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So I’m on a five hour flight from LA to Boston, and I’m not really thrilled about the entertainment options. Lots of bad movies, music choices that don’t really thrill me, and a batch of TV series that remind me of why they were cancelled long ago. And then a sort of old friend pops up among my TV options: The West Wing. I recall watching it Wednesday evenings on a fairly regular basis, but I also recall that I wasn’t a devotee, and that when I missed an episode or two now and then, I never felt that I had foregone an opportunity to be entertained, enthralled, or informed.
But 1) it didn’t seem as if I had a great many attractive alternatives, 2) I had no idea whether I would feel that it had aged well, and 3) I was really curious to see how I’d feel about it in the context of the current goings-on in the West Wing.
Well, I have now watched two episodes—actually the first two episodes that were aired when it first appeared in 1999—and I am absolutely totally, and completely blown away. There on my screen were a series of characters, not just Martin Sheen’s POTUS, Jed Bartlet, but a whole staff of people who were intelligent, informed, educated, articulate, experienced, qualified, thoughtful, caring, organized, experienced, rational, and empathic. They were running the country for the sake of the country, for the sake of democracy. They were smart and attentive to the facts. The President and those around him acted on principle—think of it, principle–not whim or self-interest.
One-hundred-and-eighty-degrees from the situation in the current White House. President Bartlet is a man with experience and qualifications. Not only does he have a PhD, but he has won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He has served in Congress and as Governor of New Hampshire. He is articulate, cool-under-fire, tough as nails when he has to be, but quite tender at moments. He cares about people and he cares intensely about doing the right thing. He is respectful of anyone with intelligence around him, friend or foe, and he is equally impatient with fools, whether on his side of the aisle or the other. He’s a man to be respected and trusted, someone who is worthy of the public trust, worthy of the Office.
Okay, I know it’s just a TV show. I know that the Bartlett character was fashioned in many ways after JFK and Bill Clinton (both of whom were hardly beyond reproach in some of their personal and professional dealings), and I know this was fiction, not reality. But there are so many lessons to be learned from it.
I came away from watching these two episodes with such opposing emotions—terrible sadness at the egotist-fool who has been cast in this version of the West Wing, and tremendous hopefulness that maybe once a house falls out of the clouds on the buffoon-in-chief, leaving nothing but a set of ruby red slippers and a MAGA hat behind, there might be real leaders in charge, people who actually give a damn about everyone in the country—you know, sort of like those fictional people in that show called The West Wing.
The West Wing may not be your cup of tea. It may not turn you on, as it has me. But having watched only two episodes on my plane ride, and seeing that I am approaching LAX and won’t be able to watch a third episode while I’m still airborne, I’m going to find some way of streaming all seven seasons of the show, all 154 episodes.
It was sort of by accident that I re-connected with this show. But for me, watching Jed Bartlet in the era of Donald Trump was a true eye opener. The one is a sad reality. The other a reminder of what government might actually be.
Well put, Ed.