This is the syllabus—or at least much of it—for my Spring 2021 course at American University, “The West Wing as History.” I’ve had to radically change the syllabus in order to accommodate schedule changes and, of course, the global pandemic. I’ve also tried to incorporate a greater number of primary sources into the course readings. Someday, far in the future, I’ll be using this thematic structure as the foundation for a book. So I hope readers find this interesting and as always, I’m grateful for any feedback (especially in those areas where I’m still looking for readings)!
Thanks for reading!
Gautham
THE WEST WING AS HISTORY
Professor Gautham Rao | American University | Washington, D.C.
Course Description[1]
1999 was a momentous year in American politics. On January 7, 1999, the United States Senate began the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. On February 12, 1999, the Senate voted down both perjury and obstruction of justice charges against the President. In September 1999, First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York to establish residency in New York and to run for the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, the 2000 presidential campaign was already in high gear, especially for Republicans, as eventual nominee George W. Bush faced a strong challenge from, among others, Senator John McCain. Amid all of this, few noticed a new political drama on NBC called The West Wing, which debuted on September 22, 1999. Seven seasons later, the show exited the stage in 2006. In the intervening years it won 120 awards and received 250 nominations. It is consistently ranked as one of the best shows in the history of television. But the show had an even more profound and for some, disturbing effect. First, through its writing and plot lines, the show introduced the American viewing public to sophisticated aspects of American legal and political history. Second, it told the story of the present—of the 1990s—in a different way than cable news, which was only just becoming the phenomenon we now recognize. Finally—and nobody could have known it at the time—the show became a political rite of passage for subsequent generations. This is why the show remains so popular, over a decade after it left the air. Yet critics maintain that the show’s repackaging of history and its retelling of the 1990s amounted to a ‘liberal fantasy’ that hardwired the worst norms of American political thought and practice into the minds of viewers. This course studies the show’s multiple levels and effects through a combination of the show’s episodes, major readings in American political history and political science, and discussions of contemporary American politics.
Requirements-in-Brief [shortened for public version]
1. Attendance and Participation 20%
2. Book Review 20%
3. Weekly Discussion Board 20%
4. Midterm exam 20%
5. Final exam 20%
Required Readings and Course Website Information
All readings marked with a ^ are available on our course website on Canvass.
Required for purchase:
Anonymous, Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics(New York: Random House, 1996).
Julian Zelizer and Kevin Kruse, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974(New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020).
Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America(New York: Princeton
University Press, 1999)
Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2016)
Schedule and Readings
Thursday, January 21, 2021 Introduction: The West Wing and History
(in class: syllabus, requirements, begin characters Sorkin, corporate, summary)
Reading: Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, 7-25.
The ‘Weakened’ Modern Presidency
Monday, January 25
Episode: S1 E19, “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”
Myron A. Levine, “The Transformed Presidency: People and Power in the Real West Wing,” in Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 235-58.
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, rev. ed.),^
Preface to the 1990 edition, ix-xix
Ch. 1: “Leader or Clerk,” pp. 3-10
Ch. 3: “The Power to Persuade,” pp. 29-50
Dino P. Christenson and Douglas L. Kriner, The Myth of the Imperial Presidency: How Public Opinion Checks the Unilateral Executive(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020)^
Ch. 1, “An Imperial Presidency?” pp. 1-25
Thursday, January 28
S5 E6, “Disaster Relief”
Matt Ford, “The Emerging Right-Wing Vision of Constitutional Authoritarianism,” The New Republic, April 2, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157132/emerging-right-wing-vision-constitutional-authoritarianism
Primary Sources:
George F. Will, “Congress Grabs Power from Weak Presidents,” St. Louis Dispatch, August 28, 1988, E:3.
Charles Krauthammar, “Presidency Drained of Its Power,” St. Louis Dispatch, January 8, 1995.
Lawrence Lessig and Cass R. Sunstein, “The President and the Administration,” Columbia Law Review94 (1994), pp. 2-22, 106-123.^
Antonin Scalia, dissent in Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988)
Presidential Scandal
Monday, February 1
S3E3, “Ways and Means”
Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, 223-42.
Scott Basinger and Brandon Rottinghaus, “Skeletons in the White House Closets: A Discussion of Modern Presidential Scandals,” Political Science Quarterly127, no. 2 (2012): 213-39.^
C. Vann Woodward, “The Conscience of the White House,” in James M. Banner, Jr., ed., Presidential Misconduct from George Washington to Today(New York: New Press, 2018), __.^
Primary Sources:
Newsweekcover photo, “The Children of Watergate”
Thursday, February 4
S3E9, “Bartlet for America”
Joshua Matz and Lawrence Tribe, To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment(New York: Basic Books, 2018), 25-68[GR2] .^
Allan J. Lichtman, The Case for Impeachment(New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 1-44.^
Primary Sources:
Jonathan Alter and Matthew Cooper, “New Impeachment War,” Newsweek132, no.
15 (Oct. 19, 1998), 28-32.
ABC7-NYC news coverage of December 19, 1998.
