1670 West Wing Blues

Sadly both the Brown and Obama administrations have in common being conned, is the kindest way of putting it, by the capitalist brotherhood in paying giant size bonuses to the banking scum whose greed and incompetence have brought millions into unemployment, families to lose their homes and financial distress to millions. In other times these people would have been stripped of their possessions and incarcerated, or worse. There is news this evening that the House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to introduce a 90% tax bonuses paid out by any company accepting more than $5 billions of bail out money. Well done. For once an administration is not prisoner of its party or parliamentary system. This was the situation in the fourth episode of West Wing : Five Votes Down.

President Bartlett played by the excellent actor Martin Sheen is determined to make progress in tackling the extent of gun crime in the USA. Every President knows hundreds of thousand die in their country because of the constitutional right to hold arms to protect ones family and self. I have every sympathy that in such a situation the law abiding should be hesitant about giving up their rights while the criminal class remains unaffected and the arms dealers are allowed by governments to sell their wares regardless of their immediate uses and in the future. Once any genie is out of its bottle it is impossible to recapture and the best that can be done is to monitor and constrain. For effective arms control in the USA to take place, arms manufacture and sales would have to be nationalized and a war declared on gun crime with the same determination as the war or terrorism. In episode 4 the President accepts that what is being done is palliative but even this comes under threat.

The episodes opens as the White House senior staff and media team attend a function at which the President is making the most of the merits of the new legislation and the team is then shown the arranged long planned but secret walk from the event to the security vehicles. The walk lasts four minutes and Charlie is on hand to see the President off in his car before returning home. The scene involved 500 extras. All the main characters have something to say.

The concern of the episode is that 5 democrats are not going to vote in favour of measure and the passage is therefore in doubt. One Senator explains that he is coming up for re-election and cannot afford to alienate anyone. Josh explains that if he votes against the measure he will not be the party candidate at the election. Another is open about his action. Apart from seeing the President when elected for a photo shoot with others he has had no contact. The deal is struck. He will have another photo, playing chess with the President. Getting others on line is more difficult and the Chief of Staff is forced to call on the Vice President for assistance in relation to one Senator and their contact reveals that both had a serious alcohol problem. The Vice President has his weekly card school which includes a judge and others in the government eye who cannot afford to be open about their private Alcoholics Anonymous group. The Chief of Staff joins in, under stress because his wife has walked out unable to cope with the reality of her husband holding such high office. He failed to remember their anniversary returning several hours after the banquet ended. He arranges for his staff to buy a expensive piece of jewellery and arranges of a meal at home with a violin player. However this does not prevent her leaving precipitated when a staffer rings with the message that the appointment with the Vice President is at 9pm. McGarry pleads that he would only be away for 45 mins. She pleads about saving their marriage, He pleads that it is opportunity to achieve something few others have and he admits that he wants and needs to this and that in reality it is more important than saving his marriage.

The saying of this episode must be that of Leo. There are two things you do not want people to see how you make them, laws and sausages.

Series creator Aaron Sorkin originally considered Alan Alda, Jason Richards and Sidney Poitier for the role of President and Martin Sheen was only contracted for four episodes as the intention was to focus on the role of staff and their relationships. The producers were so impressed with Sheen that they decided to make the character a regular feature and Sheen agreed because of the social issues to be covered. It was a marriage which led to most Americans of the centre left and fans from overseas wishing that Martin would put up for the job so they could vote for him! Then came Barack Obama

The West Wing President is a man with political background in that he is a descendent of Josiah Bartlett, a signatory of the declaration of Independence. The President is haunted by his father who treated him badly, in part because he adopted the religion of his mother, a Catholic, hence his knowledge of Latin, and that the putting up for election and get popular approval is a substitute for the failure to get his father to like him. He grew up into an intellectual and was accepted for places at the best universities but chose Notre Dame because of the serious intention to become a priest. (These were not factors why I watched every episode and continue to enjoy doing so again and again, putting the TV series alongside Casablanca for films, as I did not have this information until now). The West Wing President graduated summa cum laude with a B.A in American studies and a minor in theology. He then took his masters and PHD in economics at the London School of Economics hence his global understanding and left of centre political leanings and a Keynesian, wining the Nobel prize based on his work about the application of macro economics in developing economies, an award he reluctantly shared with a Japanese economist with a conservative approach.

