The “West Wing” last night was OK, but not great, I thought. If it were me, I would have extended the kidnapping/interim president story one more episode, and given us a less anticlimactic ending than “we just up and found her somewhere, here she is, now everything’s back to normal.”
But what was brilliant about the whole arc, as I said last week, was how it mirrored our current situation with the “war on terror” and the Iraq conflict in particular. Especially good was the scene right at the beginning, when Leo McGarry talks to a pollster about the situation with the president’s daughter.
“If she’s found dead, his numbers will go through the roof,” the pollster says ruefully.
That made me think of our “real” President, and how his poll numbers have fallen back down to pre-9/11 levels. Isn’t it sad to think that should there be some sort of attack in this country, his poll numbers would shoot back up again? And the larger and more horrible the event, the bigger the bump?
He was the same guy on 9/12/01 as he was on 9/10/01. This magical transformation from Moe Howard into Churchill just didn’t happen, and it won’t happen if something bad hits us between now and election time next year, either. We just don’t learn, do we?
I’m not convinced that the same thing would happen the second time around. He was a new president then, and even people who hated him couldn’t find him responsible for 9/11, and we all hoped he’d respond appropriately.
He hasn’t. If another major terrorist attack were to occur, any of the major Democrats could — and should, and would — stand up and ask “Why did you allow this to happen again?” The administration’s inadequate spending on security, underreported so far, would become a major issue. Perhaps it would even sink in with the public that going after Iraq was not an effective way to deter al-Qaeda.
I’m not exactly optimistic, but I honestly don’t see the next 9/11 being another Bush love-fest. We’re prepared to put it in context now.
I hope so, Mike. I really do.
Hey, in case you don’t know already, we now have West Wing reruns on NBC Saturday after SNL and Sunday after the 10:00 news! Yay! The difference in this season’s writing is appallingly apparent.