Coping with Capitalism
Monday, February 8
Episode: “The Debate,” S7E7
Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, 26-43, 203-222.^
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “Presidents and the Political Economy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly42, no. 1 (2012), 101-31.^
Primary sources:
Phil Gramm, “Pricing Health Care: Choice, a Myth in Clinton’s Health Plan,” Wall
Street Journal, February 9, 1994.
‘Harry and Louise’ Ads, 1994.
Thursday, February 11
Episode: “Talking Points,” S5E19
Robert Pollin, “Anatomy of Clintonomics,” New Left Review 3 (June, 2000), 17-46.^
Primary sources:
The National Review, 45, no. 23 (1993), “NAFTA, Yes,” pp. 13-16.
Michael K. Frisby and James M. Perry, “House Passes Nafta,” Wall Street Journal,
November 18, 1994, A14.
Larry King Live (Debate between VP Al Gore and Ross Perot), 1993.
The Problem of Political Exhaustion
Monday, February 15
Episode: S2E17, “The Stackhouse Filibuster”
Joe Klein, Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics(New York: Random House, 1996), 1-155.
Thursday, February 18
Episode: S4E1, “20 Hours in America”
Joe Klein, Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics(New York: Random House, 1996), 156-315.
The Collapse of Political Media
Monday, February 22
Episode: S2E4 “In this White House”
Zelizer and Kruse, 135-159, 271-88.
Julian Zelizer, “How Washington Helped Create the Contemporary Media: Ending the Fairness Doctrine in 1987,” in Bruce Schulman et al., ed., Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 176-188.^
Primary sources:
Howard Kurtz, “Though Fed Up with Media, Public Maintains an Appetite for the
Story,” Washington Post, February 12, 1998, A1.
Todd Gitlin, “The Clinton-Lewinsky Obsession,” The Washington Monthly 30, no. 12
(Dec., 1998), 13-19.
Episode: S5E14, “An Khe”
Thursday, February 25
Lyz Lenz, “The Mystery of Tucker Carlson,” Columbia Journalism Review, September 5, 2018, https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php.
Primary sources:
David Montgomery, “Room with a View: Limbaugh Has His Niche in The Land of Clinton,” Washington Post, September 23, 1993, M01.
Mike Wallace Interview with Rush Limbaugh, 60 Minutes(1991)
Truth in Politics
Monday, March 1
Episode: S3E2, “Manchester, Part II”
Hannah Arendt, “Lying in Politics,” in Crises of the Republic(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972), __.^
Eric Alterman, “Bill Clinton: Defiling the Temple of Justice,” in Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump is Worse(New York: Basic Books, 2020), 185-204 .
John Mearsheimer, “Introduction” to Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3-14.
Thursday, March 4
No episode or reading assigned.
Midterm due.
“Wellness Week,” March 7-13, schedule TBA
II. History and the Making of Modern American Politics
The Carceral State
Monday, March 15
Episode: “Mandatory Minimums,” S1E20
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America(New York: Princeton University Press, 2017), 1-119.^
Primary sources TBA
Thursday, March 18Episode: “The Benign Prerogative,” S5E11
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America(New York: Princeton University Press, 2017), 207-10, 250-98.^
Primary sources TBA
Race and Justice
Monday, March 22
Episode: “Six Meetings Before Lunch,” S1E18
V.P. Franklin, “African Americans and Movements for Reparations,” Journal of African American History97, no. 1 (no. 1-2), 1-12;^ Ronald W. Walters, “The Impact of Slavery on 20thand 21stCentury Black Progress,” Journal of African American History97, no. 1 (no. 1-2), 110-30.^
Primary Sources:
Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks(1999; New York: Penguin Books, 2001), Introduction, chapter 6 .^
Tamar Lewin, “Calls for Restitution Getting Louder,” New York Times, June 4, 2001), A:15.
Thursday, March 25
Episode: S1E15, “Celestial Navigation”
David Harris, “U.S. Experiences with Racial and Ethnic Profiling,” Critical Criminology14 (1006), 213-39.^
231-6.
Sarah Seo, Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom(Cambridge Harvard University Press, 2019), 231-66.^
Primary sources:
President’s Initiative on Race, One America in the 20thCentury (Washington, D.C., 2001), 75-9.^
Gender and Discrimination
Monday, March 29
“The Crackpots and these Women,” S1E5 and “17 People,” S2E18
Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, 65-87.
Christina Lane, “The White House Culture of Gender and Race in The West Wing: Insights from the Margins,” in Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 32-41.^
Primary sources:
Barbara Amiel, “Feminism: What NOW?” Wall Street Journal, March 20, 1998, A14.^
*TBA
Thursday, April 1
“Access,” S5E18 and “Liftoff” S6E4
Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism(Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 54-86.^
Katie Turk, Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 1-11, 72-101, 174-208.^
Primary sources:
Raymond P. Marks, “Is the White House a ‘Hostile Environment’ for Women?” Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998, A22.
Martin Kettle, “Clinton’s Survival: All the President’s Women,” The Guardian, March 18, 1998, 021.