Like many men originally felt called to the priesthood the situation dramatically changed when the discovery of the attractions of the female, in this instance his future wife, a medical doctor and liberated female, Abigail and they have three daughters Zoe Patricia the youngest who in the next but one episodes is introduced, coming from the family home to join her father before going to college. Their second daughter Eleanor Emily is also a doctor and the eldest Elizabeth Anne(Westin) who is married with two children. He is protective as a father and as a President especially when his youngest daughter is the subject of an individual assassination attempt in the sixth episode.

Prior to running for the Presidency he had served as a governor of New Hampshire for two terms having won in 1996 with a 69% vote. He was also a three term member of the US House of Representatives, so a seasoned political campaigner having also successfully been a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

He was not a front runner for the Democratic nomination having been persuaded to run by his long time political associate and friend, Leo McGarry, former Campaign Manager and now Chief of Staff who at times acts as a stern by kindly father figure. He has beaten the front runner Senator John Hoynes of Texas where the party does not do well overall, hence the difficulty that arises when Bartlet explains his unwillingness to campaign there because it would require him to wear a large hat, translated by the media, as a funny hat. He invites the Senator to be the Vice Presidential Candidate which is accepted as a means of taking over in four years as he expects the President to slip up, and this explains the conflict and distance between them. A mistake which President Obama does not appear to have made, by picking someone older and unlikely to prove a rival in the future, whereas the able and ambitious Hilary Clinton will remain determined to become the first US female President.

A feature of the series is the way the characters attempt to maintain normal lives and in the fifth episode, The Crackpots and These Women, the younger members of the team are seen playing basketball with the President who they accuse of cheating when he introduces a new seven foot defensive player who he claims is a federal employee assistant to his Counsel on physical fitness. Toby Ziegler, Communication‘s director reminds that in the previous tennis tournament he was forced to play against someone who had an amazing resemblance to Steffi Graf, and this player also has an amazing resemblance to a successful national team player! He comments on the President‘s obsession with winning.

One feature of this episode is what Josh calls Leo’s Crackpot day. A day when senior staff are expected to give time to those who passionately press oddball causes. One of these wants to create a 1800 mile corridor to enable migrating and endangered species to travel across the states at a cost of millions which as is pointed out could be spent on new schools and other more important causes. A second presentation is for the government to devote more attention to unidentified flying objects.

A second feature of the episode is when Josh is given an instruction card on who to call and what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. CJ asks Josh to read an article about smallpox in the New York and this affects him deeply as he realises that with the end of the cold war it is unlikely that he will be subject to a nuclear attack, but more likely a test tube will be broken on the streets of some close populated city thus causes most of the nation to be wiped out from the disease. However even this possibility does not prevent him from deciding that he would rather stay with his family and staff than be one of the few protected to manage the after situation.

I attended the national civil defence centre for a course on my role in the event of a nuclear attack and I carried around me the local Wartime emergency plan as well as Civil emergency plan for my area and strongly believed as I still do in the need for effective preparations to deal with all possible kinds of emergencies however remote they appear. My criticism then was that simply because one held a particular post did not meant suitably for undertaking such a role or that anyone would be effective without training, practice and retraining as threats changed. Faced with a crisis some people reacted by freezing while others let loose their demons and behaved no different from those we had gone to war over in the first instance. The presentation of the pass triggers several of Josh’s demons and he visits his psychiatrist not seen since his official Presidential appointment, and in which he reveals how his older sister died in fire when baby sitting him and how he had run out. He decides he cannot run out on his family and work colleagues should the major crisis occur.

The core of this programme is the preparations for a Presidential Press conference. Josh sits in his office worrying about his position and that of his friends listening and inspired by the singing of Ave Maria when CJ calls to remind he is expected in the Presidential suite for a chilli supper party to celebrate the arrival of his youngest daughter. As Josh arrives, the President and Leo are praising their female colleagues, singling out his personal secretary who has served the nation for 14 years having previously lost two sons in the Vietnam war.

