“There’s probably a couple of seconds every day when I think about it,” Sorkin stated, while calling his time writing the eventful tenure of the Bartlett White House “fun” and adding, “I miss it.” Sorkin, who memorably quit the show after its fourth season following friction with Warner Bros. Television, went on to create the widely ridiculed Saturday Night Live-inspired drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and the moderately more well received The Newsroom, while penning screenplays for films like The Social Network, Moneyball, and Molly’s Game.
As to whether Sorkin, whose snappy banter among whip-smart, argumentative but principled political figures could truly adapt to our current nightmare reality—where reality show hosts who posts animal snuff videos online are elected president and Congress acts less like opposed but patriotic interpreters of the Constitution than sycophantic enablers and accomplices—”tricky” might be an understatement. Sorkin himself is loath to express how Martin Sheen’s doggedly idealistic Democratic President Jed Bartlett might function in such a world, even in his term-limited private capacity. (It’s cathartic to imagine an affronted Bartlett tearing all of Trump’s gaudy golden nonsense out of the Oval Office, however.)
“I’d like to take a little time before I put words in Jed Bartlet’s mouth,” Sorkin says, before once more engaging in the most diplomatic of understatement, “I’ll just say that I don’t think his reaction would be dissimilar to most of our reactions to what’s going on right now.” And while most of the West Wing cast remains active and working 20 years after the show concluded with Bartlett’s administration giving way to Jimmy Smits’ similarly honorable, Obama-esque Matt Santos, at least one former cast member’s recent choice of roles suggest he might not be amenable to another term, at least not as part of a Bartlett-Santos tea
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