Jonathan V. Last

But why is the entire city (320,000 people in D.C. watch every week) swooning over a show that is such an obvious river of liberal agitprop? The show’s creator and writer, Aaron Sorkin, tried to deny that his show has any particular political bent in a recent profile in the Washington Post. However, a quick examination of the series shows his denial to be, as they say, inoperative.

“The West Wing” is such a thinly veiled roman ` clef about the Clinton administration that even most interns on the Hill know who the characters’ real-life counterparts are. The featured players include George Stephanopoulos (Rob Lowe), Harold Ickes (Brad Whitford), Dee Dee Myers (Allison Janney), Mandy Grunwald (Moira Kelly), Hillary Clinton (Stockard Channing), Chelsea Clinton (Elizabeth Moss) and Bill Clinton (Martin Sheen).

But to Sorkin, a liberal Democratic activist, the real Clinton White House wasn’t good enough. So he created a dream White House, starring not the real Clinton but the good Clinton who lived in the typical Democrat’s mind in 1991. From there, the propaganda gushed forth. In the first season, Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen as Clinton) and his administration have come out in favor of paying reparations to blacks for slavery, using statistical sampling for the census, putting the self-described “most liberal judge in the country” on the Supreme Court, keeping a Secret Service confidentiality clause, letting gays serve openly in the military, enacting tough campaign finance reform and taking up hate-crimes legislation.

The Bartlet administration is against school vouchers, school prayer, a flag-burning amendment and the religious right. And apparently it’s just warming up: In last week’s episode, the president’s advisors lament that they’ve dropped five points in the polls because they aren’t being liberal enough.

But if “The West Wing” is silly as a political diatribe, it’s brilliant as television. The writing — and there is no one to credit but Sorkin — crackles with energy. The dialogue ricochets from character to character with intelligence and precision. The pacing is swift and sure. The cast is professional and believable. And the production values are the best on network television — from the elaborate, burnished sets to the dynamic yet smooth camerawork.

So how does “The West Wing” manage to be politically didactic and entertaining at the same time? And why isn’t there a Republican version of “The West Wing”? The answer, of course, is that there couldn’t possibly be a Republican version. Liberals can do drama well and conservatives can’t.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, but, generally, when liberal politics intersects with dramatic entertainment, the results can be pretty good. TV drama in the ’80s was dominated by “St. Elsewhere” and “L.A. Law,” and today by “The Practice” and “The West Wing.” When conservatives do drama it comes out as “The A-Team” or “Red Dawn” or “The Omega Strain” or, even worse, “Rambo.”

Liberalism and conservatism each have distinct roles to play in civil society, and this explains why one makes for drama and the other makes for comedy. Democracies change, historically speaking, at a very fast pace. Liberalism is the engine of change; it always seeks to push the culture forward, to advance and evolve. Sometimes it brings about good things (like the abolition of slavery) and sometimes it brings about not-so-good things (like forced busing). But it is always fighting to move beyond the status quo. And eventually liberalism wins because the status quo does change. This Sturm und Drang is the stuff of great drama: It tells of brave struggles that give way to glorious accomplishments.

In a recent episode of “The West Wing,” Lowe’s character is confronted by the daughter of the chief of staff, a public-school teacher. Her father has just shown her a position paper that Lowe had once written advocating school choice and, like any good member of the National Education Association, she is furious. The two wage a pointed debate on the merits of vouchers and she becomes exasperated that he can be such a Neanderthal. And then Sorkin shows us his fastball: Lowe admits to her sheepishly that the paper she saw wasn’t a position paper but an opposition-research memo. Of course he doesn’t support school choice. He was only playing devil’s advocate. They hug and make up.

“The West Wing” is full of earnest arguments and moments of triumph and, dramatically, they’re very satisfying. But when that sincere hopefulness is used as a source of comedy it falls hopelessly flat. Think back to Dixie Carter’s ham-handed “I am woman” punch lines on “Designing Women.” Liberal comedies are either insulting or boring.

