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November 08, 2005
''West Wing'' shows how to hold debates
The Virginian-Pilot
It took a scripted, rehearsed, audacious TV drama to put some spontaneity back in American presidential politics. Sunday night’s live installment of “The West Wing” matched two fictional candidates in a debate stripped of the stupid rules that govern the real ones.
The result was the sort of high-minded hurly-burly that Americans have been demanding since the first televised debate, in 1960, ensured John Kennedy’s election. Modern presidential debates — the real ones — are so devoid of substance that they result in nattering about the bizarre bump between the president’s shoulder blades.
On “The West Wing” this season, Democratic U.S. Rep. Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, and Republican Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda, are vying to succeed President Josiah Bartlet , played by Martin Sheen.
Sunday night, the two ersatz candidates talked about tax cuts, debt relief, health insurance, illegal immigration, the death penalty — the latter producing an exchange consisting entirely of two words: Yes, and no.
Vinick made the kind of compelling case for tax cuts, including ones for Africa, entirely missing from Republican rhetoric in the real world. Santos, in a moment that had many Democrats slapping their foreheads, found a way to rehabilitate the adjective “liberal” in a fashion that has eluded the party for decades:
“Republicans have tried to turn 'liberal’ into a bad word,” he said. “Well, liberals ended slavery in this country.”
“A Republican president ended slavery,” Vinick retorted.
“Yes, a liberal Republican, Senator. What happened to them?”
Sunday night’s sweeps stunt — which is what it was — brought an energy to network television that has been long gone. Strangely, though, in showing once again the purity of live TV, with its mayhem and mistakes and truth, “The West Wing” also showed the poverty of the modern presidential process, which is supposed to have all those things, and never does.
Posted by Jo at November 8, 2005 08:46 AM