The West Wing Turns 25
President Biden meets The West Wing cast to celebrate the show's anniversary.
The West Wing was appointment television. As The New York Times writes:
More than anything, “The West Wing” was a romance. Sometimes the romance was literal, as with the long slow burn between Josh and his assistant and sparring partner, Donna…But it was also a love affair between passionate wonks and their work, a rom-com of good government.
It was a product of the Clintonian, late nineties, feel-good era. I loved The West Wing even if I knew that politics wasn’t always a good government morality play.
My earliest memories were the Ann Richards-Clayton Williams slugfest and the Clinton-Gingrich showdown-turned-shutdown. Politics was messy, and the actors were complex people with complex motives.
Writer James Poniewozik shares his more cautious take:
I was an early skeptic of “The West Wing.” I didn’t like its sermonizing or the way it stacked the deck in favor of its paragons of public service. I lamented its Emmy dominance, in its first four years, over HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
The Sopranos debuted the same year as The West Wing. It’s one of my favorite shows. The timing of their debuts is no coincidence. They offered competing worldviews at the end of the century: optimistic do-goodism vs. bloody realpolitik.
The late nineties were a magical time. The economy was booming. The internet—full of promise. The culture—a feast that included Britney Spears, Frasier, and Radiohead. It’s not surprising The West Wing emerged during this cultural climax.
There was trouble around the corner. The dot-com bust. 9/11. Iraq and Afghanistan.
In retrospect, The Sopranos presaged the time to come. The early aughts were darker, anxious, and less hopeful.
I started my career in Washington around then. My boss swore the world was like The Sopranos. Organizations have a leader (a "boss"), vice presidents (the "lieutenants"), and employees (the "underlings"). Competence mattered as it did in The West Wing. But loyalty mattered more.
No show fully reveals how Washington works. Many operatives will tell you DC is like Veep. Reflecting on his time in the real West Wing, former White House speechwriter Jeff Sheshol said: “Rarely is politics as purposely and successfully evil, and skillfully corrupt, as in House of Cards.” Scandal was an over-the-top soap opera, though its crazy plotlines seem less so now.
For politicos, The West Wing holds a special place in history and our hearts. The Obama era revived its liberal idealism, briefly, before other currents swept it away.
Few people in American political life can reach Aaron Sorkin’s rhetorical heights. Yet some writers and speakers still break through despite the barriers.