That’s because the flip side of the coin is that for all of their dramatic successes, liberal messages nearly always make for bad comedy. “Murphy Brown,” “Ellen,” and “Designing Women” verged at times on the unwatchable. “M*A*S*H,” one of the best shows ever to appear on television, always sagged whenever Alan Alda began his sensitive political philosophizing.

And as antithetical as it may seem, conservatism makes for great sitcom characters. Archie Bunker was much funnier than Meathead and Gloria. George Jefferson grounded “The Jeffersons,” and Alex P. Keaton, played to incorrigible Reaganite perfection by Michael J. Fox, created the humor that was in “Family Ties.” Even “The Simpsons” fills its shows with endless tweaking of the liberal agenda. (In one famous instance, Sideshow Bob is sent back to prison screaming that one day he’ll walk the streets again because you can’t keep the Democrats out of office forever.) And the most conservative character on television is, unquestionably, Hank Hill from “King of the Hill.”

Conservatives are, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, the stupid party. Conservatism doesn’t like change. It fights a perpetual holding action that it knows it can’t win because nothing stays the same forever. Of course, when societies change too fast they fall apart at the seams (witness the 1970s). Conservatives are the brakemen on the train, never stopping forward progress completely, but keeping the pace slow enough that the engine doesn’t jump the tracks.

It is not, however, a glamorous job. Conservatism has been on the losing side of most of the fights since Brutus and Caesar took it outside. This win-loss record is good for the conservative temperament, if bad for the ego. Conservatism can laugh at itself — and it can laugh at others, too, because part of its job is to poke fun at the more ridiculous aspects of liberalism. In the comic arena this resignation to defeat is gold, but in drama it’s creepy. When conservatism is injected into drama, it is often preachy, bitter or wildly unrealistic, the result of losing too many arguments to history and never getting credit for saving the world from devolving into anarchy.

For his part, Sorkin certainly doesn’t give conservatives any credit. He blames them for everything from starving inner-city children to sending death threats to the president’s daughter. And it’s wildly entertaining.

Indeed, much of the political sentiment today seems ready to award Gore the office in 2004. The day after the election, Tim Russert said that Gore could be a “shadow president” and would be “almost a de facto nominee in 2004.” Michael Beschloss said that Gore “would have an opportunity to be almost a shadow president over the next four years.” Dick Morris wrote that Gore should “use the popular indignation over the illegitimacy of the Bush triumph to get the nomination and win the election four years hence.” Predicting a Gore concession, Linda Monk, author of “The Bill of Rights: A User’s Guide,” wrote: “Vice President Al Gore is more likely to quit because he knows he has another chance. If Gore withdraws gracefully, he will be the anointed hero and shadow president until 2004.”

But the best indication of Gore’s political future came from DNC head Ed Rendell on Election Night. Moments after the networks declared Bush the winner, Rendell appeared on television denouncing the vice president. He should have used President Clinton more, Rendell said. He shouldn’t have pulled money out of Ohio. He should have at least carried Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. The race, said Rendell, had always been Gore’s to lose. Rendell was described as “furious.” Talk to certain Democratic operatives and you already hear the half-joking refrain: Gray Davis-Dick Gephardt ’04!

The real historical analogy for Gore isn’t 1824, 1876, 1888 or even Nixon in 1960. It’s 1998. The election fight is the impeachment fight, and it’s to the death. The great modern political lesson that Bill Clinton taught America is this: Victory is vindication. Be it healthcare in 1994 or the government shutdown in 1995 or impeachment in 1998, now, more than ever, might makes right. And if Al Gore loses he isn’t going to be Jackson, Cleveland or Nixon. He’ll be Newt Gingrich.

That is the reason he will fight this election until the bitter, putrid end. Until the last elector has cast his vote. There will be no concession, no admission of defeat. Al Gore is fighting like a man for whom there is no tomorrow — because for him, there isn’t.

Democrats have never been happy with Gore. He was a respected senator, but his 1988 presidential bid showed a man ill-suited to national politics. In the debates he established his trademark robotic style. And among political operatives he began to develop a reputation for exaggeration after his staff was forced to walk him back from several potential untruths. But this time around, Gore was rewarded for his loyalty to Clinton and handed the nomination by the Democratic Party establishment despite his known shortcomings. (Since the Civil War only two other vice presidents of two-term presidents have run. One of them won — George H.W. Bush in 1988 — while one of them lost — Richard Nixon in 1960.)

