The West Wing:The Last Sane Democrats or Life Imitating Art

 This is not my usual topic for this blog but it's something that I feel compelled to put out in the world. 

I recently rediscovered the TV show *The West Wing*, and I've been diving into it over the past week or so. I largely missed it during its original run, but it's pulled me in now for several reasons. It's undeniably a masterful series—sharp dialogue, superb acting, and some of the best scripting television has ever seen—but what fascinates me most is the window it provides into liberal thought at the turn of the millennium, during the latter years of the Clinton administration. In my view, that era represents the last time the Democratic Party and the broader American left could reasonably be described as at least semi-sane and grounded in pragmatic center-left politics.

A couple of aspects of the show particularly struck me as I watched. First, the way Republicans are portrayed often feels like a mirror image of what we now call "Trump Derangement Syndrome" among many Democrats today—an obsessive, almost irrational opposition that borders on dysfunction. The GOP characters are frequently shown as rigid, opportunistic, or outright unhinged in their resistance to President Bartlet’s agenda. I don’t recall real-world Republican opposition to Clinton being quite that cartoonish (though I was an independent with right-leaning instincts at the time, so perhaps I was one of the viewers the show was gently ribbing).

More unsettling, though, is an episode in which the Bartlet administration begins facing sharp criticism from the far-left wing of its own party—at least as depicted in the show’s universe. The progressive character pushing that critique, with his moral absolutism and uncompromising demands, would blend seamlessly into today’s Democratic congressional caucus or Senate Democratic leadership. He reminded me vividly of figures like Gavin Newsom or Tim Walz, echoing many of the same talking points we hear routinely now on issues ranging from identity politics to economic redistribution.

Consider this: *The West Wing* aired from 1999 to 2006. At the time, those far-left positions were presented—subtly but unmistakably—as something of a parody, an extreme fringe that the principled, pragmatic Bartlet team had to manage and ultimately reject in favor of workable compromise. The show was widely celebrated, even by conservatives, for its relatively fair and even-handed portrayal of American politics. Yet in just about 25 years, what the series treated as satirical exaggeration has become mainstream Democratic orthodoxy. That dramatic leftward shift—from parody to platform—is, frankly, alarming.

I genuinely wish more progressives and Democratic leaders would revisit *The West Wing* today with fresh eyes and an open mind. If they did, they might recognize how far their party has drifted from the center-left idealism the show once championed—an idealism rooted in competence, bipartisanship, and a belief that good governance could transcend ideology. It’s not too late to steer back toward that saner, more unifying ground.

DMMC 

12-13-25