![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer...should, I think, have been the subtitle of The West Wing, though possibly not revealed till the series had finished.
I've been re-reading the pitifully small number of scripts that have been published, and thinking about what I know happened after Aaron Sorkin left the show at the end of season four. When it started out, around 1998 or thereabouts, the premise was, I believe, something along the lines of "what would happen if a man became President of America who was not only good and decent but also intelligent, knowledgeable, and strong-willed enough to be his own man in the job; an ideal leader, in other words?" And I watched the first two seasons in spellbound fascination, seeing in flashback how Leo McGarry, a man whose past rendered him unfit for the office himself, found such a man and worked tirelessly to get him elected. I was waiting to see how Bartlet's America would inevitably diverge from the real world, where such things don't happen.
And then 9/11 happened. Sorkin talks in his introduction about how he felt at the time, that it was somehow disrespectful to compare his fictional White House with the real one in which the President and his staff were fighting real battles against a real and deadly threat. Of course we now know they weren't; it's a matter of established fact that they received warning of the attack well in advance and chose to do nothing to prevent it, and it's also well known who finally took effective action against the instigator of the atrocity. At best--at BEST--the "heroes" Sorkin lauds were plotting how best to use this incident to cement their President's wobbly claim to the position, and to justify a costly war against a completely unrelated former ally who had become inconvenient to their commercial interests. But it's easy to see how even he could have been taken in, in the shock and horror of the tragedy.
And after that it's very noticeable that Bartlet's presidency hews much more closely to the line taken by reality. The good guys achieve less, the bad guys gain more power, there's a governmental shutdown which foreshadows the one that actually happened quite recently, and Bartlet actually has to step down for a time when his daughter is kidnapped. In the end, the message is clear: yes, you can theoretically put an ideal leader into the most powerful political position in the Western world, and it won't make one atom of difference. The forces arrayed against anyone who would try to change the world for the better are just too powerful for anyone to prevail against them without sacrificing those very ideal qualities that could further such a change. And perhaps this is what Barack Obama, a man who seems to possess at least some of those qualities, has known all along, and perhaps that's why his first term has disappointed so many people, as the fictional Leo must have been disappointed in the outcome of his grand experiment.
And now I've finally got that out from between my teeth, I'm going to bed.
I've been re-reading the pitifully small number of scripts that have been published, and thinking about what I know happened after Aaron Sorkin left the show at the end of season four. When it started out, around 1998 or thereabouts, the premise was, I believe, something along the lines of "what would happen if a man became President of America who was not only good and decent but also intelligent, knowledgeable, and strong-willed enough to be his own man in the job; an ideal leader, in other words?" And I watched the first two seasons in spellbound fascination, seeing in flashback how Leo McGarry, a man whose past rendered him unfit for the office himself, found such a man and worked tirelessly to get him elected. I was waiting to see how Bartlet's America would inevitably diverge from the real world, where such things don't happen.
And then 9/11 happened. Sorkin talks in his introduction about how he felt at the time, that it was somehow disrespectful to compare his fictional White House with the real one in which the President and his staff were fighting real battles against a real and deadly threat. Of course we now know they weren't; it's a matter of established fact that they received warning of the attack well in advance and chose to do nothing to prevent it, and it's also well known who finally took effective action against the instigator of the atrocity. At best--at BEST--the "heroes" Sorkin lauds were plotting how best to use this incident to cement their President's wobbly claim to the position, and to justify a costly war against a completely unrelated former ally who had become inconvenient to their commercial interests. But it's easy to see how even he could have been taken in, in the shock and horror of the tragedy.
And after that it's very noticeable that Bartlet's presidency hews much more closely to the line taken by reality. The good guys achieve less, the bad guys gain more power, there's a governmental shutdown which foreshadows the one that actually happened quite recently, and Bartlet actually has to step down for a time when his daughter is kidnapped. In the end, the message is clear: yes, you can theoretically put an ideal leader into the most powerful political position in the Western world, and it won't make one atom of difference. The forces arrayed against anyone who would try to change the world for the better are just too powerful for anyone to prevail against them without sacrificing those very ideal qualities that could further such a change. And perhaps this is what Barack Obama, a man who seems to possess at least some of those qualities, has known all along, and perhaps that's why his first term has disappointed so many people, as the fictional Leo must have been disappointed in the outcome of his grand experiment.
And now I've finally got that out from between my teeth, I'm going to bed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 06:31 pm (UTC)1) That if they took the series too far away from the 'real world' they would move into science-fiction and also lose contact with potential stories for future episodes.
2) That the American Constitution really is supposed to be that confining and frustrating. They think it's a feature not a bug, poor fools.
That said there was a lot of needless miserabilism in the series. The way Toby was given a plot where he betrayed his loyalty to the President for no adequately explained reason was the second worst example but for my money the worst was the one where they discovered that a government minister in the fictional equivalent of Saudi Arabia was leading a faction of Islamist terrorists and all they could think of to do with it was have him assassinated. Again the reasons why they absolutely had to do it were not convincing: I think they boiled down to 'it will make the President feel better'. Keeping him alive and playing him would have been far more effective: as long as your enemy is alive you know who and where he is. Kill him and another will take his place.
Oh and the government shutdown wasn't prescience: there actually was one under the appalling Newt Gingrich's tenure as Speaker of the House.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 09:02 pm (UTC)I think the reasons may have boiled down to "it will make the real President feel better." But that's pure speculation.