And with the nomination came almost certain victory. The economy was soaring, America was at peace, his boss’s approval ratings were still high. His opponent was a political newcomer whom Democrats routinely dismissed as a dunce. He led in the polls at Labor Day (a certain sign of victory, until this year). He led in every major poll on Sept. 22 and led in many polls during the first week of October.

Yet Gore managed to bungle the election. He changed his HQ and his wardrobe. He hectored and he pandered; remember when he posited that “the principle of a woman’s right to choose governs” when asked whether or not pregnant women should be executed? He selected a New Democrat running mate and then ran to the left with middle-class populism. And by trying to cover all flanks of the party, he also gave everyone in it a reason to distrust, if not revile, him.

Mind you, they still turned out for him. Eight years in the White House had convinced Democrats that winning is better than losing, and so the party’s base went to the polls in record numbers. (No matter how things end, the great story of the election is the mega-muscle shown by organized labor and blacks.) But not because they liked Al Gore. In fact, many party leaders secretly grumbled about how poorly Gore was running the campaign.

And if Gore loses, those same Democrats will abandon him in an instant. He will not be allowed within a country mile of the nomination in 2004. Already big Democratic donors have blasted the vice president for running an abysmal campaign, and it’s unlikely they’d be willing to pony up the big bucks necessary for Gore to make another run at the White House. Moderates in the Democratic Leadership Council will blame Gore for running with lefty populism, orthodox liberals will blame him for not abandoning all of his New Democrat positions. Each wing of the party will blame Gore for embracing the ideology of the other and in the end, neither will claim him as their own.

However even if the party faithful weren’t allayed against him, Gore would be hard-pressed to gain the Democratic nomination again. Candidates were once routinely allowed a losing general election campaign or two. Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Thomas Dewey, Adlai Stevenson and Richard Nixon all lost elections yet lived to run again. But that capacity for forgiveness disappeared decades ago. Modern campaigns are too big, too dynamic and too expensive to entrust to a loser. Political parties now treat candidates the way the Air Force treats fighter pilots: No matter how good you are, crash once and you never fly again.

Whether or not we admit it to ourselves, Americans have hidden anti-republican (note the lowercase “r”) tendencies. We like to boast about how anyone can grow up to be president, but deep down we long for some sense of legitimacy from our leaders. Maybe it’s the last vestiges of our colonial heritage, a soft spot for our monarchical past, but we do like political families, and we reward them with more political support than they objectively deserve. Every political family, that is, except the Bushes.

One of the most effective lines of attack against George W. Bush — and, of course, poorly utilized by the hapless Gore — has been the idea that he’s only running for office because his daddy was president. Both Bill Clinton and Al Gore have alluded to W.’s “legacy problem,” as did his Republican opponents in the primaries. In the third debate, the vice president referred derisively to “Bush’s dad.” When he appeared on Oprah, Bush himself identified it as an obstacle to his campaign.

The Clintons, Cuomos, Doles and Gores all get extra points for legacy, yet it’s a minus for the Bushes. This is strange because, if you like dynasties, the Bush family is the embodiment of modern noblesse oblige. When you look at the facts, the Bush family is the most exemplary political family since the Roosevelts. By their very essence, the Bushes are what we pretend the Kennedys were.

Let’s examine the family myth: The story of the Kennedys is a classic tale of immigrant elbow grease turned golden, with Joe P. Kennedy scrapping his way to the American dream, raising one of the country’s richest families and bringing forth a trio of sons who made a lasting impression on America.

The niggling details: Joe Kennedy was a man with close business ties to the Mafia and reputedly with tremendous sympathy for the Nazis. He made money by shorting Czech stocks days before Hitler’s invasion and was no friend of minorities. After he failed to rise to president, he spent his winter years pushing each of his sons to claim the office.

