The West Wing Failed Us

For a sure technology of Democrat, The West Wing is the way in which America needs to be run. From 1999 to 2006, over the course of seven seasons and 156 episodes, Aaron Sorkin’s political drama provided the idealized fantasy of a relaxed, regular, liberal presidential administration doing its finest to assist the American individuals amid a sea of adverse political calculations.

Twenty years after its debut, it’s not exhausting to see why The West Wing has maintained such a maintain on the American political consciousness. It gained two Peabodys, 26 Emmys, and a number of different accolades, and loved excessive scores throughout its first 4 seasons. It price $three million per episode to provide, feature-quality manufacturing values coating its A-list actors in cinematic lighting and filling their mouths with Vital Phrases about Democracy.

The West Wing was competence porn at its most interesting, a slick, stentorian blanket round which we may wrap ourselves and say, “if solely it was like this in actual life.” If solely we knew how good we had it. If the occasions of the final three years have taught us something, it’s that the dream of a Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (as performed by Martin Sheen) presidency was simply that: a dream. In reality, I daresay The West Wing completely failed to organize the nation for the realities of our trendy political system. At its worst, it might have even heralded them.

The American President

After the 2016 election, many disillusioned voters turned to The West Wing for a much-needed escape. Google Traits confirmed an enormous spike in searches for the present after each the election and Trump’s inauguration, and lots of a tweet has been made waxing nostalgic for the sunny, regular fantasy of the Bartlet presidency.

I get it, imagine me, I do. Daily within the Trump period is a race to the underside of the identical democratic norms The West Wing upheld, like the thought of politics as an altruistic enterprise or administration officers sternly working for the betterment of all with little thought to their very own private enrichment. The grim realities of political glad-handing, energy for energy’s sake, and self-enrichment hardly ever, if ever, reared its ugly head, and positively not among the many courageous, good heroes we adopted every week. In an age the place we will’t go 4 hours with out listening to concerning the new approach our president has embarrassed us on home, worldwide, and ethical phases, we want a ripcord. Paradoxically, The West Wing permits us to not fear about politics for a short while.

However that’s the insidious downside of wanting the world to be like The West Wing. It seems we do want to concentrate to politics each day. The value of freedom is everlasting vigilance in any case, and our complacency is what has led us to the atrocities at Residents United, Sandy Hook, the Charlottesville march, Donald Trump. We will’t depend on a Jed Bartlet by to come back alongside and play designated driver to our democracy. We have to concentrate and act, in no matter means we will muster.

“That’s my place. I simply haven’t discovered the right way to do it but.”

In fact, as a lot as Bartlet and The West Wing is chum within the water for extra left-leaning individuals, it succumbs to plenty of the center-left pondering that obtained us right here within the first place. For Bartlet and his staffers, no downside is just too large, no political divide too nice to bridge. Politics is hardball, but it surely isn’t imply; Democrats and Republicans sit down for scene after scene of impassioned, quick-witted barbs about fiscal duty or seeing to the wants of a forgotten Midwest base. Truthful play is the norm, and capitalism is an unequivocal, unquestioned good.

Take this trade from the first-season episode “Lies, Rattling Lies, and Statistics,” wherein Jed and David Huddleston’s Republican Senator Lobell discover an uneasy peace in a deal on marketing campaign finance reform:

Bartlet: We agree on nothing, Max.

Senator Lobell: Sure, sir.

Bartlet: Schooling, weapons, medication, college prayer, gays, protection spending, taxes – you identify it, we disagree.

Senator Lobell: You already know why?

Bartlet: As a result of I’m a lily-livered, bleeding-heart, liberal, egghead communist.

Senator Lobell: Sure, sir. And I’m a gun-toting, redneck son-of-a-bitch.

Bartlet: Sure, you might be.

Senator Lobell: We agree about that.

There’s actually a contingent of people that’d relatively see us come again to that point of political bipartisanship, the concept if we may simply sit down with our political opponents, we may discover some widespread floor.

However that’s a really 2000s mind-set, one dashed to bits by Trumpism and a complete on-line equipment designed to troll, confuse, and disorient anybody searching for easy, unassailable truths everybody can share. The left and proper reside in two totally different realities now with their very own units of info, and no quantity of Bartlet-ian pontificating could make us budge. It’d even make issues worse.

A part of the rise of this new, spicier breed of American neoconservatism stems from resentment in the direction of the so-called ‘elites,’ the upper-crust Ivy League political dynasties and so-called “Washington insiders” who’ve earned the ire of the working-class American. (Trump’s one among them, don’t get it twisted, however his crassness and braggadocio have allowed him to spin his model into a person of the individuals, albeit one who used to stay in a literal golden tower.)

What Sorkin and The West Wing didn’t depend on is that nobody like Jed Bartlet actually exists. Even when he did, we would not need him to be President.

Because the 2020 race heats up, Joe Biden sits comfortably within the lead (although much less and fewer so daily) for the Democratic nomination. We will assume that is due to his affiliation with the comparatively-sunny years of the Obama presidency, an period of cool-headed administrative certitude usually likened to the glory days of The West Wing. Hell, presidential candidate (and later President) Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) was, in accordance with government producer John Wells, “based mostly on Obama earlier than Obama was Obama.”

However on this age of ‘pretend information’ and political frustration, that’s not sufficient. His frequent gaffes and poorly-aged file usually put him nicely behind a few of his extra progressive working mates, and lots of are merely exhausted by the thought of a return to the political institution. In spite of everything, the key to Trump’s success was a promise to shake up the system, which he actually has (to oft-disastrous impact). The American public desperately craves a grownup within the room, to make sure, however settling for that alone looks like taking a step backward on this unprecedented (or as Trump himself would write, ‘unpresidented’) time in trendy politics.

The answer isn’t to carry again Bartlet. It’s to go even additional than he ever may. We don’t must get again to how issues had been, we merely can’t recork that individual bottle. As a substitute, we have now to do one thing that not even Bartlet may do in seven years of Sorkin-penned tv: make daring, demonstrative adjustments to the nation to enhance the livelihoods and dignity of all People.