Educating on Education, Part 4 - Kind of: What My Favorite Episode of The West Wing Has to Say About The Proxy Battles We Wage in Schools

 

Note: This article could just as easily appear in other series I have written –  it could fit in the Disruption Series, my arguments with extremists, even TV criticism. I am including it as part of this series for two reasons. The obvious one is that, as you’ll see, it deals directly with both education and the way both sides turn it into a war. The other is because Sorkin is far more upfront about it and makes the kind of arguments that you honestly think need to be listened to.

 

As I mentioned in a previous article every Thanksgiving my family and I rewatch the ‘Shibboleth’ episode of The West Wing.  In that article, I mentioned how it took me years to realize the deeper meaning behind one of the subtle arguments Sorkin was making.

The article in this series is about a point that the viewer picks up fairly immediately and has as much context today as it did almost a quarter of a century. It deals with the flashpoint of religion and education, but it makes it very clear that there are far more sides to this than the black and white that the talking points will tell you.

As the episode begins Josh tells C.J. that they are holding off announcing the recess appointments because they want to add one more name: Josephine McGarey, Leo’s sister. When C.J. asks Josh if this was about Leo, Josh says with slight glee: “This is about Toby picking a fight on school prayer.” “He’ll get one,” C.J. says. The rest of this story is fundamentally focused between Toby and Leo.

We first see Toby discussing in it the Oval Office with the President. It’s clear that Bartlet does not like the idea that much. Toby (Richard Schiff) tries to argue that it’s not patronage if she’s qualified and Josie is – she’s a respected educator, the former superintendent of schools in Atlanta and a significant Democrat. Bartlet reminds him the recess appointment is used because it assumes the Senate will have no problem with the nominee. “They will have a significant problem with this nominee.” Toby says this is about starting a debate on school prayer, but that’s not the only reason. Bartlet says he’s known her for over twenty years and ‘he thinks she ‘All About Eve’.

This reference will not make a lot of sense to those who get the majority of Sorkin’s references. For those who might not know the movie, Eve Harrington is an aspiring actress who becomes a star after worming her way into the life of several creative people and is willing to climb over innocent people to get there. Toby deflects by saying: “I wouldn’t cast her in a play” but he doesn’t realize the deeper meaning. He will soon.

Leo (John Spencer) knows the moment that Bartlet tells him she’s on the list. He asks if she called the President. When he tells him no, his reaction is: “I’m amazed.” Toby says she called him. “I’m less amazed.” Then he gets the real problem: “Don’t get on Toby’s band wagon. It’ll take you to a place we are not prepared to go.” Toby and Leo spar and Toby says he will take the meetings with Republican leadership who will tell him very quickly how dumb an idea this is.

In the second act,  Toby does meet with aides to Republican leadership. Toby sometimes can have a certain amount of arrogance and he goes into this meeting with the same level of it. He lectures the aides on how the recess appointment work, degrades them when they mention Josephine badly and dances around what the problem is with her. When they tell him you know what, he says: “I do, but I’d like to hear you say it.” When they say she’s anti-religion, he cheerfully tells them she’s the deacon at her church and teaches Sunday school. Finally they say: “she’s against prayer in school.”

Toby’s reaction is blasé: “ You know who else is against school prayer. The Court of Appeals. And your problem with her is when she was in superintendent she enforced the law.” When one of the aides points out that somewhere between fifty and sixty percent of the people think its wrong, Toby tells him: “Laws don’t work that way! We don’t ask for a show of hands!” (Remember a Democrat is saying this in 2000. How far we haven’t come.)

At the peak of his bluster he tells the aides that if they want to wage this fight, it will give them a second term: “But not because I’m right and you’re wrong – even though I am and you are – but because I’m just a little better at this than you.” Then one of the aide speaks up and tells him: “Not this time. This is a photograph of her.” When Toby asks what she’s doing, he says three words: “Enforcing the law.”

The third act is where all of this ends up playing out and it is the biggest reason this article is here and now in another series. Toby is trying to spin this for Leo saying that this is a photo of Josie breaking up several students praying. Leo goes into detail saying that: “It is a photo of her standing next to two cops, handcuffing two students who are kneeling for prayer, and one of the cops has his hand on his night stick.” Toby weakly says: “It’s not good.” Leo goes in for the kill: “One of the students is in his marching band uniform. One of the students is black. And you’re saying it’s not good? That’s a penetrating analysis from the White House communications director.”

