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Josiah Bartlet, a Personal President

“Did you see the look on his face?” I can’t remember when Sam said this - it was definitely around the midpoint of the first season - but it was the first time I noticed that things were going to be different on my second viewing of The West Wing. First of all, the line and the manner in which Rob Lowe delivered it was freakish. He had his hand around Josh’s forearm and he was leaning in a little with that sociopathic, dead-eyed Rob Lowe look that only Rob Lowe can pull off (well, him and Tom Cruise). Second, he was talking about the President.

I recently handed in the last assignment for my Masters in US Studies. The first time I saw The West Wing the whole way through was in March 2009, a year before I started my degree, and I just finished rewatching it. I thought it would be interesting to revisit it equipped with two years of knowledge. With the exception of a few things - such as the quiet disappearance of the 2004 congressional elections, which upset me more than I care to admit - it was a mostly painless experience. The thing which most glaringly stood out to me, however, was just how liberal this show is, in the American sense of the term. I always knew it was very liberal, moreso in the Sorkin years than post-Sorkin, but that understanding has since been flipped backwards. I’d go as far as saying that what separates the first four seasons from the last three isn’t that the show got less liberal (Republicans are people too, right?), but that it got more liberal; while at the same time the loss of its ludic portrayal of the people in politics made the show a little less fun. The consistency which connects the two sides of the show is its depiction of the President - by which I mean the show’s idea of, and reverence for, the President. 

There’s a book that explores this topic in detail by Theodore J. Lowi called The Personal President. Published in 1985, it’s obviously a little dated in parts, but Lowi’s central thesis still applies, at least to a degree, today. Lowi’s thesis is quite expansive, but his book essentially traces a history of events that have conspired to change not only how Americans view the Office of the President but also, concurrently, the function of that office. The clearest demarcation he points to is how, before the 1930s, American government was what Woodrow Wilson called a “congressional government”; Lowi characterises the period after the 1930s as “presidential government”. It’s hard to imagine, for example, the Tenure of Office Act passing for law these days. For Lowi, it mostly started with FDR, whose administration’s power was enabled by the Great Depression (spawning the New Deal), technological developments (his fireside chats) and Supreme Court decisions (such as Myers v. United States in 1926, which deemed the Tenure of Office Act unconstitutional), all of which set the foundations of a new kind of Presidency, one in which party and congressional politics came to be eschewed in favour of speaking directly to the people: Lowi’s “personal President”.

This change wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t that Roosevelt came along and the game changed. An enormous number of factors were at play, even before his administration. When William McKinley brought America to the attention of the great powers of the world in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, it’s arguable that he, more than ever before, inadvertently tied American interests to the Office of the President. When the League of Nations was formed, Woodrow Wilson represented those interests on the global stage, elevating the power and relevance of the federal government over the states to previously unforeseen levels (even though the organisation dissolved, its effects, lessons and dissolution set the precedent for the formation of the UN). But you can point to the changes that took place in FDR’s three terms in office as the pivot point of this history. Eisenhower took Roosevelt’s eschewing of party politics to the next level when he ran a presidential campaign with citizen groups instead of the RNC. Kennedy took it a step further with volunteers for his campaign.

Two things characterised the deepening relationship between Americans and their President over the next several decades: presidents and presidential candidates used increasingly lofty rhetoric when speaking to the public, and Americans increasingly expected more from their presidents. It became a feedback loop to such an extent that nothing a president does can ever turn around the expectations of the public. I’m really simplifying things now but I’m kind of eager to get to the point: how all of this applies to The West Wing.

It’s frequently obvious who the heroes and who the bad guys are in The West Wing. It’s not just a separation of Democrats and Republicans in the former and latter camps respectively, though that is often the case. It’s also the Democrats in the White House v the Democratic Party. It’s also Bartlet v Hoynes. Bartlet v Ritchie. Bartlet v this, Bartlet v that, let Bartlet be Bartlet, everybody loves Bartlet. But most of all, it’s Bartlet v Congress. Or more ideologically, a liberal President v an intransigent Congress. It’s very rare for the show to give anything more than lip service to the idea that Congresspersons might be motivated by the demands of their constituency - or, you know, in a phrase rarely uttered these days about those who represent their state, might be doing their jobs. 

Of course, there’s a larger-than-kernel of truth about this. Congress is a big old mess; the Senate especially, with its bullshit archaic rules. And sure, a lot of crazy people somehow find their way into the legislative branch. But The West Wing manages to make the vast majority of them look like conniving, backstabbing, sometimes crazy, sometimes stupid thugs that needs the god damn President to step in, rough ‘em up and set ‘em straight. Season 5, the first post-Sorkin season, has the most egregious examples of this.

Bartlet manages to best Speaker of the House (and Mr Evil Republican Glare) Haffley during the show’s version of a government shutdown. He fixes Social Security by trading in the credit he would’ve gotten for doing so - because he’s the only politician that cares, obviously. He successfully appoints two Supreme Court Justices, one of whom is extremely conservative but revealed to be a judicial genius, so hooray, another victory for Bartlet. Finally, he paves the way for long term peace between Palestine and Israel - which kind of breaks down a little later in the show, but in a very dismissive fashion.

Americans constantly want their presidents to do more; their expectations almost always exceed what is realistically possible, but match the rhetoric they hear. No one’s really to blame - presidents and presidential candidates have no choice but to use lofty rhetoric. They can’t soften their promises or their speeches. They certainly can’t go the other way (i.e. pessimism). It’s fascinating though, how much American pop culture perpetuates and deepens this feedback loop, and that’s what I got out of my second viewing of The West Wing.

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