In comparison, Prescott Bush, a child of privilege, became a mild-mannered senator and a great proponent of civil rights. He left office to become the Connecticut chairman of the United Negro College Fund and inculcated in his family the idea of Waspy noblesse oblige, teaching them that since they had been born to privilege, they had an obligation to serve society.

Jack Kennedy served in World War II with distinction. So did George H.W. Bush. While Kennedy was cruising the Pacific in PT-109, Bush flew 58 combat missions, twice returning to combat after being shot down. Once JFK took office, his term was short and his only real victory was in the Cuban missile crisis. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War before leading the first successful post-Soviet era conflict in the Gulf War.

The rest of the Kennedy legend is a sordid affair. Jack was a philanderer who famously humiliated his wife with his adultery, as did Bobby. Ted may or may not have been responsible for the death of a woman at Chappaquiddick, Mass., in addition to his own affairs. One cousin was accused of rape while another is suspected of bludgeoning a girl to death with a golf club. And who could forget Joe and Michael Kennedy, the famed “poster boys for bad behavior”? Joe tried to have his marriage of 12 years annulled; Michael had an affair with his family’s 14-year-old baby sitter.

To be fair, the Kennedys have had more than their share of honest tragedy: Joe and Rose Kennedy losing daughter Kathleen in a plane crash and son Joe Jr. in World War II, and of course Jack and Bobby to assassinations. In this generation, the loss of John Jr. seemed to continue the bad luck. But so much of the rest seems like a series of self-inflicted wounds.

The Bushes have seen tragedy: George Sr. and his wife Barbara lost their eldest daughter, Robin, to leukemia when she was just 4 years old, an ordeal which they rarely discuss. And it’s that reticence that largely defines the clan. George W. - his brief, “wild” youth aside — has kept a low-profile private life. He is married to a librarian, sent his daughters to public school and doesn’t drink. His brother Jeb married his college sweetheart, a Mexican-born woman named Columba, worked with the Urban League in Miami to found a charter school and then taught there. He’s now the very popular governor of Florida.

The rest of the Bush children are almost comically lily white. Marvin is active in the United Ostomy Association. Dorothy married a former aide to Richard Gephardt, and spends her time raising money for charities. The dauphin, George P., is building a record of public service working in inner-city schools in Florida. The closest thing there is to a Bush scandal is Neil’s bumbling with the Silverado Savings & Loan.

Our national affinity for the Kennedys, but not the Bushes, doesn’t speak particularly well of us. It points to an unsettling, if accepted, fact of modern life: Fame trumps noblesse oblige. Other current political families, the Clintons, Doles, Cuomos and Gores, aren’t so much political dynasties as they are celebrity dynasties which happen to play in politics. Think of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign signs (“Hillary!”) and Bob Dole’s unsettling Viagra commercials and Chris Cuomo’s pals and Karenna Gore’s endless glossy magazine profiles. These are famous people, first and foremost, moving effortlessly from one media outlet to another. And the Kennedys, who started out as a political dynasty, have morphed into celebrities. They are Arnold and Maria at the Oscars and JFK Jr. posing nude in his politics-as-show-biz magazine. Jack Kennedy’s performance in the Cuban missile crisis is less remembered than Marilyn Monroe’s performance of “Happy Birthday.”

While the Bush family has been building a dynasty on 1950s values and an aristocratic sense of noblesse oblige, they’ve missed the boat. They don’t realize that the trick of modern politics isn’t to be John Foster Dulles, it’s to be Princess Di. Honor, service and fidelity don’t make you famous.

And here is the saddest thing: Our obsession with fame doesn’t just reward undeserving people, it also obscures past triumphs. There was a time when the Kennedy family did help America. But no one remembers that. We don’t remember the anti-communism and latter-day civil rights struggles. We remember the celebrity trappings: a toddler’s sad salute, Jackie’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis, front-page court cases — just like O.J.! — and paparazzi following them around at movie premieres. The biggest change in modern cultural sensibility is that fame now has an absolute value sign around it. Notoriety is the same as celebrity and both trump political legacy.

None of which bodes well for the Bushes. After all, just try imagining a Bush with paparazzi.

