I think a lot of political junkies have a love-hate relationship with The West Wing and its unofficial feature film companion, The American President. Both were written and created by Aaron Sorkin, who offered a window into governing a country. The show is well-written, acted, and has been awarded numerous accolades. Yet, Sorkin’s observation about today’s Republican Party is what’s rich. In August, he claimed that if he created the show today, he would have trouble finding or framing the opposition party as “reasonable” (via The Hollywood Reporter) [emphasis mine]:
Aaron Sorkin thinks he could still make The West Wing today, but there is one political factor he thinks would be very different than when the series ran 25 years ago: today’s Republican Party.
At an event in support of the upcoming book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service in Los Angeles … Sorkin acknowledged that he is sometimes asked if the show would work in the present day.
“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” he explained to the crowd at the Skirball Cultural Center. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a House of Cards or Veep. The idea behind The West Wing was what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic and it was aspirational.”
He continued that he thought audiences would respond the same way today, but “what would be different would be this, and I don’t want to get a rumble started over anything. This is simply what would be different. I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”
This observation is humorous for numerous reasons. First, the Biden administration has been more like the HBO show Veep, albeit with more incompetence, death, cocaine, and politicization of the justice system. Second, Democrats are more reasonable, Mr. Sorkin. It’s a party that wants to enact Soviet-style price fixes to address the inflation crisis they started, among other things—a snobby elite more concerned about pronouns, child genital mutilation surgeries, and abortion than expanding job opportunities. It’s a party that’s stuck in the mud on foreign policy. The only counterargument they have is, ‘Trump is evil.’ When cornered, you see the sad, puerile center of American liberalism that’s devoid of principle, addicted to hypocrisy, and overall astoundingly strange.
You know this already.
For those who’ve watched the show, there were no “sensible” Republicans—only ones that would qualify as Democrats today. There were seldom any prominent conservative Republicans, except maybe Speaker Jeff Haffley, who was portrayed as a toolbag. The others are mentioned in passing, presented as radical Christians, or mocked for not being one of the elites in coastal Democratic political circles. Sorkin’s idea of what the GOP should be never existed. It was only a universe comprised of liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans, who today are two peas in a pod. The boundaries of this political realm were stretched to its limits in the fictional presidential election of the show’s last season, where a Democrat won South Carolina and Texas, and a Republican carried California.
Reasonable Republicans are a lighter shade of Democrats, and we’re sick of them.
