Unsurpassed ensemble playing

(Review Update)

I wrote this review when the marathon 8 year, 154 episode series of the The West Wing came to an end. Even during its live run, the story-lines of the TWW eerily paralleled the actual events, challenges and moral debates at the heart of real American politics. That it managed to maintain an audience large enough to hold its prime-time slot in the schedules for over 8 years was an extraordinary achievement for a programme openly and proudly both idealistic and liberal in spirit. It was nothing short of a miracle, given that these qualities were deeply distrusted and rejected by the majority of the US electorate who elected a President diametrically opposed to everything the programme stood for, who is unmistakably mocked, parodied and seriously shown up for what he is, through characters and story-lines again uncannily accurate and authoritatively critical.

Even two years after the series ended it still resonates. Within the series when Jed Bartlett sought re-election for a second term, his Republican opponent was a homespun, ‘simple-talking’, ex-military, anti-intellectual figure. Jed Bartlett by contrast was fearsomely intelligent, articulate, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Bartlett was taken to task by his own staff for trying to be all things to all people; for trying to downplay his intelligence because it alienated many voters; for soft-pedalling his deep liberal beliefs and trying to appeal to the generality of the electorate just to get them to vote for him.

This is precisely the dilemma currently facing Barack Obama. We can only hope he, like Bartlett, can be persuaded to stand up for and by, his deepest political beliefs – for whatever one thinks of the ‘wisdom’ of the American people in electing an inadequate and disastrous President – twice – their instinct not to vote for someone without the courage to stand up for, and by, what he believes, is a sound one.

The West Wing – The Final Review

Dickens is, if not everyone’s final choice as the greatest ever novelist, near the top of almost everyone’s list. And rightly so. Dostoievsky may be more philosophically profound; Tolstoy perhaps more insightful on religion and spirituality; Eliot certainly way ahead of her time in creating women of substance, intelligence and character. But across a broad spectrum Dickens is hard to beat. His appeal is universal, creating so many unforgettable characters that have engaged and fascinated generations of readers. Made them laugh and cry; angry and sad; morally aware and frustrated at the apparently irredeemable inequalities of our lives, personal and social. At the heart of Dickens’ greatness is an irrational, illogical, impractical, unshakeable belief in our humanity. Our capacity to care for and about others. Dickens’ creations are so affecting because they describe truthfully the harsh, unjust, precarious times in which he lived. Yet if despair is frequently the emotional setting of his stories, hope is their spirit. Dickens for all his outrage and anger at inequality and injustice, was an idealist. He believed people could be better than they were. By choice. He may have been one of the first writers whose idealistic belief in the possibility of goodness in human affairs, was dismissed by cynics as sentimental.

However far-fetched you may consider the aesthetic comparison, it is certainly true that cynics and critics of The West Wing rest heavily on accusations of sentimentality and idealism. And of course, we are now too knowing and worldly wise to fall for of all things, political idealism. And who can blame us? Surely our lack of trust and confidence is merely the inevitable consequence of facing the historical facts of recent decades? Our post-war belief in broadly liberal democratic political principles, of the right or the left, is in crisis. This crisis in our confidence and conviction in these principles that lie at the heart of our democratic political life, leaves us uncertain and anxious in the face of unrestrained, implacable hostility towards them by the certainty and unquestioning power of fundamentalist belief systems. Especially when these are, by definition, beyond verification or empirical validation because religious and therefore metaphysical. When reason and discussion do not work and therefore nothing can be done – we have nothing left but to pick up the gun. To think otherwise is culpably naïve. Talk is appeasement; compromise is cowardice. Or so the argument runs.

But is this all inescapable? Is questioning such nihilistic cynicism mere sentimentality? The recent documentary, The Fog Of War, included real footage of President John F Kennedy discussing and debating with his closest advisers, military and political, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It is both startling and not a little comforting to see the young, fiercely intelligent Kennedy struggling to bring to bear all the resources of his intellect and moral responsibility on perhaps the most onerous and potentially dangerous decisions any politician had ever faced. Comforting because we see Kennedy resisting the macho blandishments of his Generals and their efforts to bend the facts of military intelligence towards a belligerent, confrontational response to Nikita Kruschev’s proxy nuclear threat to the USA via Cuba. Though tantalisingly brief, these glimpses of real discussion reinforce the historical judgement that here was courage and true leadership.

Three assassinations – the Kennedys and Martin Luther King – destroyed the idealism and hope which their victims poignantly represented. Then the moral bankrupcy of Nixon turned us all into cynics. The toxic cynicism of the post-Kennedy era even reaches back to a revisionist view that he was just as venal, just as phoney and self-serving as the rest. This corrosive tide of collective self-contempt seeks to strip even Martin Luther King of his inspirational courage and spirituality. In both these cases distrust of their qualities of leadership and public probity is predicated upon all-too-human flaws in their private relationships. Conflate these two within a serving President and we get Bill Clinton whose personal weaknesses undermined his undoubted capacity to lead. Idealism doesn’t play any more. Intelligence is distrusted. Truth and honesty in public life is mocked. And John F Kennedy’s inspirational call to a generation to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” now plays like an ironic sound-bite. And we are all the losers who got what we deserved – George W Bush.

