Election 2008: The West Wing vs 24

Today, America is one huge television studio, in which the respective spirits of two great drama series are locked in mortal combat: namely, The West Wing and 24. Aaron Sorkin’s seven-season saga of the presidency of Jed Bartlet was a form of televisual therapy for a liberal elite disillusioned by the reality of the Clinton years. It described, in gripping and beautifully-scripted detail, the lives, loves and ideals of a White House staff committed to all that is best and noble in the American Democrat tradition, always trying to do the right thing in the face of necessary compromise. Its patriotism was unashamedly left-of-centre, a sort of leapfrogging of the Kennedy ethos over Watergate and the Reagan years into the Nineties. It famously obsessed Tony Blair’s team, too, which modelled itself all too self-consciously on the Bartlet staff. Now, in Obama, liberal America has its youthful Congressman Santos figure, the Jimmy Smits character elected to the White House at the end of Season Seven.