When I began watching reruns of “The West Wing,” I thought I had discovered a cure for Trump Derangement Syndrome, the malady Republicans created to disturb the sleep of thoughtful Americans.
Because each morning Donald Trump rolls out a new horror to jangle our nerves, like the Iran attack threat, every evening I review President Jed Bartlett’s administration to remind myself that stability once graced our government and may yet return.
Those tempted to try my cure would be well advised not to look for relief in the series’ obvious elements. The problems Bartlett faces, for instance, mirror today’s crises: the sexual indiscretions of a senior official, the cover-up of a presidential health condition, a government shutdown, illegal immigration, and presciently, a slippery vice president angling for the top job that Jed holds. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” we moan with Yogi Berra.
Moreover, viewers who look for reassurance in Bartlett’s reactions soon discover the series is not a remake of “Father Knows Best.” The president does not have all the answers. Following a terrorist attack, Jed’s initial response is to bomb offenders back to the stone age. When his daughter is accused of drug use, Bartlett urges killing the story. And the chief executive orders a government shutdown when Republicans renege on a budget deal.
If the problems are disturbingly familiar and the president’s reactions are equally discomfiting, what constitutes relief on “The West Wing”? It’s the White House staff: Toby Ziegler, C.J. Cragg, Josh Lyman, Sam Seaborn, and Leo McGarry. The program’s creator is a dedicated team player. Following Aaron Sorkin’s faith in the wisdom of groups, the series declares: “We each have a piece of the truth and we make our best decisions when we put all of our pieces together.”
As a result, the typical show crams fifteen formal or informal staff meetings into its brief 42 broadcast minutes. The gaggles are unruly affairs in which all speak their minds without attention to rank, age, gender, or longevity. After most discussions, the president is talked off the ledge, honors the consensus, and resolves the crisis without bloodshed or ego damage.
One illustrative episode features a lengthy debate about how to respond to a terrorist attack in Gaza that kills a U.S. admiral and three congressmen. Reinforced by a hawkish Leo, the president is poised for military action, until a new staff member weighs in. National Security Deputy Kate Harper persistently floats peaceful options that eventually persuade her colleagues and lead to a Camp David summit.
The resulting international accord leaves viewers primed for a good night’s sleep, cheered by the knowledge that people of high ideals and good will are in charge of our government. Of course, choosing responsible people as aids is a key step in the process, a strategy that seems missing in Trump’s administration that values loyalty over expertise, malignity instead of mercy.
Consider the health advice of Robert Kennedy that there is little to fear from germs, a scientific discovery he garnered from years of “snorting cocaine off toilet seats.” What comfort can we take from White House terrorism director Sebastian Gorka’s gleeful boast that he ordered an attack that vaporized a terrorist into a “pink mist” and killed so many people that bodies were stacked like “cordwood”? Setting the prevailing tone, Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller justified seizing Greenland by advocating Bismarck’s realpolitik, “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Poor puny Denmark.
Such henchmen are enough to make those who care about the republic yearn for White House advisers like John Hay and Edwin Stanton, who served our first Republican president. Instead of dreaming of conquests, Abraham Lincoln and his assistants pursued noble desires to emancipate slaves and to “bind up the nation’s wounds” — caring for soldiers in gray, as well as those in blue.
Ubi sunt, a discouraged prophet once asked after a fruitless search for such high-minded individuals; still we ask, “Where are they?” Women and men who value the common good; seek truth; and care for others. Apparently none occupies a West Wing office, and precious few populate the party that Lincoln pioneered.
Given the current personnel of the White House, my prescription of group wisdom for our national malady will end in failure. There is little advice that Jed Bartlett or his aides can provide to still the chaos sown by Donald Trump. Until the denizens of the West Wing awaken to the “better angels of our nature,” we are doomed to mope off to beds filled with unquiet dreams, rather than the comforting American vision of “malice toward none with charity for all.”
About the author
William T. Walker is the author of three books on modern American and European culture, and served as associate vice president of the College of William & Mary. He is retired, and lives in Staunton.
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