Sunday Morning
I didn’t see it coming. It was Sunday afternoon, and after writing an essay, getting through a workout, and eating a Sunday-late breakfast with Jenn, I settled to watch “the rest” of the Sunday news shows. (OK, Sunday morning is where I surrender to complete political nerd-dom. I wrote my essay to the background of MSNBC’s “Weekend”; did my workout to ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” and the local NBC channel’s “The Spectrum”; ate breakfast to NBC’s “Meet the Press”; then back to MSNBC for “Inside with Jen Psaki”. I used to try to leaven that with a little bit of “Fox News Sunday”, but when Chris Wallace left, so did I).
After all of that talk, and thought, and workout, and food; you’d think that would be enough news and commentary. And it was; I moved to the family room with all the dogs. They crashed on the couch with Jenn; I hit my recliner. So I was dozing through the end of Jen Psaki, kind of half listening to her as I faded in and out. And then, I got blindsided.
Counterpoint to Reality
Jen Psaki’s last guests were Mary McCormack and Martin Sheen. If you don’t know their combined names, you may not get the rest of this essay (but please, carry on). Both played characters in the long-running political show The West Wing (1999-2006). McCormack played Kate Harper, Deputy National Security Advisor for the last three years of the series about the White House. Martin Sheen starred for seven years as President Josiah Bartlet.
The West Wing was about the Bartlet administration, from beginning to end. Bartlet was a “moderate” Democrat, and the Aaron Sorkin produced show quickly sucked in viewers with political interests from all parties. It had (has) a special place in American politics: an uplifting show at a time just after the real President was impeached for having a sexual relationship with a twenty-one year old intern. As an American and a Democrat, The West Wing helped me emotionally get through the election crisis of 2000 that resulted in the George W Bush Administration, and 9-11.
Art Imitates Life
In fact, it was right after 9-11 that I realized how important The West Wing was. How does a television show about the Presidency, talk about the ultimate national crisis? Instead of trying to reconstruct a White House under attack, or somehow dramatize the event; they chose to educate America on who attacked us and why. “Isaac and Ishmael” wasn’t in sequence with the series; it was a stand-alone episode written by Sorkin. It was the show, but more importantly it tried to teach a lesson, the same lesson President Bush taught when he spoke at the Islamic Center and quoted the Koran soon after the attack.
Psaki opened the segment of her show with a cut from the final season of The West Wing. President Bartlet, finishing his second term, is backstage at the Democratic Convention, waiting to endorse the new Democratic candidate for President, Congressman Matt Santos. Standing beside him is his former Chief of Staff and best friend, Leo McGarry, who accepted the role as Santos’s running mate. Bartlet is introduced to resounding applause and cheers, as the convention recognizes his accomplishments in office. There are chants of “Four More Years!!!”
Life Imitates Art
Sure, it relates directly to Joe Biden appearing at tonight’s Democratic Convention to endorse Kamala Harris. Democrats will shower Biden with “love”, for what he achieved, and also what he sacrificed for the Party, and the Country. I hadn’t really thought of that direct tie to The West Wing. And then, when the clip ended and Psaki, Sheen, and McCormack were sitting at the table, all three were shedding tears. Psaki because life was imitating art. Her President, Joe Biden (she was his Press Secretary), is in the “final season” of his “Bartlet” role.
Martin Sheen and Mary McCormack were crying for a different reason. This was the last scene in the show the Sheen and his friend John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry, were together. Spencer died of a massive heart attack soon after (another example of life imitating art, the McGarry character suffered a near-fatal heart in season six). The last few episodes of the show were written around his absence, and, in the show, he died of a second heart failure on election day. Sheen doesn’t often watch his own work – this, now eighteen years later, was the first time he saw the scene with them together.
A West Wing Moment
The West Wing gave “us Democrats” hope in the interminable stretch from the end of Clinton until the beginning of Barack Obama. It wasn’t long from the end of the series to the beginning of “Yes We Can” with the first African-American President. But it wasn’t just “us Democrats” watching the show. In the third season, Bartlet is running for re-election. After struggling to find a “rhythm” for the campaign, McGarry sums up the way to “right the ship”: “Let Bartlet be Bartlet”. Last week, Corey Lewandowski, an early Trump campaign manager from 2016, returned to help the floundering Trump organization. Lewandowski’s is known for his campaign “fix”; “Let Trump be Trump”.
The West Wing set an example of “hope” in the politics that a whole generation of political “folks”, Democrat and Republican, use as a frame of reference. It also became a counterpoint of derision: “Don’t expect Biden to leave the campaign and Harris to come in like a “West Wing” moment.” That was actually said on network TV.
Of course, that’s exactly what’s happening this week. The cast of the show aren’t the only ones with tears in their eyes – like their show, now two decades old; real life is giving us hope.