The memorable exchange was between the President and Toby who accused him of allowing the demons in his head to shout down the better angels in his brain. Later at the party he qualifies this saying that for the first time in a long while, the battle between the forces has become a fair fight. The President refers to the crackpot day visits earlier and that the UFO was a failed Russian satellite burning up in the earth’s atmosphere and that having succeeded in exploring into space, in search of the face God, there are other challenges for them, such as ensuring that every young person, like his daughter, who wants to go to college is able to do so and reap the benefits of such experience.

In the sixth episode of the first series, Mr Willis of Ohio. There are two main stories. In the first an intruder is discovered in the outer grounds of the White House, the first of eight security lines. I cannot remember if this happened before or after an intruder was found within Buckingham Palace. The President is shocked to find that the assassin was a deranged woman with a gun and where the target was his daughter. Later the President, noting that Charlie seems to just work and stay home suggests that Josh takes him out for a few drinks in a local bar before returning to watch an important vote. The President’s daughter hear about this and invites herself along with the school teacher daughter of the Chief of Staff who calls to ensure that her father is coping having moved out of his home to allow his wife to return. In addition Sam and CH join the party at a bar attended by young people who are attending university, the kind of place daughter Zoe will be experiencing when she goes to college. She is hassled by three drink too much young men when she goes to the bar alone, leaving her panic button behind, in order to see how a particular drink is made. Charlie is the first to sense she is in danger and immediate goes to protect her and ensure to ensure she returns to the table with the minimum of fuss and is subjected to racial as well as normal male abusive and threatening behaviour in such a situation. Josh and then Sam also go to aid with Josh sounding the panic button. Earlier at the party Zoë asks Sam if he has not brought his female friend and then others are shocked to learn she knows about the situation, having been told by the daughter of the Chief of Staff who Sam unintentionally slipped out without realising who she was. Sam enquires if their respective parents are aware of the position and they advise that they are collecting I.O.U favours. Back at the White House the President expresses concern at the action of his daughter in going to the bar without arranging appropriate security and explains his fear they she will be kidnapped and he asked to do something which he would find impossible to grant, although his priority would be her life and welfare, something which happens in the recent episode of 24 hours and which becomes a reality later in the programme series. The President is made aware of the action of Charlie and invites him to join in what appears to be a nightly poker game. The game is a devise to enable the President to show of his general knowledge although he uses this as a means of distracting opponents.

I am not sure about the inclusion of this activity or the extent to which the President is so familiar with his closest employees. It takes an exceptional individual to be able to combine friendship with being the boss. There the risk of putting employees in an impossible position. One interesting aspect is that the President appears to have been able to hand pick his immediate staff in way I am not sure exists in the UK where equal opportunity legislation can create problems when it comes to effective team building although the art is to ensure the job specifications are clear and precise

The main political issue of the episode is a debate over altering the national census and the costs and limitations of the traditional method where every household is visited by a trained enumerator and where money could be saved by taking samples for the information required. A meeting is held to persuade three congressmen to change their vote and this includes Mr Willis of Ohio who is attending as a temporary replacement for his wife who has died and while a successor can be elected. It is fascinating that a spouse can participate and vote in such a situation. His two colleagues cannot be persuaded from moving away from the agreed line. The Presidential negotiating team have before them copies of the draft budge in thousands of pages and which includes a significant number of individual expenditure items put in to effectively buy the votes of individual members of the Congress and Senate (pork barrel politics), The threat is to hold up the budget until the right position is adopted on the census legislation. The temporary representative from Ohio listens to the arguments and changes announces he will vote as required because of the force of the argument, Toby Ziegler tells everyone, I met an unusual man, He didn’t walk in with his mind made up. He genuinely wanted to do what he thought was best. He didn’t mind saying the words I don‘t know. What an indictment of the party political system on sides of the Atlantic that such a statement rang true.