Rooting for Europe: the West Wing team

I’m not talking impressionable youngsters here – the bright-eyed parliamentary assistants, trainees and, yes, WebCom editors who hang out in “Place Lux” on Thursday nights – no, I’m talking top officials, the senior movers and shakers, men and women whose opinion really counts and whose administrative grades add up to serious totals. I speak with authority, the first DVD boxed set I watched (ah, the untold bliss of Series 1!) was pressed on me by the (then) most senior official in the European Parliament, a man whose many talents probably include the ability to provide a plot summary of any one of the episodes of the West Wing at the drop of a hat.

I was not alone. Soon I was part of a circle of West Wing addicts, passing the latest boxed set on from one to the next. Judging by the rapidity with which the 23-episode series were recycled, some serious 2, 3 or even 4-episode sessions were being put in on a nightly basis. A fan phenomenon of course swiftly emerged, with online quizzes identifying the respondent with one or the other West Wing character being particularly popular. Try this, by the way, it’s a lot of fun. I was delighted to come up (repeatedly) as an alter-ego of CJ Cregg, President Bartlett’s feisty, sharp, empathetic and witty press secretary. (I am myself not particularly feisty, sharp, empathetic or witty, but I would dearly love to be like CJ Cregg…).

So why this West Wing thing? Of course, there’s a fair dose of wish fulfilment about it. The real West Wing cannot be like that, of course, but we doubtless all wish it could be, just as anyone who works as a staffer in the world of politics dreams of being at the heart of things and making a difference in world affairs. And where better than the world’s most potent symbol of democratic political power, the US presidency?

White House press secretary C.J.Cregg - WANNABEEEEE!

Of course, wish-fulfilment easily elides into envy, and, sure, there’s a healthy dose of envy there too: where political Europe is perceived as complicated, often ineffectual, misunderstood or disregarded by the citizens it serves, the White House is decisive, central to national life  and, at least in its fictionalised version, steered by a small group of (ususally) wise, energetic, idealistic people. EU officials can only look on in wonderment as world crises are decisively addressed with a couple of presidential words uttered gravely in the Situation Room (delivered, naturally, following sage advice from the grizzled but ultra-reliable chief of staff Leo McGarry), or when hi-octane presidential staffer Josh Lyman knocks a few heads together on Capitol Hill and key legislation makes it through the House as a result. Even day-to-day business, the scurrying open-plan offices, the fast-talking fast-walking wit, the state business conducted in terse exhanges in corridors over a Starbucks coffee and muffin “to go”, the gruelling-but-glamourous 24-hour working rhythm, the ruthless-but-inspired hiring and firing (no pernickerty EU Staff Regulations here!)… it all seems exciting, adrenaline-driven, so unlike the EU official’s daily lot of turgid task forces, fiendish financial regulations, protracted procurement procedures and all the dull, necessary impedimenta of public service.

Of course, it ain’t like that really, neither there nor here, but that shouldn’t get in the way of a bit of wholesome envy, should it?

Maybe however, the envy goes a little deeper, beyond the fictional world of Jed Bartlett and co., to touch on something which really does bother those EU West Wing fans. If you know the West Wing, you also know that, for all the plot lines of human imperfection, political infighting and frustration, the bad taste left by the occasional realpolitik needed in foreign affairs, it rests ultimately on an underlying belief in the system, a bottom-line respect for the office of the Presidency, a conviction that when push comes to shove, the system is – or can be – inhabited by high calibre individuals genuinely doing what they believe is best for their country. A strain of unfeigned idealism, shared assumptions and national unity underpin the West Wing’s appeal. Naive? Maybe. Cheesy? Sure. But don’t tell me, that, deep down, Brussels is not full of people who profoundly wish some of that sense of idealism and common interest could be replicated here. For they are themselves, very often, idealists, true believers in a European ideal, which increasingly they see as neglected and eroded by the daily reality of Brussels. And it’s not just EU politics, at national level too, that West Wing spirit is hard to find.

Can we afford to lose even that basic belief that the system, at heart, can work for us rather than against us?

Indeed we’re probably going the other way.  If I look at UK political drama – the local equivalent of the West Wing perhaps – I can draw a straight downward line from Yes Minister, though the House of Cards trilogy to In the Thick of It – all uproariously funny and clever television, but marking a steady increase in the cynicism and disrespect with which the political system and its inhabitants are viewed. Healthy? Possibly. Deserved? To an extent. But can we afford to lose even that basic belief that the system, at heart, can work for us rather than against us?

If you think I’m being misty-eyed about American idealism, you’re probably right, but then I’m not alone. The presidential campaign of Barack Obama said something about how Americans view their political system, surely, and one need only look at European reactions to his election to see that there is an appetite in Europe too for the brand of idealism it represented for many in the old continent.

But all is far from lost. For a start, life imitates art, as we know from the extraordinary predictiveness of the West Wing’s seventh and last series. (Though we subsequently discover the real story was even more extraordinary.) Second, history moves on. Europe is not what it was even five years ago, the heyday of the West Wing fan club. As already noted on this blog, the moment has finally come when Kissinger’s famous question about who he should call to “speak to Europe” has finally been answered (by the New York Times, no less) – with the answer being neither Van Rompuy nor Ashton, but Jerzy Buzek!

Dan Brown fans among you may also wish to draw conclusions from a new instance of life imitating art, with the news that the Commission’s former spokesman, Johannes Laitenberger, has become chief of staff to President Barroso. Sound familiar, West Wing fans? (For the uninitiated, press secretary CJ Cregg ultimately makes the same move to the office abutting the Oval Office.) Maybe Mr Barroso is a West Wing fan too?

But so what? What can we conclude from all this? I crave your patience to advance two ideas: one academic, one practical.

My theory holds that the extent of devotion to an American TV series about American government is a reasonable indicator of the level of euro-idealism among officials of the EU institutions.

The first is my new working theory, Steve’s West Wing Paradox or the West Wing euro-idealism coefficient. This theory holds that the extent of devotion to an American TV series about American government is a reasonable indicator of the level of euro-idealism among officials of the EU institutions.

The second is linked to this observation, not least because it in inevitably a theory of limited shelf life, and to the second observation that the EU system is maturing and starting to resemble the US system to an ever greater degree. It is simply that the time is surely ripe for an equivalent of the West Wing to be made about the EU…

European West Wing fans have long indulged in a parlour game, imagining the title, setting and plotlines of a local equivalent. Suggestions inevitably range from the hopeful to the facetious and back. But maybe now we can – just – start to imagine what such a series might be like, a series to be followed avidly by White House staffers. So dear readers, your suggestions please; now is the time to reveal your creativity and your shameless euro-idealism. Just one rule: no MEDIA subsidies, no DG-Comm grants, no public funded co-productions, this one has to make it alone…