Surprise! Democrat wins on 'West Wing!'

Yeah, right.

The show's producers claim that the death of the actor who played the running mate of fictional Democratic nominee Matt Santos (reflected by the death of his character in the show) changed an original story line in which Republican Arnold Vinick was to be elected to succeed President Josiah Bartlet. They claim that viewers would have been just too sad to see Santos lose both his running mate and the election.

After all those years of running the longest-running free partisan political ad in history, I would have believed that the producers of "The West Wing" would have let a Republican succeed Jed Bartlet when I didn't see it. (I would have read about it on Television Without Pity).

Actually, in the real world, the election wouldn't have been as close as it was in the series. A great many Republicans (myself included) would have stayed home rather than vote for someone with Vinick's position on abortion. Santos would have won going away.

It does make sense, though, that any Republican portrayed half-way sympathetically on "The West Wing" would have had to have essentially Democratic views on social issues. Which is, essentially, why I never bothered much with a well-written, well-acted, and well-produced television series on a subject which fascinates me, and which I greatly enjoyed the few times I watched it. Whatever its merits as entertainment, it was always entertainment laced with propaganda- and often rather spurious propaganda, at that.