NBC's engaging political drama "The West Wing," about a fictional Democratic president and his staff, followed up its Emmy night landslide (it took a record nine awards, including best drama) with a resounding ratings victory for its Oct. 4 season premiere. Twenty-five million viewers tuned in for the episode, doubling the series' average weekly viewership from the previous season. Not only was the show the No. 1 rated program of the week, it brought NBC its highest rating for the time period since 1989. To put it in political terms, "The West Wing" has the Big Mo.

The two-hour episode was a continuation of last season's cliffhanger finale in which President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his entourage were fired upon by gunmen while leaving a town meeting at the Newseum. The president was wounded, as was deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford). The assailants were white supremacists, but they weren't aiming at the president; they were aiming at his African-American personal aide, Charlie Young (Dule Hill), who happens to be dating a white woman -- Bartlet's college student daughter, Zoey (Elisabeth Moss).

Did you catch that last part? In the most popular TV show in America, the daughter of the president of the United States is dating a black man, with her father's blessing. In the most popular TV show in America, the president of the United States is also an undiluted liberal Democrat who is emphatically pro-gun control, is trying to replace "don't ask, don't tell" with a policy that protects the civil rights of gays serving in the military, has come out swinging on campaign finance reform (and he's not all talk either) and has vowed to protect a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

In the very first episode of "The West Wing," in fact, Bartlet was confronted by a pair of right-wing Christian anti-abortion leaders who sought to use a perceived insult by one of Bartlet's staff members as leverage to force Bartlet to endorse the morality legislation they were pushing for. We've already learned in the episode that Bartlet is religious, and that, in a private crusade, he spent eight months traveling the country trying to discourage teenage girls from having abortions. But, as his chief of staff, Leo McGarry (John Spencer), put it, Bartlet "doesn't believe that it's the government's place to legislate this issue."

And Bartlet dismissed the anti-abortion leaders with a frank speech that was in stunning contrast to the usual timid "balance" of prime-time topical dramas. He parried with them first, quizzing them on the Ten Commandments. Where in Scripture, he finally asked them, does the lord command his followers to mail symbolically mutilated rag dolls to little girls -- specifically, to the president's granddaughter -- who espouse pro-choice views in teen magazine interviews? The Bible and the Constitution are two separate entities, and, by God, he intends to keep them that way, thundered Bartlet. "Now get your fat asses out of my White House!"

Amazingly, this was Bartlet's first scene in the show -- "West Wing" writer/creator Aaron Sorkin had waited approximately 50 minutes into the debut episode to introduce the president. It was a breathtaking entrance (and Sheen played it to the hilt), establishing Bartlet as a political anomaly; here was a politician willing to speak his mind, sharply, without fear of alienating potential backers or risking reprisal from enemies. What a contrast to the obfuscating, hemmed-in men who would be president this campaign season.

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