Mister So-and-So Goes to Washington
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Mister So-and-So Goes to Washington For the umpteenth time. BY JOHN PODHORETZ "DO WE EVER really get to I Igovern?" asks the naive young U.S. senator of his more experienced chief of staff as...
...Something odd happens whenever Hollywood touches the subject of politics in Washington: Things get gooey...
...A kid in charge of the mail insists that he be called the office's information-management specialist...
...You do," she replies...
...Just as in Capra's movie, Mr...
...Sterling arrives in Washington and is met at the Hay-Adams Hotel by a veteran aide who leads him out to the driveway...
...Pat Moynihan and more recently a terrifically sensible talking head on MSNBC and The McLaughlin Group...
...It has all the usual elements—the beautiful pictures of D.C...
...That's true even in the case of Mister Sterling, which is the first television series about D.C...
...Sterling were played in such a way that Sterling came off like a boob and the Appropriations chairman came off like a wise old soul...
...This familiar exchange takes place near the end of the second episode of Mister Sterling, a new television series that premiered on January 10...
...Sterling gets the job because he's come up with a new way to give prisoners hope through schooling and because he has a famous last name (his father is a former California governor...
...This leads to some Jim Jeffordslike hijinks when it transpires that the appointed senator has it in his power to shift control of the Senate to the Republicans...
...The fact that these are not party-line views means Mister Sterling could prove more interesting as an exploration of political ideas than any other TV series before it...
...landmarks, the hushed voices, the gravitas leavened with rueful humor...
...Once a partisan Democrat, O'Donnell now speaks very much like a disaffected independent—as does Sterling...
...A Democratic staffer catches sight of a senator who switched parties two decades earlier and speaks bitterly of the "traitor...
...senator of his more experienced chief of staff as they stand on the washington Mall, staring across the Reflecting Pool at the washington Monument...
...Only when a producer has the courage to emerge from the Mr...
...That leads Sterling's terrified staff to wonder whether the stuff in the pipe is peyote and if so, whether smoking it might be legal, given the senator's Indian heritage...
...Wouldn't it be fun, for a change, if the villains of these works were less villainous...
...created by a Washington insider...
...Sterling approves of military tribunals and is open to the notion of digging for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge...
...Smith is an apolitical worshipper of American greatness...
...Smith goo will we ever see a work of popular art that engages with the real Washington...
...Wouldn't it be something if the hero of a Washington movie or TV show were to drive by the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial without giving it a second glance, the way actual Washingtoni-ans do...
...But still, wouldn't it be exciting if somebody, just once, made a show about a politician who actually loves being a politician—who enjoys raising money and trading votes and glad-handing and haggling with lobbyists— and yet still manages to hold true to his principles most of the time...
...The party-switcher is a Native American (a thinly disguised version of the Senate's real-life wild man, Colorado Sen...
...And you never surprise me...
...When Sterling says he needs $38,000 to pay for a penitentiary teacher, the Finance Committee chairman—who manages billions of dollars a year—has a giggling fit...
...Wouldn't it be fascinating if the scene between the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and Mr...
...Smith Goes to Washington, Frank Capra's 1939 film...
...O'Donnell, like every other Hol-lywoodian who takes on Washington, cannot resist the temptation to create a mythically wonderful figure whose views and ideals happen to dovetail completely with his creator's...
...That's the good stuff, and it's all infinitely truer to the spirit of the Senate than the fantasy presidency on The West Wing is to the real White House...
...He opposes the death penalty and is pro-choice...
...Just as in The Candidate, Sterling is suffering from some undefined psychological issues relating to his father...
...Our hero gives a puzzling speech in the second episode about how he never did drugs because he didn't want to give his father the satisfaction of getting him out of jail...
...It's at this point that Mister Sterling takes an unfortunate turn into fantasy land...
...And though Sterling seems like a rube, he manages to outfox the Senate majority leader and those pesky and annoying committee chairmen...
...The new senator sees a limousine parked in front and makes a move toward it, whereupon his aide cuts him off...
...Sometimes...
...O'Donnell understands how the Senate works and how Washington works, and there are delightful riffs on both...
...She smiles...
...Sterling is so apolitical that he is actually a registered independent—a fact unknown to the sitting California governor responsible for his appointment, who simply assumes that the elder Sterling's son must be a Democrat...
...The show's writer, creator, and executive producer is Lawrence O'Donnell, who was once a senior adviser to Sen...
...Sterling is a young idealist who is appointed senator in an act of raw cynicism by a corrupt governor, and whose honesty and ingenuousness prove threatening to the Washington status quo...
...Certainly, a California governor would do a little more checking up on his choice...
...We've seen several of Mister Sterling's scenes before, most famously in Mr...
...Senators don't get limos," the horrified aide says, and pushes Sterling into a modest D.C...
...And when you do, it makes it all worth it...
...Ben Nighthorse Campbell) who offers Sterling a hit off a peace pipe in his office...
...Indeed, with Mister Sterling O'Donnell has basically updated Mr...
...Smith got the job because he saved lives in a forest fire and because his first name, Jefferson, sounds patriotic...
...But it could just as easily have been lifted from The West Wing, John Podhoretz is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But the good stuff must share time and space with the hoariest of pop Washington cliches...
...You always vote for my bills...
...the three-year-old Tv show that inspired it, or from any other work of popular art with a washington setting (save, perhaps, for the 1960s spy parody Get Smart...
...Sterling wants to be assigned to the most powerful Senate committees, Appropriations and Finance...
...No one like Sterling would ever be appointed senator from any state save Jesse Ventura's Minnesota, and then only for a few weeks...
...He visits the chairmen of the committees and is given the identical tough-guy talking-to by both men in successive scenes: "You never offer an amendment to my bills...
...The kid's roommate is a gorgeous young researcher for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call who comes across as a combo of real-life NBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell (herself once a Roll Call staffer) and every blonde pundit in a Washington booker's Rolodex...
...Smith and thrown in some of the 1972 Robert Redford movie The Candidate for good measure...
Vol. 8 • January 2003 • No. 18
