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On Monday, cast members from the TV show “The West Wing” appeared at the White House, and President Joe Biden posted a photo with the comment, “It’s always a pleasure to welcome President Bartlet and his staff to the White House.”
It was like watching two fake presidents at once, both of whom were awful for American politics, both the current one in rapid decline and the fictional one.
There are a lot of things in life that are fun and delicious and exciting but that aren’t actually that good, and Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant White House drama, “The West Wing,” was clearly one of them.
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In 1999, Sorkin and his incredibly talented cast tapped into a new way of looking at politics, one in which the two major parties no longer pursued common goals through differing approaches and policies.
Many of us are still stuck in Aaron Sorkin’s world of black and white politics, still the enemy of our own people.
Rather, the parties were first and foremost a team, one representing moral goodness and progress and almost always winning, the other regressive and even sometimes sinister in hues.
Fake Democratic President Jeb Bartlet and his tireless, courageous staff were undoubtedly the heroes of the show, and in some ways a sort of shadow presidency to the tumultuous eight years of George W. Bush that the show more or less contemporaneous with.
The way it was supposed to be was that good, decent people were in power, not people like Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, and miraculously, as was the case, crises and problems usually had solutions if only the Bartlet administration would do the right thing and stick to its moral, neoliberal worldview.
For the fictitious high priests of the Democratic Party, even lying may be justified.
In an incredibly prescient example, it turns out that Jeb Bartlet hid the fact that he has multiple sclerosis from the American public during his first election. Season 2 ends with him being asked if he’ll run again, despite having lied. Sound familiar?
Well, he ran again. And he won.
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Sure, he accepted congressional censure and received other minor punishments, but Sorkin’s clear message was that telling the truth wasn’t important, only that the good guys win and the bad guys lose.
The political realignments we have seen this century, particularly the leftward shift of the Democratic Party on social issues, are also the product of this quasi-religious outlook on political parties. New orthodoxies have emerged around same-sex marriage, transgender treatment for children, and abortion, which are now celebrated rather than preserved as safe, legal, and rare.
In 1997, two years before The West Wing premiered, Wag the Dog was released. Written by Hilary Henken and David Mamet, Sorkin’s longtime shadow operative. What’s striking about this behind-the-scenes election scandal cover-up starring Robert De Niro is that it’s never revealed which party the president he works for represents. It’s irrelevant.
In some ways, “Wag the Dog” is much more realistic in this respect than “The West Wing.” Political operatives are driven by a desire to win; it’s their pay. Their job is to gain power, not “do the right thing,” even if they believe the two are one and the same.
For many Americans today, politics is less about what works and more about identity.
Most voters I have met across the country would never dream of voting for the opposing party’s candidate; the very idea is emotionally shocking.
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“The West Wing” was in part a promotion for the seven-year run-up to Barack Obama’s presidency. The series ended with the election of the first non-white president. This personal and emotional relationship to politics and politicians has continued ever since, especially since the rise of Donald Trump.
But conversations with voters this year, unlike the past two presidential elections, show cracks appearing in the White House’s view of the political world.
Recently in Ohio, I met Nick, a knife maker in his 30s from Maine on his way to a convention in Indiana. He told me, “We agree on 85 percent of things, but instead of doing something about it, we focus on other things.” He’s not the only American I’ve met who has no desire for party affiliation to become a major, intimate part of his life.
The last presidential candidate Nick actually voted for was John McCain in 2008, just two years after The West Wing went off the air, but now he writes Willie Hugh Nelson’s name all the time.
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If either party can move away from the destructive “us vs. them” politics of the past 25 years, as typified by the White House, there will be voters who are re-engaged and who can win elections.
But for now, many of us are still stuck in the black-and-white world of Sorkin politics, still the enemy of our fellow man, still frustrated that our high morals and good intentions are making it all go wrong.
To read more articles by David Marcus click here
