Season 2 of The
West Wing demonstrated no sign of the so-called sophomore slump. The
ratings throughout the season were higher then they’d been in Season 1, no
doubt helped by the nine Emmys the series had won that September. The series averaged between 20 and 25 million
episodes a week, a new critical and ratings hit just at the time NBC – after Seinfeld’s departure and the
gradual erosion of ER’s overall ratings – needed it most.
The quality of
the episodes were up to the already high standard that Sorkin and his cast had
hit in the first season beginning and ending with two episodes considered among
the greatest television history. (Two Cathedrals remains ranked one of the greatest
episodes in TV history by TV guide nearly a quarter of a century after it
aired.) While there was the occasional creative slump, the series pursued some
of its greatest storylines that led some of the greatest moments in television
history, all the while mixing the comedy and drama blend that Sorkin had
perfected in Season 1.
As a result
during Season 2 the show spent most of the year winning awards at a rate it
hadn’t managed even in Season 1. They were nominated for five Golden Globes in
2001 and took Best Drama and Best Actor in a Drama. They would win their second
consecutive Peabody Award and win an award at every major guild that year, from
the Directors Guild to the Producers Guild and a clean sweep at the SAG Awards
for Drama. It climaxed with eighteen Emmy nominations that summer and another
eight that November, including their second consecutive Best Drama award.
Yet for much of
the early part of the second season’s drama pales in comparison to the battle
for the White House that was going on that year and took a full five weeks
after Election day to resolve. Indeed the Christmas episode Noel, one of the
biggest nominees and winners that year, was postponed due to the live broadcast
of Al Gore’s concession speech on December 13th, a campaign that
many of the cast including Bradley Whitford had worked to exhaustion on.
During much of
Season 3 and the start of Season 4, Sorkin would exorcise his frustration about
the current president by having Bartlet run for reelection against the Governor
of Florida Robert Ritchie, who the entire staff thought was an intellectual
lightweight and couldn’t believe the Republicans would nominate as their
standard bearer. (The fact that Ritchie is the governor of Florida allowed
Sorkin to insult two Bushes for the price of one and everyone knew it.) However
it’s worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of the election Sorkin chose
to focus his wrath in a more subtle fashion against someone many people already
considered the real reason Al Gore had lost in November.
In the second
season Toby and Leo have just formed the committee to reelect the president.
(They don’t yet know that Bartlet promised his wife that he would only serve
one term, a storyline that becomes critical to the revelation of his diagnosis of
MS to the public.) In an episode called The Drop In, Sam has accepted an
invitation for the President to address the GDC, known as the Global Defense
Council.
Those who are
familiar with Sorkin’s work know that this organization was who Annette Bening
was hired to work for to pass 454 in The American President. In that
movie the organization was shown to be a force of good. Six years later, Sorkin
has a different approach to it.
Toby is unhappy
that this has happened: he doesn’t like the President being a second choice and
appearing to be at the beck and call of the environmental lobby. He thinks it
is important for the President to show that this at the luncheon, saying: “We
don’t have to move to our right if there’s an opportunity to spank the people
to our left.” As he tells Leo the GDC has constantly failed to admonish acts of
eco-terrorism, including the recent bombing of the site of a golf course which
was being built on the habitat of a lynx. (Bartlet is the only member of the
White House who knows what a lynx is.)
Bartlet is unhappy
at the idea but Leo reminds him that (as anyone who viewed the Pilot knows) a
year and a half ago he criticized Al Caldwell because the Christian church he
represented had refused to admonish extremists. Bartlet famously said: “You’ll
denounce these people; you’ll do it publicly. And until you do, you can get
your asses out of my White House.” Bartlet reluctantly says it would be
hypocrisy not to hold our friends to the same standards. But he makes it clear
that he’s not doing this for the politics but because “it’s the right thing to do.”
He agrees to a
drop-in (something that will not appear in the text) and Sam is unaware of it,
determined to write a speech that will evoke a standing ovation. That night
when Bartlet makes the drop-in, he calls Toby angrily about not being told
about this and is equally upset that the entire crowd politely applauds without
leaving its seats. He is so angry that he tries to barge in to the Oval Office
and yell at the President and has to be warned off by Toby. That night Bartlet
is dealing with the fallout by having a conversation with the leaders of the
GDC:
Bartlet: The
number of words that they had that meant ‘manipulative, there’s no way they
didn’t have a thesaurus in front of them. They threatened to endorse Seth Gilette
in a third party bid.
Leo: “What did
you say?”
Bartlet: I said
for cab fare and a ride to the airport,
Gilette could have the job right now.
Bartlet is just
venting as he knew very well this is exactly what was going to happen when he
made the drop-in. But it is this speech and this group believes that a
Democratic President should be at their beck and call or else is the first clear
sign that season of the frustration Sorkin expresses about them.
This is carried
out two episodes later in The War at Home, an episode that followed Bartlet’s
third State of The Union. Leading up to this episode told a reporter:
“You’re going to
meet Ed Begley Jr, who plays a character that will remind you of Ralph Nader
in that he’s coming from the left. He’s a junior senator from North Dakota
who is the darling of the environmental lobby and of liberal causes and is
planning on causing trouble for Bartlet in terms of reelection.
