Hail to the chief.
If the one in the White House and his staff are as proficient and inspiring as their fictional counterparts were in Wednesday night's special terrorism-themed episode of "The West Wing," Americans are well-served in the grief-driven, war-footing aftermath of Sept. 11.
Are George W. Bush and the people around him this good? \o7 Please\f7 let them be this good.
But not this preachy.
Customary spin and photo ops aside, the public has no way of knowing for certain how well or poorly a president performs for the nation in private until biographers and tell-all authors weigh in. On NBC, Josiah Bartlet's weekly crescendos of strength, deep thought and character fill that void neatly, he and his idealistic staff wearing the halos of heroes and walking just a bit taller than other earthlings while delivering one throat lump after another.
Take Wednesday's hastily crafted hour, titled "Isaac and Ishmael" and set in the present period following last month's terrorist strikes.
Series creator Aaron Sorkin's morality play had a group of visiting high school students trapped inside the White House during a tense lockdown ordered in response to a possible security breach that turned out to be a false alarm. As Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) separately grilled a Muslim American White House worker (Ajay Naidu) wrongly suspected of terrorist links, other staff members took turns lecturing the students and themselves about the roots and nature of terrorism and how a wounded U.S. should respond to it. The president (Martin Sheen) and first lady (Stockard Channing) ultimately dropped by, too, leaving behind silver bullets of profundity.
Named after a biblical tale relating Islam and Judaism, "Isaac and Ishmael" was strongest when confronting McGarry with his own latent prejudice as he interrogated the young White House worker, whose name just happened to match an alias used by a suspected Arab terrorist. As for the rest, well ...
Credit Sorkin with using his series to react swiftly and boldly to address the present difficulty with a risky story stating, above all, how innocent Americans can be victimized by ethnic and religious profiling--in this case, those of Eastern and Middle Eastern origin--in these jittery times.
