Let me start by saying that I, like any self-respecting political junkie, have watched and adored The West Wing — all seven seasons, multiple times.
So, before you roll your eyes and think, here we go again, another piece of Sorkin musings, let me state it plainly: The show remains the closest thing modern television gets to pure political catnip.
It has become such a global language that every English-speaking politician, from Tony Blair and David Cameron to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has insisted, at some point, on comparing themselves to President Josiah Bartlet and his merry band of idealistic staff.
The starry-eyed, walking, talking world conjured by Aaron Sorkin has seduced even the most sophisticated political enthusiasts. Tony Blair’s love for her was well documented: No 10 apparently once invited John Spencer – the late, great Leo McGarry – to have bread with Aaron Sorkin, Blair’s real-life chief of staff. One wonders if they also tried to enlist Martin Sheen to give them one of those soaring fatherly pep talks that always end with him strolling down the aisle while rousing orchestral strings hammer home the point.
And let’s not forget Bill Clinton’s advisor, Gene Sperling, who was not only a leading political mind but also served as an expert advisor on the program. Blair’s office invited him to dinner as well, bridging the gap between fantasy and reality so seamlessly that one would have expected CJ Craig to come in and brief them on the daily crisis. The West Wing was the political soap of the day. It gave politicians the same rush that teenage pop fans might get from meeting the full lineup of their favorite band backstage. For a certain generation, it was cultural currency – and, more importantly, it made politics seem downright cool, something that was extremely rare.
Fast forward to 2017 (or actually 2025, if we look back and count the years of regret). Enter Donald Trump as president. The question arises: how far is he from Sorkin’s luminous world? Trump is the antithesis of Bartlet, isn’t he? The reckless spectacle, the Twitter rants, the preference for provocative sound bites over careful, rational debate—all of it seems anathema to the idealistic, calculated legislative artistry that Sorkin’s scripts so worshipfully championed. President Bartlet was a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame and a Nobel Prize winner, a man who poured over reams of data before he made the slightest peep. Trump? Certainly no cross-charts of comparative advantage will be drawn in the Oval Office.
Watch carefully, however, and you will find West Wing moments in the Trump presidency, whether we like them or not. The genius of Sorkin’s masterpiece lies in its ability to turn the daily drudgery of politics into compelling drama—the big speeches, the grand declarations, the employees’ unwavering devotion to their man. The Trump White House may not be precise, but it is certainly big. And it is this flair for the dramatic, the showmanship, that paradoxically reflects the power that The West Wing has over its audience. In a strange way, Trump has turned the real West Wing into something akin to a reality show, with suspenseful scenes every week and an eternally breathless press corps. We may not like it, but it has its own narrative arcs that might make Sorkin, in a strange alternate universe, nod in acknowledgment.
Meanwhile, across the pond, we have to wonder if Keir Starmer’s team are busy figuring out which streaming platform the show is still on in the UK or hitting eBay to get DVDs and a player to play on in some marathon sessions before strategy meetings. You can almost imagine one of the employees relentlessly declaring: “We need to find a ‘Let Bartlet be Bartlet’ moment!” In fact, according to The Times, the phrase “let Starmer be Starmer” has only just entered mainstream commentary. Let’s not forget that it was the phrase “Let Bartlet be Bartlet” that became the show’s rallying cry — a reminder to our dear President Jed Bartlet to be his best. Now we hear about Starmer, and this is probably the closest to a real British version of Sorkin’s taste. The noble advice, the exciting phrase, the pledge not to compromise. Sean Kemp joked on Twitter this morning that this new bit of Starmer lore continues “whatever the fourth goal in the hat-trick is called”. accurately.
But, comedic similarities aside, one of the most interesting endorsements of The West Wing came from Justin Trudeau, who admitted on The West Wing Weekly that he found the show quite relatable, right down to the day-to-day work and fleeting time. Moments of moral clarity.” He even bragged that he used the scene of the 2002 Bartlet debate — the scene in which the president invalidated his opponent’s shallow “10-word” answers — as a setting for his own contests. And it worked for him. Trudeau came into office with youthful swagger and rhetorical vision However, as events have shown, real political theater cannot be written with such precision, nor can all the twists and turns of the future be condensed into a Sorkin diatribe.
However, the appeal of this Sorkin speech is something no political geek can quite resist. Take a quick tour through the best five minutes of any political show, the opening scene of Sorkin’s The Newsroom (there’s a convenient Viral clip on YouTubeif you have five minutes). There’s Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy, who finds himself locked into an uncomfortable direct answer and launches into a diatribe about why America isn’t the greatest country in the world. It’s raw, it’s edgy, it’s borderline heretical, and it’s the way a legion of political spectators secretly yearn for politicians to speak: with honesty untainted by fabrication, offering rants that would knock James Carville’s socks off. But in real life, this kind of rhetoric is as rare as hens’ teeth — especially now that spin itself has become a zero-sum game, the lifeblood of perpetual campaigning. The only British politician who comes close is Nigel Farage, which may explain why he is now winning in the polls thanks to his direct style of dealing with the public.
And here we are, decades after obsessing over Sorkin’s poignant drama, still the unattainable shining standard for political behavior. It is still cited at press conferences, dinner parties and, yes, at Prime Minister’s Questions. The idea that every new prime minister (or indeed president) might be the next Jed Bartlet has proven more ephemeral than the damp phrase “new normal”. Yet, ironically, this may be part of the West Wing’s enduring genius: it presented not the real but the ideal political sphere. It’s an allegory for how we wish politics could be — high-minded, passionate, and filled with moral clarity — rather than what it usually is, full of cheap cynicism and questionable negotiations behind closed doors.
So, how far is Donald Trump from the West Wing? It’s tempting to say a million miles away that Sorkin’s calculated erudition and Trump’s staccato rigor don’t speak the same language. But I’m not completely sure. They share a sense of visibility, even if they are at opposite ends of the rhetorical scale. They both delighted their fans. Bartlet with a high moral sentiment, and Trump with a strong populist punch. If The West Wing teaches us anything, it’s that political theater resonates deeply. We want a big emotional story, and a sense of a moral arc that bends in the right direction (or at least somehow). Trump’s new presidency will be a show of a very different kind, but it certainly will be. Perhaps this is the real lesson: The West Wing demonstrated how deeply politics and performance are intertwined. Whether you prefer Bartlet’s White House style or Trump’s street-fighting style, both are indelibly etched into modern political culture.
Ultimately, I suspect that all these references to the West Wing in politics – from Blair’s dinner guests to Starmer’s rhetorical pep talk, to Trudeau’s binge-watching – will continue to crop up for years to come. As long as there are leaders who want to conjure that golden mixture of intellect, magic, and unstoppable moral gravitas, Sorkin’s script will remain the Platonic ideal. We will continue to measure real politicians by how much they fail. Or, in Trump’s case, how far he has gone in a completely different direction. One thing is certain: President Bartlet is still in that legendary corridor, walking and talking, as he always has. And let it stay that way for a long time.