For the last several years, The West Wing has been a disappointment. Perhaps it was the departure of Aaron Sorkin. Perhaps it was the same thing that happens to every successful television show that is on the air for several seasons — the writers just get tired. Perhaps its just that the shows liberal preachiness was getting tiresome. Whatever it was, the show declined in the ratings last year and was moved to Sunday night’s at 8pm, typically a place where television shows go to die.
The time change notwithstanding, this season has actually been interesting. The Bartlett Administration, which has been the focus of the show from the beginning, is winding down and they’re picking a new President in the West Wing universe. The race has come down to Texas Congressman Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, on the Democratic side and California Senator Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda on the Republican side. Among the more refreshing things this season has been the fact that the show is actually protraying a Republican, alibeit a “moderate” Republican, in a positive light.
Last night marked the beginning of the November sweeps period, and The West Wing marked it by televising a live debate episode between Santos and Vinick, with Forrest Sawyer sitting in as moderator. It was an interesting concept, but on the whole I think it fell flat. As Tom Shales pointed out in today’s Washington Post, The West Wing’s fake debate was about as boring as the real Presidential debates we were subjected to last year.
They discussed tax cuts for the rich, public vs. private education, health care, global warming, gun control, job training — say, when is this election supposedly taking place? 1994? 1984? 1974? At times the participants strayed from the safe and sane and into the arguably cuckoo, as when Vinick tried to make some point about the tax rates in Africa and later, addressing the hired studio audience, directed them to “clap if you’ve been to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”
When his health plan was criticized by Santos, Vinick said, as no candidate in his right mind would ever say, “To tell you the truth, I’m not crazy about my health care plan, either.”
There were no big bombshell moments of unexpected melodrama except for a brief disruption from a disgruntled crank in the crowd. He was hurriedly hustled out. Santos made reference to such relatively hot-button topics as corporate chicanery, but there was no follow-up either by the candidates or from Forrest Sawyer, the real-life journalist who capably played moderator. When the candidates called for hand microphones so they could be freed from their lecterns, Sawyer asked them, “Gentlemen, you’re not going out into the audience, are you?” That at least was funny.
In other words, it turned out to be just like a real Presidential debate even though the writers, through both Santos and Vinick, had promised a “real debate” in the style of Lincoln and Douglas.
I have gotten over the point where the sheer improbability of the Santos-Vinick race bothered me. In reality, the chances of a sitting Congressman getting his party’s nomination are pretty close to non-existant. The last President to come out of the House of Representatives was John Quincy Adams and the last sitting Congressman to even come close to getting a nomination was Richard Gephardt in 1984. And don’t get me started about the odds of an openly pro-choice Republican getting the GOP nomination. I was looking forward to last night’s episode because it promised to be something different; unfortunately it turned out to be more of the same.
