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January 23, 2005
And the next president of the United States is ... Alan Alda or Jimmy Smitts
by Alex Massie
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=86062005
JUST when one Washington election campaign ends, another begins. And, as has become traditional, the Iowa caucuses will be the first important test. As John Kerry proved last January, an impressive victory in the Hawkeye State can turn a candidate from outsider to favourite in the race to win his party’s Presidential nomination.
This time, however, the contenders positioning themselves for an election battle, are thought to be Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits as they prepare for the caucuses in a forthcoming episode of The West Wing. In other words, the battle to succeed Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, has begun.
"We’ve set up both candidates as someone you’d like to have a beer with," said the series executive producer John Wells.
Alda, who found fame as Hawkeye in MASH, plays a Republican Senator from the midwest, whereas Smits is a Democrat from Houston.
Although the sitting vice-president Bob Russell, played by Gary Cole, believes he has a chance of the Democratic nomination he faces two significant problems: he is thought a political lightweight within the series’ fictional Washington and, in real-life, Cole possesses less glitz and star power than Smits who made his name in the 80s series LA Law.
Being a Latino cannot harm his chances either even if, in real-life, no Latino has yet run successfully for nationwide office.
For the last year producers and executives at NBC have been wondering what to do with the series. The immutable laws of the American political process meant that Martin Sheen’s character, President Josiah Bartlet would soon have to depart the stage having served two full (fictional) terms in the Oval office.
The programme’s makers, having presumably rejected the Dallas "shower option" of making the last year just a bad dream that could be conveniently wiped from the memory, have decided that the show must go on. Negotiations for a seventh series that would include an election between Smits and Alda are nearly complete.
Alda joked last week that he was looking forward to having the chance to solve America’s problems. "Anything to turn this great country of ours around," he said. The veteran MASH star who, like most of his colleagues, is in real life a committed Democrat, added: "I’ll do as many episodes as it takes to achieve our goals."
Wells said the next series would also allow the programme to "offer a glimpse of post-White House life". Sheen is looking at Bartlet becoming "a Jimmy Carter-type of ex-president".
He added: "I would like another term, but that can’t happen, so I’m going to have to live vicariously through one of these guys [Alda and Smits]."
The programme now exists without its founder Aaron Sorkin who left last year, leaving wells as the show’s dominant force. Some of the show’s most devoted fans believe the series "jumped the shark" when Sorkin left - a TV term for having past it’s best - as a host of guest stars such as Matthew Perry and John Goodman were brought in to boost ratings even as the plots moved away from any attempt at realism or credibility and into melodrama.
NBC’s president Jeff Zucker said last week: "The ratings for The West Wing are not what they were. But it’s an incredibly difficult time period. The fact is, its ratings are good, not great."
The show also began to feel out of step with contemporary Washington. In any case the real-life drama unfolding in the run-up to the war in Iraq as the State Department and the Pentagon conducted a near-open civil war within the administration was both more dramatic than anything The West Wing could hope to achieve.
Even without September 11 and its aftermath, The West Wing might have eventually struggled once George W Bush replaced Bill Clinton in the White House. Suddenly an idealised Clinton-type figure in the White House seemed out of step with reality.
Richard Schiff, who plays White House communications director Toby Ziegler, admitted the cast had little idea how long the show might run.
"The plans are that it’s going to go a full term, eight years. Thank God, constitutionally we can’t go more than that," he said while attending a Liberal fundraiser.
Unlike in politics however, it seems that the TV show really can go on, even if The West Wing seems determined to risk proving that Enoch Powell’s famous dictum that all political lives end in failure applies to television shows too.
Posted by Jo at January 23, 2005 11:25 PM