The Great Pretenders

...In the same interview, he remarked, "There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do...

...You will not find such subtlety in The West Wing...

...In one of many hilarious set pieces about the British Establishment, the fair-haired, plummy foreign secretary Sir Richard Wharton (Donald Pickering) joins Sir Humphrey in explaining to Bernard how the system works: Sir Richard: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis...

...But it is well worth noticing, because democracy cannot thrive on sunbeams and the better angels of our nature...

...Horace once advised the playwright: "Put the elements together / In just the right way...

...Sir Humphrey: Well, I thought it might upset you...

...But there's a problem with Sorkin's "valentine to public service...

...Moreover, Hacker's degree from the London School of Economics places him socially a notch below Sir Humphrey, not to mention below his own Personal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (Derek Fowlds), the very model of a career civil servant with an Oxbridge First in classics...

...Unfortunately, the laughs don't occur where they are most needed: during The West Wing's many flights of moralistic rhetoric...

...So he orders Bernard to confiscate the key that allows Sir Humphrey free access to Number Ten...

...Humphrey, for God's sake, for once in your life put it into plain English...

...Martha Bayles, who teaches in the honors program at Boston College, posts a blog called Serious Popcorn at wwwiartsjournal.com...

...In Stage One we say that nothing is going to happen...

...And the early seasons can be very funny, especially when deflating busy, self-important people...

...The first four seasons, by far the best, are available on DVD...

...Soon Hacker realizes that, as prime minister, he is in a position to go over the heads of Sir Humphrey, Sir Richard, and the rest of their claret-swilling brethren...

...The West Wing made its debut in 1999, and despite the departure of creator/writer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme in 2003, it is now in its sixth season on NBC...

...In that low-budget production, with its tacky sets and lighting cold as a London winter afternoon, virtue resides not in individuals but in institutions—the institutions of liberal democracy that, for all their faults, do allow for the occasional victory by ordinary elected representatives of the people...

...The West Wing is an hour-long dramatic series about a blue-blooded president, Josiah "Jed" Bartlet (Martin Sheen), and his senior staff, a group of blue-state workaholic dreamers, running a scandal-free (one is tempted to say Clinton-free) Democratic White House...

...Given the relentless dumbing-down of nearly everything on American television these days, including politics, it is hard to complain about this...

...And until you do, you can all get your fat asses out of my White House...

...But really, this is prudent...

...So comedy is the natural vantage point from which to compare two remarkable television shows about contemporary democratic politics: America's The West Wing and Britain's Yes, Minist...

...And in case your heart isn't warmed by the lesson, the music on the soundtrack will microwave it for you...

...Each of these shows has dominated an era and continues to attract a loyal following...

...You are not here to run this Department...

...And people who come in from outside must wait where they cannot see the people from inside coming in to tell you what the people from outside are coming to see you about...

...Washington today is full of interns and young staffers who dream of becoming Josh Lyman, Sam Seaborn, or C.J...

...Yes, Minister, by contrast, is witty and lucid throughout...

...At which point the president appears, flanked by Secret Service agents, and booming, "I am the Lord thy God...

...The current season of The West Wing has fewer MOSs...

...For a while, The West Wing did something similar...

...So let us thank the British for Yes, Minister...

...It was Margaret Thatcher's favorite program, and even a Yank can see why...

...Bartlet himself is not just an economist, he's a Nobel Prize-winning economist—and a polymath to boot, whose pedantry on scientific, historical, and literary topics is affectionately mocked but also emulated...

...But after plenty of folding up and going round in circles, he actually steadies into the seat of power...

...Hacker: Now, whatever made you think I wouldn't want to hear that...

...For example, when the newly appointed Hacker inquires about office furniture, Bernard says, "It used to be said that there were two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of minister...

...It may explain why the show has maintained a certain distance from real events ever since...

...And people who arrive when you are with people they are not supposed to know you have seen, must wait somewhere until the people who are not supposed to have seen you have seen you...

...This is the show biz side of politics, and it is no accident that show biz people would do a brilliant job of depicting it...

...10 Downing Street) aired on the BBC during 1980-87...

...As for Hacker, Bernard's way of assisting him is usually to assist him to stay in his place...

...Pause) All right, don't tell anyone this happened, okay...

...Waiting for him in the Mural Room are three staffers and three evangelical Christians...

...In the first three seasons of The West Wing, the typical MOS is a politically correct sermonette capping off a rapid-fire debate over some controversial issue in which the last word is invariably given to the left-liberal position...

...It is typical of evangelicals in The West Wing to misquote the Bible for racist, sexist, and homophobic purposes, so we are not surprised when another asks, "Then what's the First Commandment...

...Announcing that his granddaughter has been receiving death threats from a militant pro-life group for making public "her feelings about a woman's right to choose," the president wheels on the elder evangelical: "You'll denounce these people, Al...

