Beyond Josh Lyman Politics: How the West Wing Miseducated My Political Generation

[unrepentant progress]

The act of “engaging” with national politics has come to resemble more and more the act of watching The West Wing, as political media – from MSNBC to POLITICO – focuses in on the internal dramas of the Beltway kings’ courts. After you have watched all the episodes where Josh Lyman wheels and deals his way to another win, you can turn on the real news and watch talking heads discuss how Mitch McConnell’s or Valerie Jarrett’s next move might give their team a win, too. It’s no surprise that political statistician Nate Silver joined ESPN last year: his meteoric rise over the past elections was the final keystone in the complete ESPNification – with its wins and losses, points and scorecards – of American political journalism.

Viewing hundreds of millions of Americans who are not Washington insiders as useful only for votes and campaign donations is not an idiosyncrasy of Jim Messina and his fictional counterparts on The West Wing— it’s endemic to Beltway politicos. As Theda Skocpol pointed out in her wonderful book Democracy Diminished, we have moved from a “membership democracy” to a “management democracy” in the past century. A once-thriving national network of participatory federated societies – which involved routine local activities in small town chapters which cascaded bottom-up into member-driven state conventions and influential national offices – gave way to a politics where we send our checks in to D.C. managers, who engage in democracy for us. The West Wing will be a perfect historical artifact of this age of political management.

Despite candidate Obama’s call for citizens to “be the change we have been waiting for” – to not “wait for some other person … some other time” – political engagement, under President Obama’s watch, has become evermore defined as spectatorship of the interpersonal drama of Washington insiders. Our citizenry’s neverending psychoanalysis of the president marches on, as some citizens continue to waste countless hours being haunted by the spectre of a radical Muslim Kenyan, while other citizens waste countless hours defending the president from such attacks, all while our equal and opposite obsession with the president – an obsession we incorrectly refer to as “following politics” – distracts us from being good neighbors and visionary reformers in our communities and specific issue areas — realms where we could, as extraordinary ordinary citizens, make a serious difference. In fact, many members of the administration and the administration’s opposition fan the flames of the obsessive spectatorship, for an angry, confused, locally-disengaged, centrally-focused populace is better converted into donations and votes come election time than a strong, clear-headed, locally-engaged citizenry.

It’s one thing that the West Wing theory of politics – the thought that the replacement of one president with another would solve our great public problems – failed the test. It’s a worse thing that my generation of politically-minded young people failed to see through this simplistic view of political change. Unfortunately, we had been miseducated by the very show that had brought so many of us here in the first place.

Full essay: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2015/01/beyond-josh-lyman-politics-west-wing-miseducated-political-generation

On aside, I viewed The West Wing for the first time in a series of binge watching episodes over the course of about a month when I was snowed in. Three things struck me about the show:

1. It's very good television, and judging by The Newsroom, that's something Sorkin has forgotten how to do
2. The neoliberal policies were front and center. I couldn't believe so many people here on DU idolized the fictional Bartlett Presidency
3. By the end I was rooting for Alan Alda's Republican Senator to become President over Jimmy Smit's Democratic neoliberal.

[onehandle]

1. whatthefuckever. nt

[66 dmhlt]

2. Maybe you're visiting the WRONG site. Let's review that debate ...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

... AND just in case it doesn't embed properly, or you can't view it - here's the transcript:

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

"What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one!

"So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."

-- Matt Santos, The West Wing

And YOU rooted for Alda?!?

Yeah, you are DEFINITELY on the wrong site.

Hot Air, Daily Caller, Freeperville, etc. are that way --> --> -->