The kids might be (understandably) angry about American politics, but if my class at American University— “The West Wing as History”—is any guide, they are just as interested in how American politics became the way that it is. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve taught this class. However, each time I teach it I learn something new from the students; and each time I teach it I learn something new from updated primary and secondary sources.

This time, the big change was that I leaned a bit more into primary source reading and interpretation by using the digitized contents of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library alongside contemporary news articles and profiles. This meant doing less around the ‘politics’ of The West Wing itself—less Sorkin drama, less John Wells metaverse, less NBC mercuriality. I think it worked. Discussions were lively and I could see students connecting the show’s big plotlines to the politics and happenings of the 1990s and 2000s. A case in point was watching some of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings…

As always, I poll my students at the end of the semester about what they liked and what they didn’t. Here are the results, followed by the course material below!

Favorite reading: Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (New York: Doubleday, 1997)

Runner up: Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018)

Least favorite reading: Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002)

Favorite episode: “The Supremes, S5 E17

Runner up: “Night Five,” S2 E13

Least favorite episode: “Access,” S5 E19

Favorite West Wing season: 2

Least favorite West Wing season: 5

American University, Spring 2024

Gautham Rao, The West Wing as History: A Historian’s Guide to America’s Favorite Political Drama, introduction.*

Episode:

S1E1 “Pilot”

Episode: “King Corn,” S6, E13

“The Leadership Breakfast” S2E11

Primary source:

E.J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics (1991).^

James Endrst, “No Intern Jokes, Please…Clinton: The Series, It’s Not,” Montreal Gazette, September 17, 1999.*

Tom Jicha, “West Wing and a Prayer,” Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, September 22, 1999, 1E.*

David Zurawick, “By a Landslide,” Baltimore Sun, September 22, 1999, 1E.*

Secondary source:

Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), 1-25.

Selection from Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).*

Episode: “Bartlet for America,” S3 E10

“Bad Moon Rising,” S2 E 19

“Here Today,” S7 E 5

Primary source(s):

Anon., “Agnew Hits ‘Watergate Syndrome,’” San Francisco Chronicle, October 5, 1973.*

Sarah Van Boven, “Watergate/Monicagate,” Newsweek, October 19, 1998.*

Newsweek Cover, October 9, 1998. *

Office of Speechwriting and Paul Glastris, “Impeachment Talking Points [2],” Clinton Presidential Library, National Archives. *

Secondary source(s):

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 223-42.

Scott Basinger and Brandon Rottinghaus, “Skeletons in the White House Closets: A Discussion of Modern Presidential Scandals,” Political Science Quarterly 127, no. 2 (2012): 213-39.*

Ruth P. Morgan, “Nixon, Watergate, and the Study of the Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 1 (Winter, 1996), 217-38. *

In class discussion:

Episode:

“Disaster Relief,” S5 E 6

“Let Bartlet be Bartlet,” S1 E19

Primary source(s):

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 Review 94 (1994), pp. 2-22, 106-123.*

Antonin Scalia, dissent in Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988)*

Secondary source(s):

Kruse and Zelizer, 26-44.

Episode:

“Night Five,” S2 E13

“And It’s Surely to Their Credit,” S2 E5

Primary source(s):

Independent Women’s Forum, “Take Back the Campus,” April, 2001. *

Aileen Jacobson, “Author’s Zingers Gain her Some Buzz,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 29, 2002, 1E.

Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002), 35-57.^

Katie Couric, interview with Anne Coulter, The Today Show, June 27, 2002.

Secondary source(s):

Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3-38.*

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 65-87.

