Bartlet for America, Again
Bartlet for America, Again
The West Wing's reunion special on HBO Max feels like a portal into a different universe.
Plenty of ink has already been spilled on The West Wing and its place in our brave new world. Aaron Sorkin’s much-awarded White House drama depicts a brand of politics that felt saccharine at the turn of the century. Watching West Wing right now, in our fourth year of the Trump administration, should come with a whiplash warning.
To Sorkin’s credit, he has star Bradley Whitford basically admit as much when he introduces HBO Max’s “A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote.” The cast and creative brain trust behind the longtime NBC show have reassembled to encourage voter participation in the upcoming election. It’s not quite clear who exactly the special is for though, despite that stated purpose.
The special is a minimalist stage production of the season three episode “Hartsfield’s Landing,” which sees the Bartlet White House jockeying for position in the lead-up to the New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, the president must keep China at bay while Taiwan tries to hold its first free elections. Both the A- and B-plots are about the importance of elections, which made it an ideal episode to recreate. It also happens to be one of my favorites.
And you know what? It’s good. The special is good, at least on a surface level. Pretty much the entire cast - even the actors in the bit parts - have returned, with Sterling K. Brown stepping in for the late John Spencer as Leo McGarry. It’s a cast full of heavyweight actors, and they perform accordingly. It’s not quite the same as the 2002 version of “Hartsfield’s Landing” - Martin Sheen, now 80, doesn’t quite have the same energy he once did - but it’s good. It's a treat to see these characters again, even if we’ve already seen this story play out before. It’s timely. Toby loudly encourages Bartlet to play up his intelligence given that the Republican nominee is likely to be the dim-witted Rob Ritchie, and we know that he’s really talking about Donald Trump.
The minimalist sets work, and series stalwart Thomas Schlamme’s direction is excellent. Everything’s fine! The Bartlet administration is here to make us feel better about the state of things. But again, even as I was smiling as I listened to Sheen spew niche chess history in that delightful New England accent, I couldn’t stop wondering why exactly I was watching what I was watching.
Encouraging voter turnout is a noble cause, especially in this year’s election. But are fans of The West Wing - particularly those who are big enough fans to figure out how HBO Max works and then decide to watch this special - not already motivated liberals? Who exactly are Elisabeth Moss and Dulé Hill trying to reach in their interlude aimed at younger voters? The children of people who watched The West Wing when it first came out?
I definitely fall into that latter category. I grew up watching the Bartlet administration play out on television. It’s what spurred my interest in politics. My initial plan for my life was that I was going to go to some Ivy League school and eventually wind up with Josh Lyman’s job. I wanted to manage a presidential campaign. Things didn’t go that way, thankfully. I grew up, my interests shifted (somewhat). I’m now more of a Toby Zeigler, a grumpy writer with a passion for pie and brown liquor. I’m disenchanted. My relationship with The West Wing has grown complicated. I’ve come to regard the show as peddling an almost comical parody of white liberalism, even while I also acknowledge that it was excellent, brilliantly-performed television.
But goodness if I didn’t get emotional when I pressed play on this damn thing.
Despite the years and years of real-life political skulduggery that have been beamed directly into my psyche, I still like this show. I’m old enough to know better, to know that Josh is actually a repugnant prick, that the notion of the good guys winning through moral righteousness and diligently Being Right is about as realistic as Santa Claus dropping a baby unicorn off under my Christmas tree in a few months’ time.
The show itself seems to recognize this in its own way. Sorkin departed after season four, and the fifth season introduces a new Republican Speaker of the House who immediately starts smacking the White House around by simply exercising his power. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) gains the Democratic nomination for the presidency in the show’s final seasons, unexpectedly comes out in favor of Medicare for All (this aired in 2005!) during a debate, saying that the plan put forth by his own campaign was lackluster and designed to pass a floor vote.
The HBO special is a reflection of the show’s early values, and it’s here we can determine who this is really for. President Bill Clinton is one of the people who shows up during the interludes to talk about what’s at stake this November and why you, the viewer, should vote. He talks about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and his own policies that expanded voter registration.
He doesn’t mention the Biden crime bill he signed into law, which is responsible for disenfranchising countless people and sped the march towards mass incarceration. He doesn’t mention his other harmful policies, nor does he mention how he took a potshot at Kwame Ture while delivering a eulogy for John Lewis. Clinton is emblematic of a brand of liberalism that is better left far, far in the past, yet here he serves as a comforting, familiar face for the viewer. Who exactly is Clintonism for these days? Who exactly looks at Bill Clinton and wishes for more?
I would guess that it’s not the people who aren’t already motivated to vote. The HBO special feels more like a rallying of the troops than a recruitment effort. It’s a portal to a bygone era, chicken soup for the liberal soul. Its purpose is more to make Hamilton-loving (yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda shows up), Bartlet for America bumper sticker-having folks feel better than it is to get out the vote, even if it doesn’t quite realize that.
Whitford, who didn’t understand that his famous “I would have voted for Obama for a third time if I could” line in Get Out was not meant to be said in earnest, states in the opening monologue that if they get even one person to register and cast a ballot, they’ve done their job. And odds are that yes, at least one person, somewhere, will vote because of this special.
I’ve watched this thing twice now. The first viewing made me smile. The second confounded me. I can’t quite square the Sorkinese with the real world. Frankly, neither can Sorkin.
He’s still clinging to this notion of People Doing The Right Thing While The Music Swells. It’s an astounding feat for the man who also wrote The Social Network, which may very well be the defining film of our early 21st century technocratic dystopia.
The existence of this special is a nice little trinket, a probably harmless little bit of nostalgia catnip for suburban liberals who are really into their monthly wine club, and for their kids like me. It’s nice to have some aspirations about what government should be. Samuel L. Jackson quotes Toby from a different episode in an interlude, saying that government should be a place where people come together, and nobody gets left behind. It’s a quote that can seem pollyanna-ish, but I like it. Government should be about helping people, about making sure everyone is taken care of and protected. We should be saying yes to people far more than we should be saying no.
I dunno. Sometimes I still think about getting into politics. I think about writing speeches, directing messaging, talking about ideals and how best to turn those ideals into policy.
Then I remember that life probably isn’t like The West Wing, even if there are a few people out there who seem to be doing the right thing and approach governance with the goal of changing the system for the better. I remember that things aren’t quite the way that I hoped they would be when I was growing up.
I ask what’s next.
Images via HBO