Hollywood Scripted
It could be a sad state of affairs when our political system begins to replicate Hollywood.
Although NBC’s popular White House drama, “The West Wing” went off the air years ago, it might still be having an effect on the 2008 presidential race.
You may recall the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, when moderator Jim Lehrer said, “I’m determined to get you all to talk to each other.”
“West Wing” writer Lawrence O’Donnell claims some ownership over Lehrer’s push for a more free-flowing debate.
During his time at the show, O’Donnell wrote a fictional debate in which the characters — presidential candidates played by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda — decide to forego the debate rules and actually engage each other. O’Donnell contacted Lehrer back then in hopes that the PBS anchor might appear in the episode as the moderator. O’Donnell recently recounted the odd fiction-becomes-reality to writer Kurt Anderson on WNYC’s “Studio 360” radio program.
“After a long pause from [Lehrer]”, O’Donnell recalled, “he said, ‘You know I’ve been sitting up there for years waiting for someone to ask me this.'” Ultimately, Lehrer had to turn down the offer of being on the show thanks to prohibitive PBS rules, but he did send a DVD of O’Donnell’s episode to the Commission on Presidential Debates this year as an example of an interesting debate format. And Lehrer’s own moderating of the September 26 debate sure seemed reminiscent of that “West Wing” episode.
Now, we’ll just have to wait and wonder whether the results from that “West Wing” presidential race — in which a Democrat from an ethnic minority beat a Republican senator from the West — will also manifest itself in reality.
