Ripon Forum


Vol. 40, No. 2

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A Note from the Chairman

We have tried to continue that tradition in this issue by focusing on a number of important topics that we believe will have some prominence in the coming weeks and months. We lead off with a discussion of the Suburban Agenda, an effort by a group of House Republicans to craft a positive, issues-oriented strategy […]

The Suburban Agenda

There are two basic truths to mid-term elections in America – they are won on themes, and, historically speaking at least, they are usually lost by the party in power.

Suburban Health Care

The legislative agenda developed by the suburban caucus is meant to address our everyday concerns: the safety of our children at school, congested and overcrowded roads, and dwindling open space, for instance. At the very top of that agenda is health care. Seniors enjoying their retirement, couples raising children, and individuals in the suburbs face […]

Q&A with Dave Reichert

Dave Reichert represents Washington’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Elected in 2004, he first came to national prominence as the detective who led the effort to capture the Green River serial killer. He serves on three committees in Congress, and is Chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science […]

How I See It

The question is simple enough. What do I think about increasing access to health insurance for American workers? Strengthening border security? Lobbying reform? I’m for them all, and House Republicans are taking aim at each. But beneath the veneer of these simple questions is, I believe, a fundamental misunderstanding of the role a Majority Leader […]

A Bipartisan Solution to Our Big Government Problem

The issue is the establishment of a Sunset Commission. For the second straight year, President Bush is proposing the creation of such a commission as part of his budget plan. Under this proposal, every federal agency and government program would automatically receive a 10-year expiration date, at which time they would essentially be required to […]

Devising a Terrorism Insurance Solution

When Congress enacted the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (also known as TRIA) in 2002, the government-backed terrorism reinsurance program it established was designed as a temporary stopgap to give insurers time to regroup and sort out the complexities of dealing with terrorism risk.

Dynamic Scoring: The Time is Now

It is hard to find any serious economist who would argue that the federal government’s tax and spending policies make no difference to U.S. economic performance. Indeed, all across the political spectrum and throughout the leading schools of economic thought, a broad consensus exists that what governments do with tax dollars and how they raise […]

Dynamic Scoring: Not So Fast!

They are frustrated because formal revenue loss estimates used by Congress during the budget process ignore revenues recouped from the increase in economic activity which occurs as a result of the pro-growth tax cuts.

Politics Never Sounded So Good

We wring our hands in this third century of the American Experiment. More of us, we’re told, can identify Paris Hilton than Paris, France. Frothy celebrity magazines thrive while serious political journals struggle. Citizens seem more excited about voting for the American Idol than the American President. Entertainment trumps civic engagement; staying amused is more […]

Lincoln, King and Scripture

When Americans marked the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., earlier this year, we were paying tribute to two leaders who did more to advance the causes of equality, human dignity, and civil rights in this country than perhaps any other Americans.

The Party Line: Great Republican Quotes from Lincoln to Reagan and Bush

Great Republican Quotes from Lincoln to Reagan and Bush

From the Archives: Thirty Years Ago in the Forum

Last month fort-five different House Republicans joined in groups of varying size to issue two in-depth statements, one on the draft, the other on foreign aid; eighteen introduced a Civil Rights Law Enforcement Act of major significance. The spearhead for the initiative was once again the Wednesday Group of moderate Republicans, joined in the draft […]

The Backpage: Maybe Clinton was right

Ten years ago this past January, Bill Clinton delivered his State of the Union Address in which he famously declared that “The era of big government is over.” In this same speech, he also reiterated his support for school uniforms and the V-chip.

Ripon Profile of Melissa Hart

I am a Republican because we are the only party that is offering positive ideas to make our country and our communities a better place to live and raid families.

Politics Never Sounded So Good

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We wring our hands in this third century of the American Experiment. More of us, we’re told, can identify Paris Hilton than Paris, France. Frothy celebrity magazines thrive while serious political journals struggle. Citizens seem more excited about voting for the American Idol than the American President. Entertainment trumps civic engagement; staying amused is more appealing than staying informed; and in the struggle for the American soul, Hollywood, not Washington, seems to have been our capital for a long time now. Perhaps it’s because Hollywood knows how to talk. In the ancient old art of rhetoric, Hollywood has Washington beat hands down — even when it’s telling stories about Washington.