The only US President since Kennedy to offer genuine echoes of these indispensable and rarest of personal qualities is fictional: Josiah ‘Jed’ Bartlett played by Martin Sheen in The West Wing. Throughout its 8 year, 154 episode run, this extraordinary series has been unashamedly idealistic; proudly and determinedly liberal; and more articulate, intelligent and perceptive about realistic political problems and their inherent complexity, than anything we have seen in real life. In the increasingly dangerous world paralleling the showing of the series most of these qualities personal and political have been conspicuously and dangerously missing.

The West Wing is not a documentary. Nor does it aspire to the disturbing ambiguities of faction or ‘docu-drama’. Its credentials are honestly and transparently those of popular art. The truth it seeks, and succeeds admirably in achieving – is artistic truth. It puts imagined and created characters in recognisable roles and places them in fictional but credible situations personal, social and political. Aaron Sorkin its creator and the team of immensely talented and creative people he gathered around him never claimed “this is how it is,” or “this is real”. He specifically disavowed this. He set himself the honourable challenge of the artist, too often evaded in our popular art, to convince us through the quality of his imagination, writing and characterisation, that this is how it might be. This displays artistic truth. In many valid parallels with Dickens, Sorkin’s imagination and superb writing created an extraordinary set of fascinating and diverse characters. Through them and their reactions to the imagined situations in which he placed them he held up a mirror to his times. For a moving, perceptive, unflinching but, in spirit, hopeful perspective on 19th century English society and moral values few would argue that Dickens is truthful, illuminating and yes entertaining. Exactly the same, with equal justice, can be said of The West Wing.

But I hear you say, the brilliance of Dickens’s creations was that they were the vision and work of one man. In contrast it will be argued, TWW, as with all cinematic art, is an irreducibly collaborative process. There is some truth in this but, apart from the extraordinary artistic daring of Sorkin’s basic conception, during TWW’s most influential period, incredibly he personally wrote no less than 85 episodes. I would argue that this is the most sustained record of consistently superb quality writing of modern times. Not to be dismissed or under-rated because placed in the service of a body of work both popular and entertaining. The moral, personal and political values of TWW, its tone and artistic aspiration were in my view irreducibly established by Sorkin. And the greatest compliment we can pay to the 3/4 series produced without his direct involvement is that they remained true both to those values and the aspirations he set.

On every level TWW sets the highest possible standards. The writing is consistently witty, stylish and incisive. The filmmaking skills of casting, performance, cinematography, editing are never less than excellent. For a series which takes place mostly indoors and in offices, the prowling, urgent and cadenced camera-work achieves a powerful dramatic pace and tension. The characters and their consistency as artistic creations are the dramatic spine of the series and never, ever, is the truth of characterisation subverted for the purposes of plot. The superbly drawn and played characters frequently surprise or even shock us, but cumulatively this simply adds to our sense of the real complexity of extraordinary, ordinary people in impossibly demanding situations. The ensemble playing in TWW is unsurpassed in my experience, only perhaps Hill Street Blues offering even a shadow of the truthfulness of characterisations consistent over time.

Within this embarrassment of talent one performance must be picked out, for it is the epicentre around which all the others revolve. This is of course Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlett. This fine film actor took the most challenging part of a lifetime and made it his own. This was Sorkin’s hutzpah – what kind of artistic arrogance or vision says – I am going to create a fictional president, played by a well-known actor and invest him with enough artistic truth and credibility, that intelligent, real people will bemoan the fact that they cannot in reality vote for him? Of course Sheen had convincing dialogue and superb supportive actors around him but to sustain, without falseness for 154 hours over 8 years, the truthfulness of the part of an entirely fictional President of the United States is simply a towering achievement. These were characters we cared about and could feel both inspired and sometimes let down by. They made us laugh and cry; frustrated and delighted us, surprised and yet always engaged us; with their flaws and uncertainties, irritating quirks and frequent volatility. They came alive in the imagination in much the same way I would argue as do McCawber, Pickwick, Heep, Haversham; Steerforth, Oliver, Pip or Copperfield.

Seriously accomplished men fantasise about CJ Cregg – yet Alison Janney is no one’s traditional beauty. Too tall, too horsey even for conventional tastes, she nonetheless commands the screen. CJ is strong not tough with her personal integrity always embattled by a pragmatic realisation of the compromises of political power. There are many superb characters, woven seamlessly into the tapestry of TWW’s depiction of the dangers and opportunities of power. I would argue that Toby Zielger is one of the great fictional creations: complex, morally tortured, hopelessly idealistic and deeply, pragmatically sceptical, shamefully arrogant; both generous to a fault and selfishly introspective. Toby is both the slave whispering “you are but a man” into Caesar’s ear and the moral absolutist impatient to change the world for the better overnight. A man who sees clear-eyed the inherent moral weaknesses of himself and his fellow human beings, yet never ceases to believe they can be prevailed upon to behave better – to be better. Sorkin and his successors were profligate with their great characters. Even the smallest parts are written and blended into the dramatic continuum with uncompromising care and conviction.

