Free The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James

objectivity earns him many a searching kiss from Allison Janney. In reality, the
Post
was fully implicated in the Republican
National Committee’s long campaign to smear Clinton not just as a philanderer, which he was, but as an incompetent and a crook, either of which he wasn’t. The media fables encouraged by
the RNC linger to this day, impoverishing our view of recent history. One particularly damaging fable is that Clinton did nothing to prepare for the onslaught of terrorism. In fact he analysed the
threat with precision, but his proposals – roving phone taps and markers for explosives were only two of them – were all defeated in a Congress heavily influenced by Republican
lobbyists. The FBI, which was practically an instrument of the RNC at the time, had three hundred of its best agents chasing down the Whitewater phantom instead of checking oddball applications to
flight school. Democracy wasn’t working. Under the Bartlet administration it works with an unbelievable productivity – unbelievable because things are the way they are supposed to be,
and not as we know they actually are. But for all its dreams and distortions,
The West Wing
, regarded as a totality, is a tremendous achievement, if only for its plenitude of dialogue
scenes that give us the spoken language at an elliptical intensity seldom heard since Congreve. Not even the screwball comedies of old Hollywood had anything quite like Josh and Donna duking it out
about the proper use of the change from the lunch money, or Toby Ziegler growing even more aphoristically eloquent as he blows his top. Such talk might not make us feel much better about the
slovenly incoherence of Donald Rumsfeld’s latest press conference, but we can’t plausibly ignore the fact that it was produced in the same country.
    Aaron Sorkin’s coke-bust, and the resulting collapse of Josh’s hairstyle in the fifth season, are subjects for another time. The first four seasons on DVD, with every episode watched
at least twice, have given me enough to go on for now. Why didn’t Toby’s ex-wife agree to marry him again? I would have. Why did Rob Lowe bail out? Did he really think that a starring
role in
The Lyons Den
would be a better bet? On the inexhaustibly enthralling topic of Allison Janney – I have never met a man whose eyes did not shine at the mere mention of her
name – it remains a nice question whether
The West Wing
makes us feel better or worse about the opportunities open to female talent. In
Drop Dead Gorgeous
, Janney plays a
low-rent maneater so well that she seems real. Would you have guessed that a lurching, chortling frump like that could transform herself into C.J. Cregg?
The West Wing
could offer her
truest talent a home, but couldn’t do the same for Emily Proctor, who sought refuge – no doubt for good financial reasons – in a long-term contract with
CSI: Miami
, where
she has ten lines per episode, plus a chance to raise one eyebrow in close-up when the markings on the bullets match. (She also spends a lot of time standing sideways. So does David Caruso, but
with less alluring results.) When the roles are missing, it’s no use complaining that the actresses aren’t there to play them. The real situation is far worse: the actresses are there,
but they are being wasted. Does anybody think that Helen Hunt
wants
to act opposite a tornado, or Tea Leoni opposite an asteroid colliding with the Earth? (They might say they do, but the
alternative is not to act at all.) Think of Anne Heche in
Wag the Dog
. On the strength of a performance like that, she could be Irene Dunne. All she needs is to live in a different era
– or in a different version of this one, with thoughtful scripts a commonplace instead of a rarity. But that’s one of the several deluding powers wielded by a show like
The West
Wing
: it makes you believe there’s a lot more where that came from. There is no more. What we see is all we will ever get, and we’re very