Leo then tells his secretary to get his sister on the phone. When she leaves he said: “I begged you not to do this.” He laughs off the excuse Toby says that the post needed to be filled and Toby finally gets the core of why he did this: “It brings the problem front and center.” Exasperated Leo says: “Great! And what prize do we get for that?”

Leo’s statement is yet another example of the difference between trying to govern in a rational and civilized manner and how many extremists -  in this case, those on the left who feel very strongly about issues like this – think its better to argue for issues they think are relevant and lose badly on them then to try and have fights that aren’t winnable. I mentioned in my previous article on Shibboleth that Josie tells Leo she doesn’t shrink for a fight and Leo says she looks for them. As someone who has read to much by the left – and that includes so much about education  - they are doing this not to solve problems but to start fights.

Leo then tells Josie that she has to withdraw her name from consideration in order to make sure the President doesn’t look bad by having to do the same. Josie is angry about it and their argument gets to the core of what so many battles in society are waged -  and how it is seen by those who shout the loudest and those who have to govern.

Leo tells Josie about the picture and when she denies knowing, she says: “There were a lot of pictures.” Leo tells her this one is special. She knows it the handcuffs, but still tries to fight. Leo then tells her that a few years ago on a campaign strong through the south, he met a photographer who told him that he had Josie to thank for launching his career in photojournalism. Josie still pleas ignorance and then Leo shouts: “Look at the attribution on the photo! You called the press in!”

Now you could argue that all of this is just another story of posturing, except Sorkin gives Leo and Toby two speeches that make it very clear that they are not just looking at it from the perspective of politics. Leo says about the kids she is handcuffing: “These kids are remarkable in this day and age. These kids are phenomenal. Now there are laws and they need to be enforced. But we do not strut ever!”

Sorkin is saying as directly as he ever does (and he can be very blunt) that the proxy battles so many on both sides wage have an all-too human cost.  We never see Josephine  again on the show, but its far too easy to imagine a world where she uses this as a path to run for elected office, perhaps governor. She would use it to say that she might have a relative in the Bartlet White House but they wouldn’t hire her because she spoke the truth to power.  She already said she had the AFT and NEA lined up to fight for her for this appointment, I imagine she could have done the same even with this photo.  I could see so many leftist newspapers using photos like these as marketing strategies, saying she was standing up to the right on religion. That she was willing to throw teenagers in jail for it might give some pause, but I imagine they’d shrug it off by saying: :It’s in the South and these aren’t the good ones.” Considering that so much politics has become about ‘strutting’, they’d consider it an argument in her favor.

What makes this episode remarkable is that when Josie leaves Toby comes into Leo’s office and admits his error and that Josie was the wrong face for this. Then he tells Leo exactly why you want the problem front and center, that it’s not about separation of church and state, it’s not abstract. Leo asks what it is about and Toby says one of the most memorable few lines Sorkin’s ever written:

“It’s about the fourth grader who gets beat up because he sat out the voluntary prayer. It’s about a way of making kids different from other kids when they’re legally required to be there. The fourth-grader that’s the prize.”

Leo asks Toby: “What did they do you?” Toby doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. We know he’s Jewish and that this battle was one in a long line he’s had to fight his whole life. Leo acknowledged. “You’re right about that part. That part should be talked about more often.”

Those two lines of dialogue are why I have included this article in the education series. So many of the battles that are being fought in schools are essentially proxy battles that do not take children into consideration at all. The Republican aides see it that way, and it’s clear that Josie herself has done so. Leo is the White House Chief of Staff and he does have larger political considerations to consider, but when he tells Josie about the photo he makes it clear that he is very aware of the cost of these kinds of stunts. Similarly Toby may be using Josie in order to wage a political vendetta of his, but when he reveals that this isn’t just ‘his problem’ as Leo suggested at one point he cuts to the core of why this is something that needs to be put at the forefront of these battles.

I think that so many of the arguments that are being put forth about education today is posturing and proxy battles. Both sides are willing to arguing at the top of their lungs that this is for the good of the children and never listens to them at all. Leo points this out to Josie when he brings up the photo and I can’t help but think there’s a similar level of posturing when we see, saying, photos of school libraries with empty shelves or arguments about curriculum. I grant you these are bad things for the students but as  Toby puts it “they’re legally required to be there’ and many probably wouldn’t give a damn.

It's why I look at all of the arguments about the ‘threats students’ face from the religious right and the radical left as what it truly is: proxy battles with our children involved in fights they didn’t ask to be in, probably don’t care about and are fundamentally irrelevant to the issues involved. That’s what I’m going to get to when I finally deal with the issue that we are talking about a lot but never from the people of those who it affected the most.