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The Fantastic Politics of ‘The West Wing,’ 15 Years Later (Blake Rutherford On Politics)

6 min read

(Editor’s Note: This is an opinion column.)

Really good television shows about politics are elusive, and that’s too bad.

It’s premiere week for the new fall shows, and on Sunday “Madam Secretary,” the latest in a long line of attempts to bring compelling political drama into our living rooms, debuted. It stars Tea Leoni as Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst plucked from private life on a horse farm to assume the role of Secretary of State. The first episode was an exercise in exposition; a simplistic and predictable portrayal of something that should be quite interesting. 

But the big the drawback of “Madam Secretary” is that it is awfully safe for television these days. The two most popular political dramas on air, “House of Cards,” a deliciously devious inside-the-beltway program on Netflix, and “Scandal,” a provocative tale of a Washington D.C. “fixer,” have little to do with the pragmatic inter-workings of government. Rather, what matters most about them has more to do with what makes for compelling television: sex, devilment and preposterous plot scenarios. But both shows are immensely creative, binge-worthy even, despite their absurdity.

Still, each year, as new “political” shows attempt to capture our creative imagination, I miss “The West Wing,” Aaron Sorkin’s indelible White House drama that celebrated its 15th anniversary on Monday. It was then – and remains – the most compelling dramatic portrayal of the American political system on television. It ran for 154 episodes and two specials, a real feat considering that 65 percent of all new shows are cancelled during their first season.

“The West Wing,” despite some pointed criticism from conservatives, did almost everything right. At its best, it made complex political concepts, things that would probably put you to sleep if you were watching them on C-SPAN, come to life. Can you think of a television show that made seeking funding for a manned space mission to Mars so compelling? How about cartography? Or the confirmation of the Fed Chairman

And it displayed a rare ability to explore such issues with real depth, which often eludes our real-life political discourse. Can you imagine a discussion of taxation or child poverty, just two of many policy perspectives “The West Wing” embraced substantially, taking on such clarity and candor today? The show believed that our challenges and the people tasked with solving them were serious.

It was not a feeling one could have had when watching, for example, “Political Animals,” a salacious, caricatural mini-series from 2012 that suffered from too much dramatic flair (“Baby, I’m the meat in the Big Mac” was actually a line in the show). Before that, there was the dull “Commander in Chief,” which premiered 9 years ago and aired only 18 episodes before it was cancelled. “K Street,” a fictional Washington D.C. drama from Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderberg, fared worse. It barely made it a season before getting the axe. Not even the uproarious political satire “Veep,” which recently completed its third season on HBO, is intended to achieve anything beyond laughs.  

In fact, you have to dig deep into the television archives, to 1988, to a find a political series that rivals “West Wing.” That year, Robert Altman, the influential director of “MASH,” “Nashville,” and “The Player,” teamed with “Doonesbury” cartoonist Gary Trudeau to create “Tanner 88,” a brilliant political mockumentary that combined fictional characters with relevant political players from that time. It aired in the months leading to the presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Arguably, there was no enigmatic presentation of the presidential election process on television since — until seasons 6 and 7 of “The West Wing.”

A Reflection of Political Attitudes

Admittedly, it’s difficult to reflect on the important anniversary of Sorkin’s work and not consider it for its seriousness and timeliness. After all, if 14 years of Obama and Bush have succeeded at one thing, it is a dramatic uptick in cynicism that permeates our political discourse. 

Today, for example, there’s widespread voter disapproval of the president and Congress. The sour rhetoric between both political parties has eroded matters to the point that 69 percent of Americans don’t want most members of Congress re-elected. An additional 36 percent don’t want their member re-elected. That’s the highest level of disapproval in 20 years. Interest in voting among 18-to-29-year-olds is shrinking; less than 30 percent said they would “definitely be voting” in the midterm elections.  

The dourness of the current climate speaks volumes as we near the midway point of President Barack Obama’s final term in office. It seems like such a long time ago that we were talking about “hope and change,” sentiments we rarely speak of anymore. Locally, the major races, notably those for U.S. Senate and governor, are partisan and incessantly negative. Even the gubernatorial debate last Friday between Mike Ross and Asa Hutchinson quickly devolved into a back-and-forth over who was worse rather than a substantive statement about the things we must improve (universal pre-K notwithstanding, I suppose).

Today, it’s admirable that “The West Wing” was able to remain unabashedly quixotic and comfortable in the notion that government can be an instrument of good. But it also seems fantastic, particularly when you consider attitudes driving some of the decision making in the Arkansas legislature.

Consider, for example, the motivation behind Issue No. 1, the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall that would grant the General Assembly the power to approve rule changes at state agencies. It would substantially alter the balance of power between two important but separate branches of government, a balance that works well today unless you have a deep mistrust in the role and responsibility of the executive, as it appears the proponents of this measure do. 

Such mistrust was also apparent in the demagogic statements by certain legislators that Pulaski County Judge Chris Piazza be recalled after ruling that Arkansas’s same-sex marriage ban was invalid on constitutional grounds. And if those things are not bothersome and dispiriting enough, state Sen. Jimmy Hickey’s enigmatic and punitive idea to impose financial penalties on state agency directors who violate state statutes is sure to appear during the 2015 session.   

Has it really come to this?

It’s not the purpose of television to solve our problems; it can, too frequently, be corrosive and a waste of time. 

But at its best, television can be, as Steve Jobs once said, “magnificent.” And in that way, it has the capacity to demonstrate a certain vision of America, one that is interesting, serious and enlightening. 

Perhaps that’s the enduring virtue of “The West Wing”: it embodies an idea of productive government that transcends the present. It may be a very long time before another show so capable comes along.

(Blake Rutherford is vice president of The McLarty Companies and previously was chief of staff to the Arkansas attorney general. You can follow him on Twitter at BlakeRutherford. His opinion column appears every other Wednesday in the weekly Government & Politics e-newsletter. You can subscribe for free here.)

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