West Wing and the Constitution (finale)

Sandy Levinson

Tonight was the final episode of West Wing. I, for one, found it immensely moving in its emphasis on the peaceful transfer of power and the almost magisterial abruptness with which it's out with the old (Jed Bartlett) and in with the new (Matt Santos), symbolized by the movers coming in at 11:45 or so and stripping the Oval Office of Bartlett's personal affects and changing the presidential pictures. Indeed, given my previous posting about the whiff of fascism in the air, which I certainly don't recant, I think it is important to note that not even the biggest critics of Bush & Co. (of which I'd like to think I'm one) believe that he (or they) will move to cancel the 2008 elections and declare themselves in office for life. Nor, even more obviously--so obvious that it goes almost literally without saying--do we fear a military coup, for all of the talk of the (justified) revolt of the (former) generals against the egregious Donald Rumsfeld. It is not contradictory, I believe, to argue at one and the same time that Bush's conception of his prerogatives of office is dictatorial (or, if one prefers, "authoritarian" or "monarchical," which is Bruce Fein's term) AND that he gives no hint of rejecting the most basic norm of American constitutionalism, which is the opportunity to vote the rascals out in an election. I have no particular illusions about the circumstances of the last two elections, but the remedy, at least in part, is Joe Hill's (I think) "Don't Mourn; Organize."

There was one unfortunate mistake, at the very beginning of the program, when Ellen Santos is (properly) complaining about having Inauguration Day on January 20, during yet another icestorm in DC. Her husband says that we can blame that on Jefferson and Adams. That, of course, isn't true. Washington was inaugurated on April 30, and inaugurations after that were on March 4, until th3 20th amendment changed it to Jan. 20, which took place for the first time in 1937. (So, as I may have posted before, one can win a bar bet by asking someone to name the two presidents, who did not die during their first terms, whose first terms in office were in fact less than four years.)

In any event, "West Wing," RIP (save for syndication).
Posted 9:40 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]