The most impressive, encouraging fact about The West Wing is that it commanded prime-time audiences for a drama that despite all its entertaining qualities, was deeply, unashamably, liberal and idealistic in political tone. Deeper still, with profound implications for the health of the democratic system in both America and the UK, one of the most insistent and consistent narrative threads of TWW is the passionate belief that such humanitarian, moral principles transcend party politics and partial ideology. In the final series the ‘liberal’ Republican candidate Arnie Vinick, played faultlessly, inevitably, by Alan Alda, is a threat to Democratic candidate Matt Santos (Jimmy Schmidt) precisely because they agree on ends but have a disagreement worthy of serious and substantial men, about appropriate means to agreed desirable ends. For Santos/Vinick read Blair/Cameron or Bush/Clinton (not Kerry, who didn’t have the guts or the passion to run as an honest liberal). And now Obama/McCain.

I can be as cynical as the next man. Our politicians make it almost impossible not to be. But that is not a necessary fact of the world. We can choose. And so can they. In a line from The West Wing to students – “the future belongs to those who turn up.” If we demand better men and women, and vote for them, we’ll get them. Then the hard part – we have to trust them and they have to justify that trust. Of course it’s hard. Is there anything in life of value that isn’t? Is it so hard? If a politician screws up I want him/her to admit it and offer to resign. Then I’ll happily say “stay”. That is the spirit of The West Wing. You cannot people you don’t trust – and who don’t trust you. And truth is the only path to trust. I leave you with 3 quotes out of hundreds. Selected for their appositeness to our real world.

1. Bartlett hid from the electorate the fact that he had a medical condition (intermittent MS) that might have influenced their decision to vote for him. Just before he runs for a second term this comes out and of course some, not all, of his opponents want to make the most political capital out of it they can. This is Bartlett’s conversation with his chief of staff Leo McGarry after deciding that he will accept that Congress formally censure him. LM is trying to persuade him to tough it out. (Compare this with Blair and WMD).

JB: “I was wrong. I was…I was just…. I was wrong. Come on, we know that lots of times we don’t know what’s right or wrong. But lots of times we do….and come on…this is one. I may not have had sinister intent but there were plenty of opportunities to make it right. No one in government takes responsibility for anything any more. We foster, and obfuscate…we rationalise. Everybody does it….that’s what we say. So we come to occupy a moral safe house where everyone is to blame but no one is guilty. I’m to blame. I was wrong.”

The storyline had Congress and people responding positively to this honesty. He was re-elected. BUT he had to accept the humiliation of a Congressional censure. Rightly. I find this an entirely credible scenario. You just need courage, honour and a belief in the people, in democracy.

2. Passionate champion of women’s rights Press Secretary C J Cregg has had to accept the bitter pill that political expediency requires that the White House to renew a lease on a base in a fundamentalist Arab country (Qumar) by providing them with aggressive weapons. She tackles National Security Advisor Nancy Mcnally (the issue is underscored by the fact that both are women):

CJ: They beat women Nancy. They hate women. The only reason they keep Qumari women alive is to make more Qumari men.

NM: So what do you want me to do about it?

CJ: How about suggesting that we sell the guns and then suggesting that we shoot the guns at them? And by the way, not to change the subject, how are we supposed to have any moral credibility when we talk about gun control and making sure that guns don’t get into the hands of the wrong people? God Nancy, what are we defining as the right people?

NM: This is the real world and we can’t isolate enemies.

CJ: I know about the real world and I’m not suggesting that we isolate them.

NM: No you’re suggesting that we eliminate them.

CJ: It’s the 21st century Nancy, the world’s gotten smaller. I don’t know how we can tolerate this kind of suffering any more. Particularly when all it does is continue the cycle of anti-American hatred. But that’s not the point either.

NM: What’s the point?

CJ: The point is that Apartheid was an East Hampton clambake compared with what we laughingly refer to as the life these women lead. And if we had sold these arms to South Africa 15 years ago, you would have set the building on fire. Thank God we never needed to re-fuel in Johannesburg.

NM: It’s a big world CJ and everyone has guns. And I’m doing the best I can….

CJ: They’re beating the women Nancy……..

OK, emotional. Solves no problems. But it poses the dilemma clearly. It is a moral question. It makes you think. Constantly in The West Wing pragmatic decisions of necessity have to made. But surely it matters, that the moral dimension is considered, that moral sensibilities are at least acknowledged?

3. And this on the appointment of a new speech-writer and advisor Will Bailey (Joshua Molina).

JB: “There is a promise that I ask everyone to make who works here for me. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why?
WB: It’s the only thing that ever has?”

For my money, simply the most impressive, important, beautifully written television drama series ever made. It is funny, witty, stylish, insightful, moving. It will make you laugh and make you cry. It will move you and anger you. It will make you think and make you believe politics and politicians can be honourable and effective. They just have to have the courage and the honesty to believe in democracy and the people. If we don’t behave with integrity, respect the law, and deserve to occupy the moral high ground, exactly what do we have to resist the march of irrational, misogynistic, fundamentalism of all kind – guns, missiles and bombs – that’s what. And in the end nuclear weapons.

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