Episode:

“Shutdown,” S5 E7

“A Good Day,” S6 E17

Primary source(s):

Contract with America Materials, Clinton Presidential Records, White House Staff and Office Files, Box 7, 2011-0584-F. *

Secondary source(s):

Linda Killian, The Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution? (Boulder, CO: Westview Publishing, 1998)

Episode:

“The Portland Trip,” S2 E7

“He Shall, From Time to Time”

“Gone Quiet”

William Jefferson Clinton, Press Conference “Regarding Homosexuals in the Military,” (January 29, 1993), William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, ARC identifier 5956212.*

Primary source(s):

Todd Purdum, “President Would Sign Legislation…,” New York Times, May 23, 1996, 1.*

DOMA Materials, Presidential Correspondence Mail Analysis Book Twelve, Clinton Presidential Records, Office of Correspondence, Box 2, 2013-0028-F, pp. 25, 37, 53, 54, 71, 85.*

Secondary source(s):

Barry D. Adam, “The Defense of Marriage Act and American Exceptionalism: The ‘Gay Marriage’ Panic in the United States,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 2 (2003), 259-76.*

Clayton Howard, Beyond the Politics of the Closet: Gay Rights and the American State Since the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 141-64.*

Episode:

“In God We Trust,” S6 E20

“A Good Day,” S6 E17

“Talking Points,” S5 E19

Primary source(s):

Jodie T. Allen, “The End of Economics: After Seven Straight Years of Growth…,” Washington Post, January 7, 1990, B:01. *

CBS Morning News, “Alan Greenspan: The Economy’s Rockstar,” October 20, 2013.

Secondary source(s):

Beth Popp Berman, Thinking Like and Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 180-200. *

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 203-222.

Patrick J. Maney, Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016), 45-71.

Episode:

“In God We Trust,” S6 E20

“Shibboleth,” S2 E8

Primary source(s):

Bill Clinton, National Prayer Breakfast remarks, February 3, 1994 (pp. 42-43), February 1, 1995 (pp. 62-3). *

Secondary source(s):

Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 177-199.^

Graduate Supplement:

Steven T. Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 2009), 200-220). *

“The Supremes, S5 E17

“Celestial Navigation,” S1 E15

“The Short List,” Season 1, Episode 9

Primary source(s):

PBS Newshour coverage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmation hearings, July 20, 1993.

Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pages TBA[GR3] .^

David Brock, The Real Anita Hill (New York: Free Press, 1993).^

Secondary source(s):

Erwin Chemerinsky, “Assessing Chief Justice Rehnquist,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 154, no. 6 (2006), 1331-64. *

Paul Baumgardner, “Originalism and the Academy in Exile,” Law and History Review 37, n. 3 (2019), 787-807. *

Graduate supplement:

Logan Everett Sawyer III, “Method and Dialogue in History and Originalism,” Law and History Review 37, no. 3 (2019), 847-60. *

Episode:

“Bartlet for America”

“We Killed Yamamoto,” S3 E20

Primary source(s):

Toby Keith, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” (2022).

Dianne Sawyer interview with The Dixie Chicks (2003).

Secondary source(s):

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 243-270.

Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 187-240.

Episode:

“An Khe,” S5 E14

“Access,” S5 E19

Primary source(s):

Joe Lockhart, Remarks at Harvard University, February 16, 2000; James E. Kennedy, Address to Cincinnati editors, ca. 1998, Jeff Shesol—Office of Speechwriting, Clinton Library, Box 25, 1006-0467-F.*

Dee Dee Myers, Interview at Georgetown University, April 22, 2014, 2:55-11:06, 14:00-18:25.

Excerpts from Dee Dee Myers Oral History, Miller Center, University of Virginia, 2005.*

Secondary source(s):

Brian Rosenwald, Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019), 51-121.*

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 135-59.

Episode:

“Game On,” Season 4, E6

“2162 Votes,” S6 E22

“The Debate,” S7 E8

Primary source(s):

The West Wing Weekly Podcast, “The Debate, Part II, with Ronald Klain and Beth Myers.”

First Presidential Debate, September, 1992, 1:30-8:46; 31:35-32:30; 55:35-1:00:14; 1:07:35-1:10:10; 1:27:57-1:32:28.

First Presidential Debate, October, 1996, 2:18-16:00.

Secondary source(s):

John R. Greene, The Presidency of George W. Bush (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021), 33-64.*

Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 238-42.