Post by Flamingo on Mar 30, 2004 18:35:48 GMT
Speaking for the President
Is The West Wing accurate? Ed Potton hears the inside info from two real-life C.J.s and gets a guarded tour of Washington
March 27th 2004
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7946-1050741,00.html>
An embattled American President kicks off what is set to be a bloody re-election campaign. Violent anti-government insurgence erupts in Haiti. Islamic terrorists launch horrifying attacks on Western targets. Watch the third series of The West Wing, released on DVD on March 29, and the temptation to draw parallels with the real world is stronger than ever.
The comparisons, of course, start to go awry when you contrast the fervent conservatism of George Bush’s Administration with the liberal outlook of Josiah “Jed†Bartlet’s. But nine out of ten West Wing fans will tell you that the real star of the show is not folksy President Bartlet anyway, but his formidable, effervescent press secretary C. J. Cregg, as played by Allison Janney. In the age of Alastair Campbell and Comical Ali, the best lines are often reserved for those who stand between the politicians and a bloodthirsty media.
Two Washington faces who know all about handling the fourth estate are Jody Powell, who served as President Carter’s press secretary from 1976 to 1980, and Sheila Tate, who filled a similar role for First Lady Nancy Reagan (1981-85) and President-elect George Bush Sr (1988-89). After leaving politics, the pair overcame their differences to found Powell-Tate, one of America’s top commercial PR agencies. We meet at Les Halles brasserie, a few blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The menu has a West Wing theme: highlights are Josiah Bartlet’s Beef Tenderloin Rossini and Leo McGarry’s Chocolate Soufflé.
They inevitably lack some of C. J.’s statuesque glamour, but both Powell and Tate, with their power suits, flawless haircuts and deft deflection of awkward questions, exude the manner of archetypal political professionals. So what do the real C. J.s make of their more famous fictional counterpart? “She’s a very interesting character and clearly compelling,†says Tate, in between mouthfuls of Toby Ziegler’s Steamed Halibut. The tact of a true pro. “ But she has more power than any press secretary I’ve ever known. If you have worked in the White House, it’s hard to watch a show and not say: ‘It would never have happened that way.’â€
For one thing, the genuine West Wingers don’t have scriptwriters as skilled as Aaron Sorkin. “Nobody is that glib,†says Powell in his genial Southern twang. “I certainly wasn’t. The negotiations to get the hostages out of Iran in 1980 were as emotional and dramatic moments as I’d spent in the White House. But you can watch the tape and be bored to tears.â€
Nor do C. J. and her fast-talking colleagues treat their superiors with the deference displayed in the real White House. “You can argue,†explains Powell, “but you have an obligation to do it in a way that’s less smartass.†When Powell did get too big for his boots, Carter would ask him dryly: “Why don’t you run for President?â€
And yet Powell had been so close to Carter that the two used to share beds on cash-strapped campaign trails. “Walking into my first meeting in the Oval Office,†he remembers, “the first thing that struck me was: ‘I will never refer to him as Jimmy again.’ He comes up and hunts with us every year, and I still call him ‘Mr President’.â€
Despite their reservations, Tate and Powell are quick to give The West Wing credit for presenting a political process that is nuanced and riddled with hard choices. “Most films and shows succumb to the whole Hollywood thing,†says Powell. “This is closer to what it was like than anything else I’ve seen about the White House in 40 years. It helps people understand that’s it’s not always good versus evil. Compromise is an important part of the political process. Any decision that gets to the President, if it were easy, would be made by someone else.â€
But big decisons can breed big mistakes. C. J.’s appeal is that she is both brilliant and reassuringly fallible: a key plotline of the third series revolves around a crucial gaffe she makes at a press conference. Powell and Tate are predictably reticent when asked about their own howlers, although Tate admits that a jokey remark about the trim on one of Nancy Reagan’s outfits being made from “a dead animal†backfired spectacularly: “Nancy and I heard from every animal rights activist in the world.†A sense of humour, often cited as the press secretary’s most important weapon, can also be their biggest handicap.