If George W. Bush is victorious next week it will be because Bill Clinton’s fame wasn’t as transferable as his foul odor; Gore is an unsuccessful understudy who has neither his predecessor’s 100-kilowatt charm nor the moral stature to avoid associations with Clinton’s scandals.

So we head onward to a Senate most likely with Hillary!, a House with Karenna and a politics cluttered with Viagraed Doles and Leo-nized Cuomos. It’s not good for the Bushes; it’s even worse for us.

After that, a source inside the White House says that on April 3 one of the producers from the special actually called 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and told them menacingly to “make sure you have your facts straight.”

There was also, apparently, a minor fracas over DiCaprio’s questions. After the interview ended and the president left, DiCaprio and the camera crew re-shot some of the questions from the interview. While this “re-ask” is common practice in TV journalism, it is highly unusual in interviews with the president. It’s one thing if Barbara Walters filmed re-asks without, say, Catherine Zeta-Jones present. It’s quite another to do it with a head of state, where a subtle change in a question could potentially alter the meaning of an answer. In a show of its displeasure, the White House sent a subtle signal to ABC by declaring that it would release the full, original transcript of the interview (which had been recorded by a White House communications agent) when and if the show aired.

Then late last week came rumors that ABC might quietly drop the interview — or perhaps the entire Earth Day special — altogether. The network hadn’t cleared air time for the show and the deadline for printing at TV Guide was looming.

However by Friday the Mouse House was somewhat in order. The Earth Day special, now titled “Planet Earth 2000,” is scheduled for prime time Saturday. It will include parts of the DiCaprio interview, but it will not include any of the re-shot questions, because, according to Murphy, “They don’t meet with our policy.” And they have resolved the question of what Westin knew and when he knew it. Murphy said publicly last week that the ABC News president did not know that DiCaprio was interviewing the president in the White House on behalf of his organization and that when he sent out his e-mail denial, “he was not fully informed about what we did at the White House and what we intended to do at the White House.”

Even so, they are trying to downplay the interview. ABC News maintains that the interview lasted only 15 minutes, while deputy White House secretary Jake Siewert made clear on the cable show “First Producer’s Club” that the interview took 30 minutes. A good indicator of how deep network support is for “Planet Earth 2000″ will come later this week. Normally, network news specials receive promotional support from other shows in the news division. If “Planet Earth 2000″ is promoted heavily on “Good Morning America,” “Nightline” and Peter Jennings’ nightly news Thursday and Friday, then the network is clearly behind it.

The entire ordeal has been somewhat humiliating for ABC. Under Westin the news division has been treading water. “Good Morning America” has shown small ratings gains, but the Sunday flagship show, “This Week,” showed a staggering 23 percent drop in viewership last quarter.

And while Westin may have escaped the DiCaprio interview intact, his lack of control doesn’t bode well for his future. Sources close to the network report that Westin’s relationship with Disney head Michael Eisner isn’t solid and may get rockier as the year goes on and the news division takes a higher profile because of the presidential election. Many in the industry are speculating that Westin could be gone around the same time Clinton leaves office.

But if Westin has a panoply of enemies both inside and outside his division, his list of friends right now is even more telling. Tabitha Soren, a former correspondent for MTV News, defended the DiCaprio interview in the New York Times by pointing out that “fighting to keep the distinction between news and entertainment is, after all, pretty self-serving for journalists.” And recently a New York Post columnist wrote, “In my humble opinion, ABC News should be celebrating the forward-looking, youth-oriented efforts of David Westin, instead of condemning his efforts.” That last endorsement is from noted journalist Liz Smith.

Or maybe not. “I don’t think that’s exactly the way it happened,” says ABC spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. “We’ve done environmental specials before … Several of the producers that work in [senior vice president] Phyllis McGrady’s unit were thinking about doing another one.”

Regardless, DiCaprio told ABC News that he would be happy to lend the network his celebrity for an Earth Day special if it devoted “a serious hour to it,” according to Sunshine. By December the project was a go — a serious hour-long special scheduled to air on or near Earth Day, April 22. The show landed in the lap of McGrady, one of Westin’s most trusted lieutenants.

