The West Wing (1999-2006)
The television show that launched a thousand Capitol Hill careers, "The West Wing" snuck onto American screens at just the time when the actual White House was becoming more and more like a TV show. Though President Bartlett never had any scandals of the Lewinsky sort, his combination of Clintonesque optimism and irascible charm gave us a president we wished we had, complete with a staff of smart, hardworking professionals who could be blisteringly funny while talking about the tedious minutiae of policy-making. Though the show faltered the deeper we got into George W. Bush’s administration, the first several seasons stand as one of the best presentations of government in any medium.