Gaffes aside, C. J. has also been romantically involved with a member of the White House press corps, a scenario that strikes Powell as “very unlikely. It’s a bad career move for one thing.†Nevertheless, both he and Tate acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining good relations with the press while refraining from getting too cosy. “It’s a fine line, you sort of define it every day,†says Tate. “I did socialise with the press,†admits Powell, “but I didn’t have small groups to my house for dinner for fear of being seen as having favourites.â€
But romance and socialising always take a back seat in The West Wing, a world where 18-hour days seem to be the rule. “It’s not a normal way to live,†agrees Tate. She resigned from her post after spending four summers organising the White House’s Christmas coverage. “We’d decorate the tree, interviews were done, pictures were taken, in order to make the November issues of the magazines. Eventually, I said I don’t want to spent another August doing Christmas.â€
However, Tate insists that she always feels lucky to have worked in the West Wing. “You’re really a witness to history, you’re right there, involved in it,†says the woman who had to give a press conference while still in shock after the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. And while Powell professes not to miss a political scene whose quality of discourse has “souredâ€, he lights up when asked at which moment in the past 50 years he would like to have been back in the White House. “I’d like to have been there on 9/11,†he answers. “In terms of a point where American history changed, that would have been a time to be there.†His eyes are alive with imagined challenges. Fiction, as ever, has a long way to go before it can match the drama of real life.
TOUR OF DUTIES
In the third season of The West Wing, C. J. falls for her secret service agent. Could this happen? “Sure,†says Kurt Wurzberger, a “threat assessment professional†who has protected everyone from Ronald Reagan to Oprah Winfrey.
“Secret service guys are still people and chemistry will occur,†he says as we tour Washington’s political hotspots. “Chuck Vance, who protected President Ford’s daughter, ended up marrying her.â€
But with pistol-packing agents on every street, Washington 2004 is more paranoid than loved up. It’s boom time for Wurzberger, who served as a counter-terrorist agent during the 1970s. He then worked privately for various clients before returning to serve his country after September 11. With his lantern jaw and professional jargon (things are not easier, they’re “more logistically feasibleâ€), he is a movie buff’s dream of a secret service agent. He consulted on Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire.
While he’s a fan of The West Wing (“It’s very accurate in terms of portraying the dialogues between the playersâ€), Wurzberger insists that non-fiction is far more fraught with peril. Outside the Hilton Hotel, he talks admiringly of the agents protecting President Reagan when he was shot here in 1981. “It was a textbook response.â€
Wurzberger has played the hero himself, foiling three attacks on V.I.P.s, in one of which he was stabbed in the elbow. “When I locked my elbow, he couldn’t get the blade out. Consequently I was able to break his handhold,†he recalls cheerfully. But that’s rare in a job which he sums up as “hours of boredom highlighted by seconds of fearâ€. Less glamorous missions have seen him disguised as a hot dog vendor and a middle-aged woman. America, it seems, will go to any length to protect itself. “Stay safe and watch your back,†he advises, and melts into the crowd.
The West Wing: Series 3 is out to buy on DVD on Monday
Is The West Wing accurate? Ed Potton hears the inside info from two real-life C.J.s and gets a guarded tour of Washington
March 27th 2004
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7946-1050741,00.html>
An embattled American President kicks off what is set to be a bloody re-election campaign. Violent anti-government insurgence erupts in Haiti. Islamic terrorists launch horrifying attacks on Western targets. Watch the third series of The West Wing, released on DVD on March 29, and the temptation to draw parallels with the real world is stronger than ever.
The comparisons, of course, start to go awry when you contrast the fervent conservatism of George Bush’s Administration with the liberal outlook of Josiah “Jed†Bartlet’s. But nine out of ten West Wing fans will tell you that the real star of the show is not folksy President Bartlet anyway, but his formidable, effervescent press secretary C. J. Cregg, as played by Allison Janney. In the age of Alastair Campbell and Comical Ali, the best lines are often reserved for those who stand between the politicians and a bloodthirsty media.
Two Washington faces who know all about handling the fourth estate are Jody Powell, who served as President Carter’s press secretary from 1976 to 1980, and Sheila Tate, who filled a similar role for First Lady Nancy Reagan (1981-85) and President-elect George Bush Sr (1988-89). After leaving politics, the pair overcame their differences to found Powell-Tate, one of America’s top commercial PR agencies. We meet at Les Halles brasserie, a few blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The menu has a West Wing theme: highlights are Josiah Bartlet’s Beef Tenderloin Rossini and Leo McGarry’s Chocolate Soufflé.
