I just finished watching all seven seasons of The West Wing, which aired from 1999-2007. There is an important lesson in most every episode.
I didn't have the good fortune of seeing any of these seasons when they first appeared. Those were the years I was working night and day transcribing court reporter notes, creating deposition and trial transcripts. Nearly all of them had deadlines, and besides, I loved the work. I began in this field in 1986 as a proofreader and continued until I retired. The West Wing years were when I was the busiest, as a scopist for several reporters.
However, now that I have had the chance to view the series, to which Lawrence O'Donnell refers so often, I have had an important education about how things get done. After Rachel Maddow ends her hour on MSNBC, it has been my habit to turn the TV off. That is changing now. The man is brilliant. Not only is he informative but is an excellent teacher.
Lawrence O’Donnell wrote many of the West Wing episodes and was a consultant and producer on all of them. Other consultants were names you might recognize, like Dee Dee Myers and Marlin Fitzwater. This lent the necessary credibility and I learned a lot of things I never knew before. I think my knowledge of civics is fairly complete, but there is so much more to how our White House operates. So many issues don’t even get to the President’s desk, and that means every member of the White House staff must be carefully vetted and bribery-proof. If not, you might get someone like Spiro Agnew, for example.
Lawrence O’Donnell doesn’t have to do this stuff anymore. I think he does this because he wants to share what he knows so that the rest of us can understand the incredible power we still have in a democracy, “if we can keep it.”
I know not everything that happens was exposed in The West Wing, and I doubt that much of it applied to activity during the Trump administration. What O'Donnell and the other writers and consultants shared was how things have normally worked, and hopefully will work again soon.
The series ends on a note that precisely connects to the end of the Biden administration, and the events we are witnessing today. The Bartlet team found itself in a bad spot, pulled into an ongoing hostile situation not of their making. They had sent troops to try and prevent a war between two superpowers. This nightmare situation was passed onto the incoming administration.