The West Wing

Introduction: Politics of Quality U.S. TV: All the President’s Men . . . and a Few Good Women

Introduction Politics of Quality U.S. TV All the President’s Men . . . and a Few Good Women 1 1 1 NBC had high hopes for its brand-new behind-the-scenes ensemble drama about Washington politics. Premiering on 22 September 1999, The West Wing was the most eagerly anticipated U.S. network show of the fall season (competing alongside forty-two other freshman series). The show certainly had pedigree. Its cast featured Martin Sheen and former Brat Pack movie star Rob Lowe, its subject matter was ambitious and germane, and its production team included John Wells, executive producer of ER (1994–2009), and Aaron Sorkin, creator of the short-lived but critically acclaimed Sports Night (ABC, 1998–2000) and author of A Few Good Men, for which he had received an Oscar nomination. Four years earlier, Sorkin had scripted the romantic-comedy The American President (Rob Reiner, 1995), about widowed president Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) falling in love with lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening). As the story goes, Sorkin wrote more than 385 pages for the 120-page screenplay and refused to discard the surplus (Rayner 2005). The following year his agent arranged for him to meet with Wells. “I knew . . . the moment I sat down . . . he was expecting me to pitch something,” recalls Sorkin. “So it suddenly oc01 McCabe text.indd 1 9/12/12 9:22 AM 2 Introduction curred to me: what about senior staffers at the White House?” (Weinraub 1999a, 4). With the “little shards of leftover stories” from The American President Sorkin wrote the TV pilot of The West Wing. A month after delivery, in January 1998, the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. NBC held back the project, sensitive to the political mood and suspecting that viewers had little appetite for a show about Washington politics (Hoffmann 2000). Salacious revelations and an impeachment hearing made the network cautious about the viability of a White House drama at a time of so much political rancor; as Wells explains: “[NBC] said they couldn’t take it to the advertisers in that climate” (Graham 1999). Sorkin, in the meantime, went to work on Sports Night, about an ESPN-style network. But with charges against President Bill Clinton dropped in February 1999 and a regime change at NBC, “the unthinkable happened,” writes Sorkin. “Somebody forgot to tell Scott [Sassa, president of NBC West Coast] and Garth [Ancier, president of NBC Entertainment] you can’t do a show about Washington and politics” (2003a, 6). At the show’s core is a team of dedicated senior staffers: shrewd beltway veteran and chief of staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer); deputy communications director Sam Seaborn (Lowe) (replaced in Season Four by the equally talented Will Bailey [Joshua Malina]); press secretary Claudia Jean “C. J.” Cregg (Allison Janney); communications director and conscience of the administration Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff); deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford); and personal aide to the president Charlie Young (Dulé Hill). Donnatella “Donna” Moss (Janel Moloney), Josh’s able assistant, replaced political consultant Madeleine “Mandy” Hampton, PhD (Moira Kelly) as a series regular in Season Two. Originally intended to be a peripheral figure, President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Sheen)—the intellectually formidable former New Hampshire governor and liberal Democrat, Nobel Prize– winning economist, and descendant of a Declaration of Inde01 McCabe text.indd 2 9/12/12 9:22 AM 3 Introduction pendence signer—proved so popular that he soon moved center stage. Recurring characters like First Lady Abigail “Abbey” Bartlet (Stockard Channing) and younger daughter Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss) as well as vice presidents John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) and later Robert “Bingo Bob” Russell (Gary Cole) joined the cast of a series about a fictional Democratic White House charged by highly principled but flawed individuals striving to govern honorably. The West Wing began in the closing years of the Clinton administration (1993–2001), a post-Lewinsky era of political scandal and partisan vitriol. Aspiring to turn around the deep cynicism pervading American political life, the series “went for nobility and for politics with a purpose” (Bianculli 2000). It combined the representation of the quotidian with high-minded governance and debated weighty political questions alongside stories of its all-too-fallible characters. Its visual pace was kinetic, its dialogue smart and witty. Only a SteadiThe Bartlet team 01 McCabe text.indd 3 9/12/12 9:22 AM 4 Introduction cam could hope to keep up with...