What was so compelling about The West Wing wasn’t its politics, but the way its characters talked about politics. Their speech was literate, intelligent, and sophisticated; open to nuance and ambiguity.  Sure, the orations of President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and the monologues of his staff could be melodramatic, overwrought, idealistically naïve, and hyperbolic.  But they were also usually convincing and always refreshingly candid. And it’s not like Cicero, Lincoln, or Martin Luther King were adverse to a little melodrama and hyperbole. Public political communication is a rhetorical performance — an act of persuasion.

What was so compelling about The West Wing wasn’t its politics, but the way its characters talked about politics.

More than anything, The West Wing was about language, and how to find language with which to talk about politics with vision and sincerity in a nation where cynicism has been metastasizing since Vietnam, Watergate, Monica, and beyond. Remarkably, The West Wing presented government as something noble, civic life as something to be proud of.  An episode in the fall of 2000 actually ended with the whole staff repeating the phrase “God Bless America” in a toast. Wizened, thinking citizens in this time between the Clinton impeachment and the terrorist attacks of September 11 might have been expected to roll their eyes at the Capra-esque jingoism of such a scene, but they didn’t. The scene worked.  In spite of their hip, ironic, Machiavellian dialogue, the characters on The West Wing exhibited an earnestness that seems impossible in the era of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and unlikely since the era of Laugh-In.

Around the same time that episode was playing, George W. Bush and Al Gore were engaging in the first of a series of televised debates.  Here, the rhetoric wasn’t quite so inspiring. The debate offered little in the way of memorable imagery or metaphor. The best one-liner of the night was Bush’s, “I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, he invented the calculator.” Needless to say, it was no, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” The entire debate revealed a notable poverty of political rhetoric. A good latenight infomercial was better at selling an idea; a taped-delayed Olympic medal ceremony better at eliciting pride of nationhood. A viable language, style, and vocabulary seem very often to elude contemporary American leaders.

People spent a lot of time uncovering and exposing the liberal messages in The West Wing, which was kind of like spending time uncovering and exposing the traditional family values in The WaltonsThe West Wing was, after all, a show about a liberal Democratic administration. Its principal characters were liberal Democrats, as were many (but certainly not all) of the people who made the show.  It wasn’t just the president and his staff who were articulate on The West Wing, however.  Their Republican opponents were also masters of the language.  If the victories of the superheroes are to mean anything, of course, they have to do battle with adversaries that are worthy of the fight. Arch-Republican and recurring character Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) was such an adversary.  She could deliver pitch-perfect oratorical flourishes that left her Democratic listeners speechless on more than one occasion. In the presidential election campaign of the final season, the Republican candidate Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), has proven a formidable opponent indeed, his rhetorical skills matching, if not surpassing, his adversary in the live debate that aired last November.

Television is often blamed for the “dumbing down” of political discourse, but the political discourse we heard on The West Wing was usually a lot more intelligent and complex than what we hear in actual political speeches.

As for the larger claims made by fans of The West Wing, we should tread carefully. It isn’t a civics lesson.  One should no more turn to The West Wing to learn about presidential politics, policy, and  procedures than one should turn to ER to learn about emergency surgery or to Shakespeare to learn about the reign of Richard III. Sure, some insights may be gleaned from these sources, but they are all, in the end, fiction and fantasy.

Political rhetoric at its best is supposed to move its audience — to engage them, to make them care, to make them interested. Much political speech today doesn’t do that. It succeeds only in making the other side angry. Television is often blamed for the “dumbing down” of political discourse, but the political discourse we heard on The West Wing was usually a lot more intelligent and complex than what we hear in actual political speeches, even big and important ones.

In this regard, perhaps it could also be argued that The West Wing set the bar too high when it came to American politics. It raised our expectations of how public officials should talk, only to have these same expectations lowered when we realized that politicians in real life are not nearly as eloquent as the actors who play them on TV.

While this last point is obviously debatable, one thing is certain – Hollywood and Washington are both in the business of communicating with our nation’s citizens. Washington, these days, just isn’t very good at it. 

Robert J. Thompson is Trustee Professor of Media and Popular Culture in the Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University, where he is also founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. He has written or edited six books on American TV.