to manage the spectacular trick of both being pro-war early on, with endless pushing for more loans to fund the military, restrictions on dialogue with the enemy (Padme literally has to smuggle herself to a Separatist world to negotiate with them), etc. and then become a critic of the war's excesses by the end. He does this in large part by arranging for the Jedi to be the public face of the war and have people blame them for starting it - which they did with their attack on Geonosha and having so many of his actions carried out by proxies. It's not him that proposes lifting financial restrictions in order to fund more clone troopers. He has a proxy do it.
I think the platform question can be a bit misleadling. It suggests he needs widespread popular support to get elected which he doesn't. He was the senator for Naboo which he has more than enough power and influence to secure his position there. He doesn't need to get elected like a US president. All he needs is the votes of the other senators which he secures with much backroom dealing and manipulation. Supreme Chancellor isn't a publically voted on office. It's like Stalin becoming General Secretary.
Ultimately I think his platform such as it is, is the discrediting of democracy. He convinces the public that democracy and bureaucracy have failed so badly that they'll cheer for someone who promises to take it all in hand and clear out the corruption and inefficiency and end the chaos. That's his platform, really: Order and peace. I don't think the modern American electorate can really relate to that as a platform. They haven't faced war in their country for a long time. But it's a message that would resonate strongly with the people of the Republic.
