Anything you particularly object to?
OK, the first thing that annoyed me, TBH, was the gratuitous dig at Hamilton (and I guess at the same time, there was the exaggerated importance of TWW). Then there's the snarky tone directed at the idea of, God forbid, actually caring about policy ("Thanks to its endless depiction of procedure and policy, the show naturally gibed with the wonkish libidos of future Voxsplainers Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein"). Then he takes a big turn away from actually making any kind of point to snark about people who work in politics and fans of the show. Then it gets really bad.
What is the actual ideology of The West Wing? Just like the real American liberalism it represents, the show proved to be something of a political weather vane throughout its seven seasons on the air.
...
The Bartlet administration’s actual politics—just like those of the real Democratic Party and its base—therefore run the gamut from the stuff of Elizabeth Warren-esque populism to the neoliberal bilge you might expect to come from a Beltway think tank having its white papers greased by dollars from Goldman Sachs.
But promoting or endorsing any specific policy orientation is not the show’s true raison d’être. At the conclusion of its seven seasons it remains unclear if the Bartlet administration has succeeded at all in fundamentally altering the contours of American life. In fact, after two terms in the White House, Bartlet’s gang of hyper-educated, hyper-competent politicos do not seem to have any transformational policy achievements whatsoever. Even in their most unconstrained and idealized political fantasies, liberals manage to accomplish nothing.
The lack of any serious attempts to change anything reflect a certain apolitical tendency in this type of politics, one that defines itself by its manner and attitude rather than a vision of the change it wishes to see in the world. Insofar as there is an identifiable ideology, it isn’t one definitively wedded to a particular program of reform, but instead to a particular aesthetic of political institutions. The business of leveraging democracy for any specific purpose comes second to how its institutional liturgy and processes look and, more importantly, how they make us feel—virtue being attached more to posture and affect than to any particular goal. Echoing Sorkin’s 1995 film The American President (in many ways the progenitor of The West Wing) it delights in invoking “seriousness” and the supposedly hard-headed pragmatism of grownups.
Really? A show set in the realish world of modern politics doesn't turn into a Utopian fantasy, where all liberal policy preferences get implemented and we live happily ever. And that means that liberals don't want to accomplish anything. Maybe a better interpretation here is that the presumption that the show depicts the most unconstrained and idealized political fantasies is false. No? That makes me think that the guy isn't just getting something wrong somewhere but is a real moron (or that he didn't question his gut reaction when he started the piece as he moved through it). A lot of further idiocy flows from this mistake (reading the show as a manifesto about How Things Should Be rather than a drama about people working in politics).
Then we get this:
Categories like left and right become less significant, provided that the competing interlocutors are deemed respectably smart and practice the designated etiquette. The Discourse becomes a category of its own, to be protected and nourished by Serious People conversing respectfully while shutting down the stupid with heavy-handed moral sanctimony.
Can fans of the show confirm that values and policies are treated as inconsequential as long as everyone is smart and respectful? I'm skeptical, but even if so, that's certainly not something that liberals in the real world believe. In fact, it might better describe the type of idiot who says stuff like, "I like either Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul" or "Bernie and Trump are my top two." To populists, mood and branding are more important than policy. But liberals certainly don't think that.
Then there's this:
But if anything gives that worldview pause, it should be the events of the past eight years. Liberals got a real life Josiah Bartlet in the figure of Barack Obama, a charismatic and stylish politician elected on a populist wave. But Obama’s soaring speeches, quintessentially presidential affect, and deference to procedure did little to fundamentally improve the country or prevent his Republican rivals from storming the Congressional barricades at their first opportunity.
WTF? The ACA alone is a massive fundamental improvement in the country, and there's a lot more besides that. Also, small issue, but it's not like presidents have any choice but to defer to procedure. I guess Trump is getting away with corruption, but that's not really a good thing. And does he think that an effective president will prevent the other party from wanting to win? And holding the WH tends to be bad for a party in other races, *especially* if the president is making big changes.
This:
If you can just crush Trump in the debates, as Bartlet did to Richie, then you’ve won. (That’s not an exaggeration of the worldview. Ezra Klein published an article entitled “
Hillary Clinton’s 3 debate performances left the Trump campaign in ruins,” which entirely eliminated the distinction between what happens in debates and what happens in campaigns. The belief that politics is about argument rather than power is likely a symptom of a Democratic politics increasingly incubated in the Ivy League rather than the labor movement.)
is interesting because it provides a link that refutes his own interpretation. Here's Klein starting from the *second sentence* of the link: "The polling tells the story. As Nate Silver notes, on the eve of the first presidential debate, Clinton led by 1.5 points. Before the second, she was up by 5.6 points. Before the third, she was winning by 7.1 points." A responsible editor would have opened the link and gone back to him saying, "bruh, this sounds like Klein is talking about the campaign. Fix your shit."
I like this, though: "Now, facing defeat and political crisis, the overwhelming liberal instinct has not been self-reflection but a further retreat into fantasy and orthodoxy." Just a tad premature there, buddy.
Anyway, that's not even a comprehensive listing of all the problems with that piece.