{"id":1975,"date":"2008-09-21T09:54:21","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T14:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2008-09-21T09:54:21","modified_gmt":"2008-09-21T14:54:21","slug":"on-the-advice-of-jed-bartlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1975","title":{"rendered":"On the Advice of Jed Bartlet"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago<\/a> I wrote about an article in The Atlantic<\/i> that rated the fictional Presidents<\/a> of film, much as Presidential historians today rate the real Presidents.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/i> article limited itself to presidents such as Bill Pullman in Independence Day<\/i>, Michael Douglas in The American President<\/i>, Kevin Kline in Dave<\/i>. Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlet of The West Wing<\/i> was mentioned but he wasn’t ranked, though the presidential scholars all would have ranked him highly.<\/p>\n

Presidents sometimes turn to their predecessors for advice. New York Times<\/i> columnist Maureen Dowd and West Wing<\/i> creator Aaron Sorkin imagine a meeting between Barack Obama and President Bartlet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s a little weird and off-putting in places, but the column does<\/i> eventually score some points. The best bit? Probably this, an angry rant from Bartlet on the Republican framing of this year’s presidential race:<\/p>\n

Call them liars, because that\u0092s what they are. Sarah Palin didn\u0092t say \u0093thanks but no thanks\u0094 to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said \u0093Thanks.\u0094 You were raised by a single mother on food stamps \u0097 where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I\u0092d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you\u0092re at it, I want the word \u0093patriot\u0094 back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn\u0092t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can\u0092t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie \u0097 the truth isn\u0092t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they\u0092ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It\u0092s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It\u0092s not bad enough she\u0092s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It\u0092s not enough that a woman shouldn\u0092t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist\u0092s baby too? I don\u0092t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she\u0092s got the qualifications of one. And you\u0092re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required<\/i> to be impolite. There are times when condescension<\/i> is called for!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I want Jed Bartlet to hit the stump and campaign for Obama, y’know? If he were out there, every single day, making that speech…<\/p>\n

Alas, it’s only a dream. Obama has to deliver that argument himself.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of Dowd and Sorkin’s fantasy. It’s worthwhile. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I wrote about an article in The Atlantic that rated the fictional Presidents of film, much as Presidential historians today rate the real Presidents. The Atlantic article limited itself to presidents such as Bill Pullman in Independence Day, Michael Douglas in The American President, Kevin Kline in Dave. Martin Sheen’s JedContinue reading “On the Advice of Jed Bartlet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[206,4108],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}