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I didn't get hooked on The West Wing until a couple of years ago, when I was in Spain. My Spanish friend explained that she loved the show because the wit seemed terribly American to her. Also, as she did not draw a line between personal and political positions, she found it refreshing to watch people in government portrayed as fallible, even fragile, as opposed to omnicient, better than the citizenry.
The fantasy of having a government made of people who see themselves as public servants rather than simply power brokers, keeps me watching. Mostly I enjoy - or enjoyed - the emphasis on intellectual merit as much as political savvy. The race for Bartlett's sucessor pitted candidates of intellectual and moral stature against each other and against a system that knocks the values right out of you. The characters in the WW are smart, flawed people who fail as often as they succeed. Even success is mitigated by trade-offs and concessions. In that there is no fantasy.
In an time when many of us want "none of the above" as a selection on our voting forms, when our leaders are not so much leading as dragging us into a maze of terrors, when public dialogue is pumped up hyperbole and intentional misdirection, the language of hope is not spoken by our politicians or journalists, but by fictional, television characters. Alas! My voter registration card for a president who understands mathematics, knows history, speaks Latin, yet doubts his own capacity for understanding even as he questions the existence of God.
