<I admire the hell out of the fictional President Bartlett - while understanding full well that other actors could portray him as well as Sheen does; Sheen has nothing to do with it - and we could do a lot worse than to find a real person of the same caliber.

It's easy to play a liberal President on television, where if you raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour, the scriptwriter can make it work, and where reality is exactly the way liberals keep telling themselves it is.

From a commentary on the show:

I have a confession to make that may get me drummed out of the vast right wing conspiracy. I love NBC's Wednesday night drama, "The West Wing." I watch it religiously. It is well written and extremely well acted. Even though a hardened survivor of "Potomac fever" might find the stories a bit of a stretch, they are usually entertaining and occasionally riveting.



The orientation of the show is certainly liberal. Indeed, liberal opinion on issues such as environmentalism, economic policy, and racial quotas, about which reasonable people may disagree, are treated as settled fact on "The West Wing" while conservative positions are frequently caricatured. But the main characters, who place principle above personal gain to do what is right for America, are such admirable human beings that the show's relentless liberal orthodoxy fades into the background. They always play fair, but they have their work cut out for them because in this morality play, the forces of evil really are evil. Indeed, the Republicans, especially those associated in some way with the "religious right," are positively reptilian.

Setting the style of "The West Wing" is President Josiah Bartlet, magnificently portrayed by Martin Sheen. "The West Wing's" president is a holder of a Nobel Prize in economics, but he also happens to be a devout Catholic who knows the Bible by heart, which comes in handy when he needs to demolish the pretentious right wing religious fanatics who continually vex him and obstruct his efforts to make America a better place.

Although his administration is reliably liberal, President Bartlet possesses virtues even a conservative could admire. He obeys the Constitution and the law. He is devoted to his wife and daughter. Being unfaithful to his wife would never cross his mind. He is no wimp when it comes to foreign policy--no quid pro quo for him. When a hostile state shoots down a US plane carrying a Navy doctor who has treated him, President Bartlet takes it personally and makes his chief of staff as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explain why he shouldn't call down the wrath of God on the people who did it.

He is absolutely open-minded and insists on hearing all views, even conservative ones. In one episode, a conservative woman commentator, probably based on Ann Coulter, obliterates Rob Lowe's character, the brilliant lawyer Sam Seaborn, in a television debate. President Bartlet insists that she be offered a job. Despite her deeply felt conservative beliefs, she is soon won over by the integrity of the president and his advisers. As the episode ends, she is chastising her former right wing cronies, rendered speechless by her decision to accept a job from the despised Democrats, for criticizing her new employer. Any liberal who could so easily co-opt Ann Coulter must be pretty impressive. By God, even I would vote for such a man.

For the student of popular culture, the most interesting thing about "The West Wing" is what it reveals about how liberals see themselves. Not only are they right, they are good. Not only are their conservative opponents wrong, they are evil. This is especially true of conservative Christians, who are portrayed as anti-homosexual, anti-woman, and anti-Semitic.



It's kind of amusing to see liberals who are so condescending of stereotypical literary archetypes in conservative favorites like John Wayne movies or Ayn Rand novels, eat them up when it's THEIR stereotypes.

I know exactly why Bartlett is such an appealing character to liberals. He is exactly what Bill Clinton was supposed to be when he was first elected, and what he pumped himself up to be, before he was revealed as little more than a slightly better-looking Boss Hogg with a zipper problem.

President Bartlett is the Bill Clinton who never was.

Just out of curiosity, is the Catholic Bartlett pro-choice on the show?