End of Term

It ain't easy, running things: Martin Sheen as U.S. President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing. AP Photo/Warner Brothers.

Few small-screen characters have enjoyed as grand an introduction as Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, the Democratic pipe dream president. “I am the Lord your God! Thou shalt worship no other god before me!” were Bartlet’s first words, thundered off-camera on the premiere episode. The dramatic effect suggested that the president might be supreme commander as well as the commander-in-chief. And with that, the star of The West Wing resolved a fight between staffers and irate moral majority leaders over the First Commandment. He banished the false prophets from his temple with the order: “Get your fat asses out of my White House.” 

As with so many battles waged on The West Wing, this antic fracas — which anticipated America’s growing culture war — was impeccably timed. The NBC series, which ends its seven-year-run on May 14, debuted in the fall of 1999, the year Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about an affair with a White House intern. At the same time, his Republican successor, evangelical Christian George W. Bush, was set to capture his party’s nomination for the 2000 presidential election.

Although Bartlet presumed to speak for God in his debut appearance, West Wing followers came to understand that the character was, in fact, a stand-in for John F. Kennedy. Like JFK, Martin Sheen’s Bartlet was a New England Irish Catholic with a great head of hair. Indeed, Sheen was readily identifiable as a Kennedy; he played younger brother Bobby in the 1974 mini-series The Missiles of October and narrated Oliver Stone’s JFK in 1991.

Liberals had been holding Kennedy seances for years, hoping to summon the white knight of Camelot. By 1999, however, America required a new and improved JFK. The very word “liberal” was considered a pejorative, and Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions” were a reminder of Kennedy’s reckless philandering. Jed Bartlet was Kennedy airbrushed. Sheen’s character was devoutly faithful to his wife, Abbey (Stockard Channing). He was also a charismatic Nobel Laureate in economics who broke into Latin when framing a moral argument. And he had a loyal shepherd in West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin. For the first season finale, Sorkin conjured a scenario in which a hail of assassin’s bullets (from a watchtower, just like in Dallas) somehow missed killing President Bartlet.

They like us, they really like us: Members of The West Wing's cast celebrate a win at the 2000 Emmy Awards. Photo Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

The allure of having a bulletproof, scandal-resistant Kennedy back in the Oval Office proved irresistible in the calamitous, Clinton-Bush transfer years. The West Wing was a top-10 show from 1999 to 2002, capturing 18 Emmy Awards, including four straight Best Dramatic Series wins. At its peak, just after Sept. 11, 2001, more than 17 million Americans and three million Canadians took refuge in the series.

The West Wing was more than a blue state special for nostalgic liberals, however. Many conservatives liked the series, too. In an age of cynicism, Sorkin and company made powerful institutions and public service seem noble. The series could also be curiously old-fashioned — for example, in its blandly virtuous portrayal of black characters like presidential assistant Charlie Young (Dulé Hill) and General Percy “Fitz” Fitzwallace (John Amos). Even Charlie’s much-discussed interracial romance with the president’s daughter betrayed a caution that was reminiscent of stodgy, though well-meaning, 1960s film meditations on race, like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Aside from Rob Lowe’s playboy deputy communications director Sam Seaborn, all the president’s men and women were a pretty sedate bunch. The glorious Allison Janney, who was so nimble on her feet as press secretary C.J. Cregg, would turn into Doris Day when a man entered her life.

Few lyrical romantics ever get to pilot a prime-time TV series, and Sorkin loved his characters and clever dialogue in equal measure. He was also an avowed fan of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. His enthusiasm manifested itself in The West Wing, where conversations were shaped into classic, four-frame cartoon gags. Once, deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) tried to cajole communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) into helping him finesse a political opponent:

Josh: “We’re gonna do good cop, bad cop.”

Toby: “No, we’re really not.”

Josh: “Why not?”

Toby: “'Cause this isn’t Hawaii Five-O. How ‘bout you be the good cop and I be the cop who doesn’t go to the meeting?”

In its first three seasons, The West Wing was, along with The Sopranos, the definitive TV drama of its era. Sorkin’s unique blend of hero worship and razor-sharp comedy, along with the work of a uniformly talented cast, made the series compulsively watchable. It was a pleasure to see Josh and Toby, or C.J. and Leo (the late John Spencer) perform one of the series’ signature “pedeconferences,” hurrying through the corridors of power while parsing legislation and dissecting political gambits on the fly. And where else on TV could you find articulate, brightly comic sound bites on topical issues such as immigration, the Middle East and abortion? The series was revolutionary in the way it offered up the American political process as television entertainment.

Though once the show of its time, times quickly change in television. Sorkin and Lowe left after four seasons. Series fortunes dwindled its second term in office, although the problem was never writing or performances. The recent election race between Democrat Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda, superb as a counterfeit nice guy) was well orchestrated and smartly played.

No, the show’s eroding fan base probably had more to do with the series’ inability to offer an engaging perspective on George W. Bush’s besieged wartime presidency. The drama that was once so gloriously timeless, infusing 1960s idealism into modern American politics, seemed merely outdated as the Bush-Cheney years dragged on. There was too just big a disconnect between Jed Bartlet’s struggle to keep America a bastion of liberal enlightenment and his real-life equivalent’s struggle to democratize the Arab world. Recent episodes attracted less than eight million U.S. viewers, fewer than half the show’s 2001 audience.

Still, The West Wing leaves behind a considerable legacy as it exits public office. There are the shows themselves, of course, available in perpetuity in season-long, DVD box sets. But the spirit of the series also lives on in a variety of openly liberal, late-night civics lessons. It is doubtful that Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher or The Colbert Report would have existed had it not been for the extraordinary success of The West Wing.

Stephen Cole writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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