Inauguration. White House. Supreme Court. Executive Orders. Despite having studied the politics and modern history of the US, I can’t hear any of these terms without thinking of The West Wing, a show which has become far more divorced from reality in the past few months than it seemed two decades ago when I first encountered it.
September 2024 marked the 25th anniversary of The West Wing first airing on US television. It had been a couple of years since my last rewatch, so I decided to mark the occasion with another. I was also lucky enough to have been given the book ‘What’s Next’ (written by West Wing actors Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack) for Christmas, which in turn led me to the West Wing Weekly Podcast, which has been the soundtrack to my commute for the past few weeks, and so I’m currently pretty thoroughly immersed in the world of President Bartlet’s White House and his improbably committed staffers.
It's interesting to look back now, a quarter of a century later, and wonder if the world really was a more hopeful place in 1999. The series began in the final year of the Clinton Administration and it’s no secret that Aaron Sorkin modelled his dedicated band of staffers on those who worked in the Clinton White House, with some of them even serving as consultants on the show. Unfortunately, at least on this side of the pond, Clinton’s legacy is somewhat dominated by his scandalous romp in the Oval Office, something it would be unimaginable for President Bartlet to have done.
It was partway through the second season that George W. Bush took office, and many have commented that the show served as wish-fulfilment during the Bush presidency. However, it could be argued that this was just as much the case during the waning Clinton years. Elected after 12 years of Republican rule, Clinton espoused a ‘Third Way’ of politics, pacifying the right wing of his own party and winning back the working classes who had been charmed by Reagan’s old-fashioned conservatism. Clinton courted business, signed up to spending cuts and abandoned unions. His record on LGBT rights might well have been called “legislative gay-bashing” by President Bartlet. His foreign policy was more a doctrine of indecision than Bartlet’s “doctrine of intervention when only humanitarian interests [are] at stake.” Clinton was a centrist – Bartlet was a liberal, and one who (mostly) put principles before politics to boot. Is it any wonder that the show became so popular in its first season?
The West Wing ended in 2006 on a hopeful note, with the election of Democrat Matt Santos as the first Hispanic POTUS, which would be eerily prescient in predicting the election two years later of Barack Obama. In many respects, The West Wing appeared more forward-thinking than much of US politics of today. In Season 3, Bartlet easily defeats plain-speaking candidate Governor Ritchie (clearly a stand-in for Bush), and the idea that someone like Ritchie could be elected was laughable. Fast-forward to November 2024, and the American public were busy electing someone far worse.
But America’s shift to the right is not in isolation – the far right is growing in influence all over the world. The AfD in Germany and Reform here in the UK are making disturbing gains in elections. This move towards the right stems, of course, from dissatisfaction. GCSE history students across the country have written countless times how the Great Depression contributed to rise of Nazism in the 1930s. For this generation, it is COVID-19 and its fallout that is the source of our discontent. In any case, watching The West Wing now seems more of a fantasy than ever: a world where even Republican politicians are decent, principled people.
Whilst it’s tempting to view The West Wing as a perfect liberal fantasy, it’s not without its flaws. Season 3, airing post-9/11, was rife with anti-Arab sentiment that is hard to stomach now. The level of reverence shown to the office of the President and the unironic declarations of the USA’s greatness – the idea that it can and should serve as saviour to the rest of the world – come across as somewhat hypocritical. Coming from such a self-deprecating, buttoned-up little island, it’s a little nauseating to watch these extreme bursts of patriotism and arrogance.
It’s also becoming more apparent to me on each rewatch just how much representation is lacking. Though The West Wing boasts two of the strongest female characters I’ve ever seen on screen in Press Secretary CJ Cregg and Dr Abbey Bartlet (with an honourable mention to the criminally-underused Joey Lucas), the treatment of other women leaves a lot to be desired. Feminism is often derided, and often by the women themselves. With the exception of Dulé Hill as Charlie Young, personal aide to the president, the main cast is exclusively white (and mostly male). And notwithstanding a passing Republican Congressman, no LGBTQ+ character shows up until the final season (and even then, it’s a minor character and not made explicit until very near the end). There are jokes that land awkwardly and lines (“these women”?) that just don’t sit right throughout. Part of this doubtless comes from the fact that Aaron Sorkin wrote virtually every episode of the first four seasons. Reading ‘What’s Next’ has given me insight into just how involved – and how protective – he was with the scripts. However gifted the writer, scripts written from the sole perspective of a straight white man must inevitably be lacking in representation.
Was The West Wing simply a product of its time? In July 1999, the NAACP President Kweisi Mfume threatened to organise a viewer boycott of major networks when it became apparent that none of the new comedies or dramas being launched in the autumn schedules would feature any actors of colour. Whilst Sorkin does try to address this in a meta way, with the hiring of Charlie as personal aide to the president, it’s not simply an issue of cosmetics, as Admiral Fitzwallace says. Progress has been made, but even now, it’s as much about the voices behind the camera as it is about those in front of it.
It’s been said that we are in a slingshot era, much like the USA was in during the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement – that to make great progress, we sometimes need to pull back, in order to shoot forward. Yet I can’t be alone in worrying that we are pulling so far back on the slingshot that the elastic may snap. It seems more unlikely now than ever that we could see a president like President Bartlet in the White House. Even Sorkin himself has admitted that writing such an idealistic and aspirational show would be challenging in the current political climate. And yet, should we not also have hope? If we could aspire to greatness then, can we not aspire again? Hope is what’s going to get us through this. Hope – and action. It's certainly not perfect, but if the legacy of The West Wing is simply to inspire us to do better, then maybe that is enough.
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