In February, an associate producer for the show contacted the Council on Environmental Quality, one of the White House’s executive agencies. Murphy claims this contact was “only for research purposes.” The council told ABC that it had recently worked with CBS to do a walking tour of the White House where it showed off the various environmental improvements implemented by the president: weather-stripping, eco-safe light bulbs, new insulation. ABC loved the idea, and told the White House that it would like to do a tour just like the one CBS received, but with the president as the tour guide and DiCaprio as the curious guest. “It always, from our perspective, was intended to be an informal walking tour around the White House,” Murphy says.

Around noon on March 31, DiCaprio and an ABC News crew arrived at the White House. “At that point,” Murphy continues, “we were told that they were unable to do the tour and what they wanted to do instead was a sit-down interview.” Which is just what happened. For 15 minutes, the young man who coined the term “pussy posse” interviewed the president of the United States on behalf of one of the most respected news organizations in the free world.

By Friday afternoon there was panic at the ABC News bureau in Washington. During the morning press briefing at the White House, the DiCaprio interview was mentioned, and the ABC senior staff was unhappy. The next morning, Westin sent an e-mail to the troops trying to reassure them. “In case you were calling about the Leonardo DiCaprio issue,” he wrote, “here’s the truth. We did not send him to interview the president. No one is that stupid.”

“I had a call from Phyllis [McGrady] yesterday morning that DiCaprio was visiting the White House (at the request of the White House) at the last minute and would have a crew,” Westin wrote. He goes on to say that he had known DiCaprio would walk through the White House and thought “the president might make an appearance.”

“We’ll take a look at whatever they’ve done and decide whether we can use any of it; it’s quite possible we’ll use none,” he suggested. And on the mixing of news and entertainment, Westin was clear: “All roles of journalist must be played by journalists (duh!).”

Immediately, Westin had problems. He claimed that the White House requested ABC’s presence. Murphy said ABC requested the audience. Westin said he wasn’t sure DiCaprio would even meet the president. Murphy said ABC News knew all along that DiCaprio was scheduled to do a walking tour/interview with Clinton. Westin was forced to posit that the interview with the president was being done on spec — maybe they would use it, maybe they wouldn’t. Presidential interviews are simply not done on spec.

It got worse for Westin. White House spokesman Jake Siewert told a very different version of events: “In February, some time ago [ABC News asked] the president to answer some questions for an ABC News special. And ABC News indicated that it would be Leonardo DiCaprio that would ask the questions.” In a formal interview request submitted by ABC on March 29, the duration of the event is listed at 30 minutes: 10 minutes for a short walk around the White House and 20 minutes for a sit-down interview with the president. The next day, the White House informed ABC that there wasn’t time for the full 30 minutes. The producers, says Siewert, agreed to eliminate the walking tour and spend their 15 minutes on a sit-down interview.

On March 31, the ABC News crew arrived at 9 a.m. to set up for the 12:30 interview. The ABC contingent eventually numbered 20. According to Siewert, DiCaprio was prepared with questions and note cards. Asked about the discrepancy between the stories from Westin and the White House, Murphy demurs, “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

Was Westin lying? Incompetent? Both?

There is one other possibility. In October 1999, Miramax agreed to give $35 million toward the financing of DiCaprio’s next movie, “The Gangs of New York.” Two weeks later, DiCaprio agreed to be the subject of a cover package for Talk magazine. A week or two after that (no one seems to know exactly when) he and ABC came together for the Clinton interview. All three entities — Miramax, Talk and ABC — are owned by Walt Disney Co.

Westin has had his problems here before, a dubious “Good Morning America” “interview” with the Pets.com mascot (Pets.com is partially owned by Disney) and allegations that he spiked an investigative story on Disney theme parks in 1998. Occam’s razor aside, there is present the distinct smell of synergy. Murphy insists: “None, zero, absolutely not. This has nothing to do with corporate synergy.”

In any case, it doesn’t look good for Westin. Either he’s the victim of imposed corporate synergy, he’s out of the loop in his own division or he is pimping ABC News out to the celebrity-entertainment world.

At least this much is clear: Beware of movie stars with ideas.