They inevitably lack some of C. J.’s statuesque glamour, but both Powell and Tate, with their power suits, flawless haircuts and deft deflection of awkward questions, exude the manner of archetypal political professionals. So what do the real C. J.s make of their more famous fictional counterpart? “She’s a very interesting character and clearly compelling,†says Tate, in between mouthfuls of Toby Ziegler’s Steamed Halibut. The tact of a true pro. “ But she has more power than any press secretary I’ve ever known. If you have worked in the White House, it’s hard to watch a show and not say: ‘It would never have happened that way.’â€
For one thing, the genuine West Wingers don’t have scriptwriters as skilled as Aaron Sorkin. “Nobody is that glib,†says Powell in his genial Southern twang. “I certainly wasn’t. The negotiations to get the hostages out of Iran in 1980 were as emotional and dramatic moments as I’d spent in the White House. But you can watch the tape and be bored to tears.â€
Nor do C. J. and her fast-talking colleagues treat their superiors with the deference displayed in the real White House. “You can argue,†explains Powell, “but you have an obligation to do it in a way that’s less smartass.†When Powell did get too big for his boots, Carter would ask him dryly: “Why don’t you run for President?â€
And yet Powell had been so close to Carter that the two used to share beds on cash-strapped campaign trails. “Walking into my first meeting in the Oval Office,†he remembers, “the first thing that struck me was: ‘I will never refer to him as Jimmy again.’ He comes up and hunts with us every year, and I still call him ‘Mr President’.â€
Despite their reservations, Tate and Powell are quick to give The West Wing credit for presenting a political process that is nuanced and riddled with hard choices. “Most films and shows succumb to the whole Hollywood thing,†says Powell. “This is closer to what it was like than anything else I’ve seen about the White House in 40 years. It helps people understand that’s it’s not always good versus evil. Compromise is an important part of the political process. Any decision that gets to the President, if it were easy, would be made by someone else.â€
But big decisons can breed big mistakes. C. J.’s appeal is that she is both brilliant and reassuringly fallible: a key plotline of the third series revolves around a crucial gaffe she makes at a press conference. Powell and Tate are predictably reticent when asked about their own howlers, although Tate admits that a jokey remark about the trim on one of Nancy Reagan’s outfits being made from “a dead animal†backfired spectacularly: “Nancy and I heard from every animal rights activist in the world.†A sense of humour, often cited as the press secretary’s most important weapon, can also be their biggest handicap.
Gaffes aside, C. J. has also been romantically involved with a member of the White House press corps, a scenario that strikes Powell as “very unlikely. It’s a bad career move for one thing.†Nevertheless, both he and Tate acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining good relations with the press while refraining from getting too cosy. “It’s a fine line, you sort of define it every day,†says Tate. “I did socialise with the press,†admits Powell, “but I didn’t have small groups to my house for dinner for fear of being seen as having favourites.â€
But romance and socialising always take a back seat in The West Wing, a world where 18-hour days seem to be the rule. “It’s not a normal way to live,†agrees Tate. She resigned from her post after spending four summers organising the White House’s Christmas coverage. “We’d decorate the tree, interviews were done, pictures were taken, in order to make the November issues of the magazines. Eventually, I said I don’t want to spent another August doing Christmas.â€
However, Tate insists that she always feels lucky to have worked in the West Wing. “You’re really a witness to history, you’re right there, involved in it,†says the woman who had to give a press conference while still in shock after the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. And while Powell professes not to miss a political scene whose quality of discourse has “souredâ€, he lights up when asked at which moment in the past 50 years he would like to have been back in the White House. “I’d like to have been there on 9/11,†he answers. “In terms of a point where American history changed, that would have been a time to be there.†His eyes are alive with imagined challenges. Fiction, as ever, has a long way to go before it can match the drama of real life.
TOUR OF DUTIES
In the third season of The West Wing, C. J. falls for her secret service agent. Could this happen? “Sure,†says Kurt Wurzberger, a “threat assessment professional†who has protected everyone from Ronald Reagan to Oprah Winfrey.
“Secret service guys are still people and chemistry will occur,†he says as we tour Washington’s political hotspots. “Chuck Vance, who protected President Ford’s daughter, ended up marrying her.â€
But with pistol-packing agents on every street, Washington 2004 is more paranoid than loved up. It’s boom time for Wurzberger, who served as a counter-terrorist agent during the 1970s. He then worked privately for various clients before returning to serve his country after September 11. With his lantern jaw and professional jargon (things are not easier, they’re “more logistically feasibleâ€), he is a movie buff’s dream of a secret service agent. He consulted on Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire.
While he’s a fan of The West Wing (“It’s very accurate in terms of portraying the dialogues between the playersâ€), Wurzberger insists that non-fiction is far more fraught with peril. Outside the Hilton Hotel, he talks admiringly of the agents protecting President Reagan when he was shot here in 1981. “It was a textbook response.â€
Wurzberger has played the hero himself, foiling three attacks on V.I.P.s, in one of which he was stabbed in the elbow. “When I locked my elbow, he couldn’t get the blade out. Consequently I was able to break his handhold,†he recalls cheerfully. But that’s rare in a job which he sums up as “hours of boredom highlighted by seconds of fearâ€. Less glamorous missions have seen him disguised as a hot dog vendor and a middle-aged woman. America, it seems, will go to any length to protect itself. “Stay safe and watch your back,†he advises, and melts into the crowd.
The West Wing: Series 3 is out to buy on DVD on Monday