![]() Since its finale more than a decade ago, it has become an essential part of the liberal cultural ecosystem, its importance arguably on par with The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and the rap musical about the founding fathers people like for some reason. More than simply a fictional account of an idealized liberal presidency, then, The West Wing is an elaborate fantasia founded upon the shibboleths that sustain Beltway liberalism and the milieu that produced them.ĭuring its run from 1999 to 2006, The West Wing garnered immense popularity and attention, capturing three Golden Globe Awards and 26 Emmys and building a devout fanbase among Democratic partisans, Beltway acolytes, and people of the liberal-ish persuasion the world over. What we see throughout its seven seasons are Democrats governing as Democrats imagine they govern, with the Bartlet Administration standing in for liberalism as liberalism understands itself. ![]() Breaking with the cynicism or amoralism characteristic of many dramas about politics, it offers a vision of political institutions which is ultimately affirmative and approving. ![]() But The West Wing aspires to more than simply visual verisimilitude. Nearly the same, of course, might be said for other glossy political dramas such as Netflix’s House of Cards or Scandal. Every procedure and protocol, every piece of political brokerage-from State of the Union addresses to legislative tugs of war to Supreme Court appointments-is recreated with an aesthetic authenticity enabled by ample production values (a single episode reportedly cost almost $3 million to produce) and rendered with a dramatic flair that stylizes all the bureaucratic banality of modern governance. Set during the two terms of fictional Democratic President and Nobel Laureate in Economics Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Martin Sheen) the show depicts the inner workings of a sympathetic liberal administration grappling with the daily exigencies of governing. In the history of prestige TV, few dramas have had quite the cultural staying power of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing.
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