"Wing" Nuts

I've got a post over at Cato@Liberty explaining why I hated NBC's West Wing and I'm glad it's gone. It was prompted by an Ezra Klein piece in the American Prospect that celebrated WW's passing for slightly different reasons."Iron Lungfish," a commenter at Ezra's blog puts my complaint with the show perhaps more clearly than I did:

The show's default attitude towards politics - and the presidency in particular - is one of unabashed naivete, which most certainly is not a good thing to foster in American life. One of the greatest flaws in American politics is that we're not nearly skeptical enough of our leaders, that we're willing to see reelection of incumbents as the default instead of firing them for their incompetence and corruption, that most of us see the president as the whole world's commander-in-chief instead of as the whole country's public servant. The West Wing reveled in the power and ceremony of the executive branch, in the kind of stateliness and pageantry that built up George Bush's image over his first four years in office. For the most part I'd say the show was mostly harmless - it was a symptom, not a cause, but it wasn't a symptom of anything good.