In late January, there was an episode of The West Wing in which a nuclear power plant in California had a problem that required radioactive steam to be released. Thinking of it a month later, the details are fuzzy, but one thing I had made a note of was that during a shot of Republican presidential candidate Arnold Vinnick, who hails from California, there was a placard behind him related to his campaign. Though I can’t find an example on The West Wing -- not even in the candidate pages, the placard looked surprisingly like what you see at the Clinton Foundation’s site -- the starry circle in the upper left corner of the page. For that matter, it looks a little like the flag of the European Union.
The circle of stars is simple enough, and I could be mis-remembering the Vinnick logo, but if nothing else, I chuckled at the possibility that the producers of the show were subtly pointing to a Democratic president with their Republican candidate.
For what it’s worth, I don’t care which candidate wins in the show. When John Spencer died unexpectedly, it meant the end of one of my favorite characters, Leo McGarry. Then, when the producers announced this would be the final season, it made the victorious candidate almost a moot point. Sure, there are questions of what it would mean to the “Bartlet legacy,” but it’s just a TV show. I’m not going to get wistful over something like that. I’m going to enjoy the rest of the series (which should never have been moved to Sundays, but that’s a whole other argument I don’t care to go into), and then I’ll move on to something else. As for other quality television, there’s always Medium.
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