New footnotes for the Tomorrow, the final episode of The West Wing.
After seven seasons and eight years of President Josiah Bartlet, what is the legacy of the Bartlet administration?
The legacy is not so clear, and this has much to do with the show's overall theme, which I think that many critics have overlooked. The West Wing was not just a fantasy look at what the world could have been like if Bill Clinton had resisted his worst demons and never met Monica Lewinsky. It was about compromise and about how even a president faces limits in what he can do.
West Wing episodes tended to end dramatically with people deciding to make a proposal or winning some procedural step. But they often did not show what happened next and we rarely got to see how those proposals actually worked out. After all, Bartlet faced a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Republican-controlled Senate, and he had to make do with what he had. Bartlet could not be as liberal as he himself was and as some of his constituents probably wanted, and his limited success record reflects that.
- Social Security is probably not saved; Josh helped arrange a bold proposal to save Social Security (Slow News Day), but this never came up again, probably because the idea failed.
- The United States is not part of the Kyoto protocols or of the International Criminal Court (as referenced in Running Mates).
- The United States probably still maintains its embargo with Cuba; Bartlet made a big proposal to end it (Ninety Miles Away), but this probably was easily dismissed given his lame-duck status and opposition by the upcoming presidential candidates.
- Campaign finance issues are still a problem in the seventh season, even after all of Bartlet's efforts in the first.
- Terrorism is still a concern, even though Bartlet ordered the assassination of a terrorist leader at the end of the third season and it was not mentioned at all in 2006 presidential debate episode. In fact, Osama Bin Laden exists and is still very much at large in the West Wing world; he was mentioned by name in "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" (which aired in October 2000) and the possibility that a 9/11-type attack may occur is probably not much less than it was in the real world pre-9/11.
On the domestic front, there are a few notable successes that Bartlet can claim. For one thing, the minimum wage is higher, thanks in part to Sen. Arnold Vinick (
"In God We Trust"). Perhaps the clearest success was in abortion rights: Bartlet nominated two liberal Supreme Court justices (Roberto Mendoza in
"The Short List" and Evelyn Lang in
"The Supremes"), thus establishing a more liberal bent to the Supreme Court than in real life. This means that the possibility of constitutionally-protected abortion rights being undermined probably is much less than in the real world.
On the international front, Bartlet has deployed the military in ways more keeping with Bill Clinton than with George W. Bush. Bartlet has deployed troops to the fictional African country of Kundun to prevent genocide, to Israel to maintain a peace agreement, and to Kazakhstan to prevent war between China and Russia over the Caspian Sea region's oil.
Accordingly, the United States under Bartlet probably is perceived by other countries better than it has been under the Bush administration, but possibly not by much. The United States under Bartlet may not have invaded in Iraq or engaged in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but it did order the assassination of a Middle Eastern leader and it did set forth a foreign-policy doctrine that justified greater military intervention when the United States unilaterally decides.
Ultimately, Bartlet's record is mixed and unclear, just as it would be in real life. I've appreciated this underlying truth over the past seven seasons as much as I've enjoyed the dramatic moments and eloquent speeches. I'm sorry that we won't be able to see Matt Santos or Arnold Vinick face the same challenges and end up with a similarly mixed record.
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