Looking Back on The West Wing
Becca Rothfeld at WP writes about the old TV show The West Wing:
“In Bartlet’s America,” wrote the New York Times’s James Poniewozik in a thoughtful reappraisal last year, “voters reward you for fighting lies and fearmongering with facts and reason. Good intentions and great oratory win the day. Well-meaning people reach across the aisle and reason with their colleagues. Politics is an earnest battle of ideas, not a consuming war of all against all.”
But “The West Wing” is a vastly more cynical show than many of its admirers remember, which why it is also a more compelling work of art than many of its skeptics assume. It is not, in fact, a paean to good government and the dedication of White House bureaucrats, nor is it an homage to good-faith debate or a portrait of political rationality. Rather, it is an honest and often quietly wrenching exploration of the Machiavellian maneuvering that corrupts even the most well-meaning people in politics.
White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) and President Bartlet — spend most of the show fretting over PR disasters and comparatively little time worrying about matters of political substance. In the episode after Bartlet brushes CJ off, Sam tries to persuade an official from the Office of Management and Budget to recalibrate the poverty index — not because he believes the agency’s calculations are wrong, but because the new measure would deem an additional 4 million people impoverished, which would look bad for the administration. In another episode, Josh agrees to append a provision to a health care reform bill — not because he thinks it is a good idea (indeed, he has not researched the proposal) but because the addition will persuade a recalcitrant senator to sign on. When Bartlet’s staffers take a more active role in shaping legislation, it is almost always by negotiating with politicians on the president’s behalf and almost never by advocating for policies on their own merits.