The Associated Press Archive, President Clinton Lewinsky Testimony Video Highlights,
The Cold War: Memories and Legacies
Monday, April 5
Episode: “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” S4E20
Paul Boyer, “Sixty Years and Counting: Nuclear Themes in American Culture, 1945 to the Present,” in Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought, and the Nuclear Conflict, 1945-90, ed. Benjamin Ziemann et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 75-91.^
Primary Sources:
Jonathan Schell, “Nuclear Detritus of the Cold War,” Newsday, March 20, 1994, 41.
Carla Anne Robbins, “Russia’s Nuclear Stockpile Still Raises Concerns Despite Major Cutbacks and Improved Security,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 1996, A20.
Thursday, April 8
Episode: “Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail” S2E16
Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America(New York: Princeton University Press, 1999), xi-3, 240-65, 359-416.
Primary sources:
Ann H. Coulter, “The Indispensable Joe McCarthy,” in Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism(New York: Random House, 1993), 55-72.
Joshua Micah Marshall, “Exhuming McCarthy,” The American Prospect 43 (March/April, 1999), 55-60.
Monday, April 12
Vietnam
S1E10, “In Excelsis Deo,” and S4E17, “Red Haven’s On Fire” (and S5E14, “An Khe”)
Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, 180-202.
Bernard von Bothmer, “Vietnam and ‘the Sixties’ in the Clinton Presidency” in Framing the Sixties: The Use and Abuse of a Decade from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 158-78.^
Primary sources:
Fareed Muwwakkli, “The People’s Pulse,” Los Angeles Sentinel,October 1, 1992, A6.
Bill Thompson, “It’s John McCain Over Bill Clinton Any Time,” Law Vegas Review-Journal, April 9, 1999, 15B.
Reuters, “War Vets Boo Clinton,” June 1, 1993, A3.
Thursday, April 15
S4E14, “Inauguration, Part II”
Clinton doctrine readings, primary sources Blackhawk down, Somalia, Wag the Dog--TBA
Primary sources:
Holly J. Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda,” World Policy Journal 11, no. 4 (winter, 1994/1995), 44-54.
Kurt Mills, International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa: Responsibility to Protect, Prosecute, and Palliate(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 53-82.
Primary sources:
Kai Bird, “Vietnam Syndrome Continues,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1998, 2.
Anon., “Dole Portrays Clinton as ‘Misguided,’” New York Times, June 26, 1996.
Immigrants and the American Story
Monday, April 19
Episode: “Shibboleth,” S2E8
Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), xxi-14, 227-70.^
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 1-15, 195-220.^
Thursday, April 22
Episode: “La Palabra,” S6E18
Ronald L. Mize and Alicia C.S. Swords, Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 91-106.^
Christina Gerken, Model Immigrants and Undesirable Aliens: The Cost of Immigration Reform in the 1990s(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 111-150.^
Primary sources:
Daniel Weintraub, “Crime, Immigration Issues Helped Wilson,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1994, 1.
John Harwood, “California Republicans Debate the Pros and Cons of Targeting Immigrants and Preference in the Fall,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1996, A:20.
Paul Gigot, “Anti-Immigrant Reckoning Comes Ahead of Schedule,” Wall Street Journal, November 22, 1996, A, 14:3.
Gay Rights
Monday, April 26
Episode: “The Portland Trip,” S2E7 (and “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet’ S1E19)
Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 134-99.
Paris Barclay, “A Woman of Influence: A Candid Conference with Allison Janney,” and Gregg Kilday, “The Two West Wings,”The Advocate, February 13, 2001, 37-41.^
The Critics Thursday, April 29
Chris Lehmann, “The Feel Good Presidency: The Pseudo-Politics of the West Wing,” Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 213-221.^
John Podhoretz, “The Liberal Imagination,” in Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 222-232. ^
Emily Todd VanDerWerff, “The West Wing is 20 Years Old. Too Many Democrats Still Think it’s a Great Model for Politics,” Vox, September 16, 2019, https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/9/16/20857281/the-west-wing-20-anniversary-primetime-podcast-episode-bartlet-biden
Lexie Schapiti, “The Lasting, Complicated Legacy of The West Wing,” Vox, May 9, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18535738/primetime-podcast-todd-vanderwerff-the-west-wing
Juli Weiner, “West Wing Babies,” Vanity Fair, April, 2012, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/04/aaron-sorkin-west-wing
Yair Rosenberg, “Why ‘The West Wing’ Is Terrible Guide to American Democracy,” The Atlantic, October, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/why-the-west-wing-is-a-terrible-guide-to-american-democracy/263084/
Luke Savage, “Aaron Sorkin’s Road to Nowhere,” Jacobin, January, 2019, https://jacobinmag.com/2019/01/aaron-sorkin-west-wing-trump-democrats
[1]Acknowledgments: My thanks to 2017 AU Public History MA recipients Sara Florini, Julie Rogers, and Joanna Capps, and current AU History doctoral candidate Rebecca Brenner Graham for their help in drafting a previous version of this syllabus. I am also grateful to students in the “West Wing as History” classes in Spring 2018 and Spring 2020 for feedback and guidance, especially Maria-Rose Belding, Connor Carlson, Gabriella Folsom, and Linda Killian.
[GR1]Notes pp. 319-63