...Hacker: How could it, when I didn't understand a single word...

...It is all so glorious, it makes you grateful that Hollywood does not work directly for the government...

...Yes, Minister is a half-hour sitcom about the tug-of-war between a reform-minded politician, the Rt...

...Josh: I was following you...

...In the wonderful world of family sitcoms, writers use the acronym MOS ("moment of s—t") to describe the sappy "I love you" endings the networks often require them to tack onto otherwise unsappy scripts...

...It must accommodate gray days and worse angels, or else turn into something all too recognizably undemocratic...

...Right after the attacks, the producers aired a special episode in which a security lockdown traps Bartlet's staff in the White House Mess with a group of high school students...

...For example, in one scene, deputy communications director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) and deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) are striding through the corridor in one of the show's trademark "walk and talk" sequences (facilitated by the Steadicam and perfected on ER) when suddenly they realize that their purposefulness has no purpose: sSam: Where are you going...

...So every administration, regardless of party, must now engage in a permanent public relations campaign...

...Bartlet is now a lame duck, and hoping to succeed him are a liberal Democrat (played preachily by Jimmy Smits) and a moderate Republican (played persuasively by Alan Alda...

...And the joy of the victory is more infectious than any celebrated in the Bartlet White House, for the simple reason that Hacker does not preen about how much brainier he is than Sir Humphrey...

...Finally, Hacker has won...

...perhaps its defenses have finally been breached by American political reality...

...If Republicans were to produce their own version, I strongly suspect that it, too, would be suffused with muffled drums, golden sunbeams, rippling red-white-and-blue graphics, and a touching faith that this administration will bring out the better angels of our nature...

...Its ripest targets are not Labourites or Tories but the BBC, Foreign Office, Church of England, and (of course) civil service—all those venerable British perches from which upper-crust Oxbridge types look down upon scientists, engineers, and economists, never mind the daughters of Grantham shopkeepers...

...Josh: Where are you going...

...Sir Humphrey: If you insist...

...One sort folds up instantly, and the other sort goes round and round in circles...

...As the junior man serving both Hacker and Sir Humphrey, the wry, observant Bernard is very much the arbiter of their contest...

...Rather than send politically correct messages, it sends up the whole political culture...

...In the episode called "The Key," a squabble erupts between Hacker's political adviser, Dorothy Wainwright (Deborah Norton), and Sir Humphrey over some prime office space in Number Ten...

...Despite its irreverence, Jed Bartlet's White House is a deeply traditional, almost courtly place, where protocol is observed, ritual revered, and the full pageantry of office carried to blood-stirring heights...

...By this standard, Yes, Minister is a classic...

...When Sir Humphrey blusters, "There's an airborne battalion in the air...

...The contrast with Yes, Minister is telling...

...And he succeeded...

...Sorkin's hope was to make politics look glamorous and exciting...

...Dorothy wants the space for her office because, in addition to being centrally located, it is opposite the "gents' loo," allowing her to eavesdrop on important conversations...

...So Bernard remains Sir Humphrey's loyal apprentice in the fine arts of keister protection, bureaucratic obfuscation, and house-training dim-witted politicians...

...But more likely it is American, the product of understandable impatience with the mundane machinations of this country's form of government...

...But the remnants of royalty still cling to the office of president, and if you think The West Wing rips these away, think again...

...Sir Richard: Stage Three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do...

...In these episodes the lighting, already theatrical, becomes chiaroscuro...

...Its targets are vanity, arrogance, moralism, and ambition: all the vices of power...

...Some critics have accused the show of being evasive, because it has never dealt directly with September 11...

...This is supposed to be a laugh line, but there's nothing amusing about Bartlet's own Mount Sinai-sized moralism...

...Thou shalt worship no other God before me...

...It would be tempting to dismiss this romanticism as uniquely liberal, the product of envious Democrats banished from the Rose Garden...

...But there is something grating about Sorkin's declaration that politics is ultimately "about smart or stupid, about engaged or not, qualified or not...

...Broadcast during the 1980s, when the Thatcher government was endeavoring to harpoon the Whitehall Leviathan, the show's genius was to have the monster defended by the deliciously slithery Sir Humphrey: Sir Humphrey: Minister, I have something to say to you which you may not like to hear...

...As American political parties have become weaker, presidents have become more dependent on the media to win popular support for their policies...

...sSam: I was following you...

...Sir Humphrey: Stage Four, we say maybe there is something we could have done, but it's too late now...

...The staff do not just have experience and savvy, they have Ivy League degrees and gilt-edged resumes...

...At first Bernard resists, but seeing Hacker act prime-ministerial, he relents and is soon collaborating in the humiliation of his superior...

...Because The West Wing grew out of the "dramedy" genre (the executive producer, John Wells, is a veteran of ER), it includes both drama and comedy...

