Running the country is not like a TV show. Oh, wait…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a lot of references to the TV series “The West Wing,” comparing fictional American president Josiah Bartlet and his staff to the current administration of faux-president Donald J. Trump. I’m about a quarter of the way through Season 4 (of 7) and I plan to keep watching until I complete the series.

I see a lot of things in the show that I wish were true, but I’m not stupid or naïve. It’s easy to create a perfect world in a television series because none of it has to be real. Creator Aaron Sorkin was free to inject his personal politics and beliefs into his characters and bring them out on the wings of angels, while making the “other side” into the bad guys who were wrong about everything.

I know it doesn’t really work that way and besides, I don’t need Jed Bartlet to be my president with his “manifest integrity, quick witticisms, fierce intellect and compassionate stoicism,” as described in Wikipedia. I don’t need a president who served two terms as governor of New Hampshire, speaks four languages and is a Nobel Laureate in Economics.

I also don’t need my president to be Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), the popular widower of the movie “The American President,” who falls in love with an environmental lobbyist played by Annette Bening and then has to defend her against slurs from his opponent. I will give the film credit for one of my favorite movie quotes, however.

When his opponent shows an unfavorable photo of Bening’s character, President Shepherd hits him with this: “You wave an old photo of the president's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them she's to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, because Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.”

I don’t need my president to be “Dave,” the good-hearted but naïve temp agency manager (Kevin Kline) who looks enough like the president to impersonate him as a side job. Dave is hired to cover up the president’s extramarital affair with a White House staffer, and gets stuck in the job when the president suffers a stroke. His everyman temperament and common sense ideas make him a better president than the man he is pretending to be.

While I’m at it, I don’t need Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels in “The Newsroom”) to be the tempestuous TV anchorman who holds politicians’ feet to the fire while spouting long soliloquies about “the American Taliban” or why America is no longer the greatest country on earth.

I don’t even need Mr. Smith (Jimmy Stewart) to go to Washington as the idealistic newcomer appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate who discovers – and fights against – a corrupt political system.

I don’t need any of these men to be my president or my senator or my journalistic conscience because they all have one thing in common: they don’t really exist. All I really need is a president who is aware that there are other people in the country besides himself who have wants and needs and depend on the government to provide them. I need my president to be an actual human being.

I need a Congress that isn’t afraid to stand up to a child-like narcissist with a mental defect who has the country leaning toward Fascism because he’s too weak to say “no” to his white supremacist adviser.

I need a media that doesn’t sacrifice its ideals and trade its mission to tell the truth for the glitz of higher ratings.

No, I don’t need a government that’s run like a movie or a TV show because I can distinguish fiction from reality. I need a government that’s run like a government, and therein lies the irony:

Our current president is running the White House like he's still the star of reality TV. He brings in staff members, gives them tasks to complete and then hauls them off to the “board room” where he fires the ones who don’t accede to his demands. In other words, it’s “The Presidential Apprentice,” and it’s exactly like the TV show he had before running for office.  

I’m still not stupid or naïve but this I will tell you: If I have to put up with a TV show instead of an actual government, I’d much prefer that Josiah Bartlet, Andrew Shepherd or even “Dave” was the man in charge.