Sorkin is rarely
this direct in his political allusions. It’s hard not to watch the scene with
Gilette (who Toby claims is a hero in North Dakota, only because that state is
too small to have a sports team) and not see someone like, say, AOC or Ilhan
Ohmar or Jamaal Bowman having this attitude.
The set-up is
that during his state of the Union the President announced, ‘a blue ribbon
panel to consider the future of Social Security” This is something dear to
Gillette’s heart and demands the White House drop the panel and get behind his
reform bill. When Toby points out in only got eighteen votes in the Senate,
Gillette says “that’s more than one any other member of the Democratic Party
got.”
Toby maintains
remarkable calm as he redresses Gillette:
The President is
not a member of your party. He’s the leader of your party. If you
think demonizing people who are trying to govern responsibly is the way to
protect our liberal base then, speaking as a liberal, go to bed.”
Gillette, in
typical leftist fashion, then proceeds to berate Toby of ‘running to the right’
on the environment. To Gillette what Toby considers admonishing environmental
terrorism, he considers a ‘cheap shot’ and lost the Presidents friends among
seniors, environmentalists and African-Americans. Three groups the President
can’t win reelection without. When Toby argues these groups will never desert
the President Gillette counters: “Not if I run as a third party candidate.
Those eighteen votes don’t seem so small now, you son of a bitch.”
Toby then uses a
not subtle term to refer to Gillette that fans of Finding Nemo will
understand: “With fronds like these, who needs anemones?” He drives the point
home. “Come at me from the left and I’ll own your ass.”
In the next
episode ‘Ellie’ the saga of Seth Gillette more or less comes to a close. The AARP
wants the President to put Gillette on this Blue Ribbon panel. The White House
would like this because he can’t denounce it if he’s on it. However, if they
offer him the position and he turns it down, it will be a massive slap in the
face to the administration. Toby resolves the issue by going to CJ and telling
her to inform the press (without telling Gillette first, of course) that he’s accepted
it. As he puts it: “Gillette put party above personal differences, that he’s
a patriot and, when asked to serve, he answered the call.” This gives the high
ground to the White House and makes it impossible for Gillette to do anything
but accept it without looking like he is ungrateful and self-centered.
It is worth noting
that while during Bartlet’s reelection campaign throughout Season 3 and the
first part of Season 4, the President faces a potential primary challenge and
later on a third-party run from the Governor of Indiana and a liberal Minnesota
Senator. We here nothing from Gillette going forward as a potential threat and
that may be because the party itself considers him a joke. When the season
finale takes place and no one is sure if Bartlet will even run for reelection,
the DNC considers many contenders if he steps aside and laughs off the idea of
Gillette. “He couldn’t carry his own family,” one high ranking Democrat says
dismissively. There will be threats from the left-wing of the party during
Bartlet’s run for reelection and indeed well past Sorkin’s tenure on the show
but at the end of the day Sorkin makes it very clear what he thinks of third-party
candidates like Nader – and no doubt down the road, those such as Jill Stein
and the other Justice Democrats.
Sorkin clearly
illustrates in this storyline that, contrary to their own attitude, the left
has to be pushed back against and that at the end of the day if they choose to
break out on their own, they can only make things worse for the liberal base
they supposedly represent. It’s also telling that Toby, by far the most
left-leaning cast member who is always pushing Bartlet towards idealism and
will spend much of the campaign arguing for the President to demonize Republicans
like Ritchie, is the member of the staff who not only pushes back the hardest
against the left but has the least use for them. As Sorkin mentioned in the
first season, Toby is an idealist but he is also pragmatic and while he will go
out his way to defend the liberal agenda at every opportunity (we see him
advocate repeatedly against those who want to cut the National Endowment for
the Arts, to use one key example) he has little use for those so-called
liberals who believe in sending a message rather than trying to responsibly
govern. Toby doesn’t like compromising but he accepts it as a reality of being
in power. Men like Gillette and organizations like the GDC if you don’t grant
them everything they want, then you are little more than an ‘anemone’.
This is more, I
should add, then people like Nader himself has acknowledged. While his own
campaign would later admit that if he had not run Al Gore would most likely
have won, he has spent the last quarter of a century continuing to not only
deny responsibility but to continue to advocate that there is no difference
between the two parties. In the last decade he continues to write books that,
while they openly denounce Trump as the enemy, just as often say there is no
difference between the two parties and liken the Bush and Obama administrations
as ‘laying the groundwork for Trump’s election’. He still sees himself as
blameless for whatever role he played in W’s election and it is clear given the
many on the far left who have emerged in his wake that they share his views openly.
One can’t deny
that this kind of argument will always have a ready-made audience, no doubt
made of so many of the constituencies that Gillette was a darling of during The
West Wing’s run. But to them I can only echo the kind of argument that
Sorkin made so clearly in 2001 and I wish they would listen to: “If you think
that demonizing people who are trying to govern responsibly is to protect the
progressive agenda, then as someone who believes in that agenda, go to bed.” Like
Toby I know that this will never happen. And like them, I really don’t know
what kind of frond they think they are.
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