...Every detail of the production, from the stylish clothes to the sumptuous decor to the artful lighting, impresses the lowly couch potato with the majesty and power of the president, and the courage, grace, and high IQs of the lords and ladies who serve at his pleasure...

...They, too, are available on DVD...

...Sir Humphrey: Stage Two, we say something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it...

...The hilarity peaks when a desperate Sir Humphrey tries to break in through a window, and sets off the alarm...

...Perhaps this explains why The West Wing glorifies the White House as the supreme seat of power...

...Jim Hacker is not stupid, but intellectually he is no match for Sir Humphrey...

...and the commander in chief, already virtuous, becomes the kind of leader who hands down the law after spending forty days on a mountaintop...

...such is the power of making / A perfectly wonderful thing out of nothing much...

...Between the two, the issues talk is more balanced than before...

...So he invites the Israeli ambassador round for a drink, and after consulting with him, orders 800 fully armed British paratroopers to the island on a "goodwill visit...

...In this American palace, the source of legitimacy is not lineage or birth (although some fuss is made about Bartlet's descent from Josiah Bartlett, signatory to the Declaration of Independence), it is brains...

...Taking a few simple ingredients—an ordinary politician, a manipulative bureaucrat, and an overqualified apprentice—it mixes them into a comic masterpiece that (if preserved) will last as long as politicians and bureaucrats walk the earth...

...the music, already grandiose, becomes Wagnerian...

...No power trip here, just a subtle reminder of who is, or ought to be, in charge...

...The United States is not a monarchy, of course...

...But Sir Humphrey wants it for an additional waiting room, because, as he explains: People who arrive before other people must wait where they cannot see other people who arrive after them being admitted before them...

...This is not very romantic, and usually one is too busy laughing to notice that something important is being said...

...Yet this distance has not prevented The West Wing from pulling out all the stops when portraying incidents of domestic terrorism (Season One), hostage-taking (Season Two), covert assassination (Season Three), kidnapping (Season Four), and suicide bombing (Season Five...

...Written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the 37 episodes of Yes, Minister and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister (in which Hacker "fails upwards" to No...

...During the first few seasons the best episodes focused not on the power struggle between left and right, Democrat and Republican, but on the elaborate game of leaks, access, favors, and spin played between the White House and the media...

...Cregg (Allison Janney), the tart-tongued, elegant press secretary recently promoted to chief of staff...

...But perhaps the palm should go to The West Wing for offering more elevated characters and making politics look more romantic...

...Sir Humphrey: Minister, the traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always been so determined as to liberate the Ministerial incumbent from the administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position...

...Inspired by Dorothy's example, Hacker decides that he, too, can stand up to Sir Humphrey...

...On the contrary, the Bartlet White House is never so power-drunk as when whipping up an imaginary international crisis...

...You'll do it publicly...

...Another of Hacker's triumphs is over the Foreign Office, who react with their usual smugness to the threat of a Marxist takeover of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean...

...Indeed, for all the program's trumpeted concern for a democracy in which all voices are heard, it powerfully reinforces the American presidency's greatest ambition (and delusion): that it is possible for one individual to rise above the petty politics of bargaining and self-interest and embody the ancient ideal of the good king, the wise and virtuous ruler able to reach out to each of his subjects and, by force of personality, subdue all his enemies...

...James Hacker (Paul Eddington), recently named Minister of Administrative Affairs, and his permanent secretary, the wily career civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne...

...Hacker: Why should today be any different...

...These youthful aspirations are a tribute to Sorkin, whose stated purpose in creating The West Wing was to depict political people not "as dolts or Machiavellian" but as "dedicated," "well educated," even "heroic...

...We see this in the pilot episode, when President Bartlet makes his grand entrance...

...Throughout the first series, when Hacker is merely minister for administrative affairs, Sir Humphrey wins every round...

...The mood is tense, and when one of the visitors mistakenly quotes the First Commandment as "Honor thy father," one of the staffers corrects her: "No it isn't . . . 'Honor thy Father' is the Third Commandment...

...In the second series, Hacker is chosen as prime minister because his party cannot decide between two strong candidates and sees him as ineffectual and therefore safe...

...The threat turns out to be baseless, but that doesn't stop the staffers from spending an hour enlightening their young visitors (and us) about the historical roots of terrorism...

...Poorly written and acted, this episode was so bad, you could call it an HOS...

...Those high IQs are key because, despite The West Wing's royal trappings, it hardly affirms the divine right of kings or the prerogatives of aristocracy...

...Hacker calmly replies, "Sounds like the right place for it...

...But absent the skills of Sorkin, Schlamme, and Lowe (a master at delivering Sorkin's ironic-pedantic lines), the debates over charter schools, gun control, and ethanol subsidies have lost whatever charm they once possessed and become an unholy cross between Hannity & Colmes and ER: shouting-head sound bites delivered at emergency-room speed...