" The West Wing " often features a large number of current or modern political issues. After the president of the res publica party, George Walker Bush , was elected in 2000, many people doubted whether this liberal program could still keep abreast of current affairs. However, This drama still discusses the many problems faced by the Bush administration from the usual Democratic viewpoint, and continues to attract the attention of the Democrats and the res publica party.
In the third episode of the second season, "The Midterms", there is a fictitious radio host, Dr. Jenna Jacobs. President Caron Butler gave a verbal warning about her homosexuality at a private White House banquet. In fact, the prototype of Dr. Jakes is to Dr. Laura Slezinger, a broadcaster known for her anti-gay remarks. According to Barbara Mikkelson of snopes, the gossip website snopes, many of the words Caron Butler said to Dr. Jakes from the Bible came from a letter circulated on the Internet in early May 2000. Dr. Xin Jie’s Open Letter"[28].
The scandals experienced by the Caron Butler administration between the second and third seasons are often compared with the Monica Levinsky incident[29]. President Caron Butler was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992. The scandal focused on whether Caron Butler deliberately concealed his illness during the presidential campaign. As a result, he was investigated by the opposition party in the House of Representatives and finally accepted condemnation by the House of Representatives. Multiple sclerosis advocacy groups praised the drama for accurately portraying the symptoms of the disease and emphasized that the disease is not fatal. Comments from the National Multiple Sclerosis Association:
"This is unprecedented, or it may be unparalleled. When people see the protagonist of the drama suffering from multiple sclerosis on national TV channels, they can still be full of hope and continue to enrich their lives. " The West Wing " is not a medical documentary, but a fictional drama. It is possible that the symptoms of multiple sclerosis will be distorted (but not) as the plot develops [30]."
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, like most American TV series, this series postponed the premiere of the third season for one week. Sorkin quickly wrote a script for the special program and started filming on September 21. "Isaac and Ishmael" was broadcast on October 3, and the actor first explained that the content of this episode has nothing to do with the main line of " The West Wing ". The September 11 incident was not specifically mentioned in the play, but it explained terrorism to the United States and the world. There are serious facts, the episode is mixed with good and bad reviews, but most of them indicate that the show has excellent flexibility in handling emergencies.
Although the September 11th incident did not occur in The West Wing , the United States in the story still launched a variant war on terrorism. The incident began in the third season, when a plan to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge was revealed, and the president ordered the assassination of terrorist leader Abdul ibn Shareef (Abdul ibn Shareef) in retaliation. In the fourth season, the president's youngest daughter, Zoey Caron Butler (Zoey Bartlet), was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the fictional country of Qumar, causing the conflict to escalate and Kuma was bombed. This plot is similar to the reality of the United States ' relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States' launch of the war in Afghanistan. As a result, the Middle East region has been brought to the forefront of US foreign relations. Terrorism has become a serious threat within the United States. From seasons 3 to 5, the fictional terrorist organization The Bahji is like a stand-in for Al Qaeda, but in seasons 6 and 7, there are characters who directly mention the problem of Al Qaeda, but the plot does not explicitly indicate the base. Whether the organization has ever launched a terrorist attack (National Security Advisors also mentioned Usama bin Laden as a potential threat to the United States in the second season premiere episode "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I").
In the middle of the fourth quarter, the fictitious African country Equatorial Kundu (Equatorial Kundu) occurred similar to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide genocide, so the Caron Butler government issued a new foreign policy and sent troops to intervene by force, while domestic disputes Should this conflict be called a genocide. In fact, the William Jefferson Clinton government did not intervene in the Rwanda incident. The armed intervention in the plot is more like a moral and conscience issue of the governor [31].
In the sixth and seventh seasons of " The West Wing ", the White House Spin doctor leaked top state secrets, and commentators often used this plot to be compared with the Plum’s identity leak case (also known as the secret agent incident)[32] [33]. In this episode, the International Space Station is damaged and cannot continue to supply oxygen to the astronauts. When Wan Fang is exhausted, the president remembers a top secret about the military space shuttle. After that, the president does nothing. This secret is stationed by the White House. The dispatch reporter Greg Brock learned that, as reported in the New York Times, just like the reporter Jodie Starlings Miller who exposed the Plum incident , Brock was arrested for refusing to disclose the source of the information. In order to suspend the investigating authorities ’ suspicion of The White House Chief of Staff Sicily Craig, Toby Ziegler confessed to the leak, and President Caron Butler was forced to fire him. In contrast, the result of the Plum incident led to the arrest and conviction of the Vice President’s Chief of Staff Louis Libby. However, Libby was later proved to have perjured the grand jury and no one was responsible for revealing the identity of Plum’s intelligence agent. Bibi was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and was later commuted by President Bush. The US$250,000 fine was also reconsidered after the appeal. Currently, it is only determined that Li Bi will lose his lawyer's license.
