West Minister or perhaps, Yes Wing?

 The inspiration for this post is two brilliant and very, very different shows: The West Wing and Yes Minister!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200276/

I am currently watching the whole seven seasons of the WW from beginning to end. (Probably for the 10th time, I have lost count and some episodes I've watched again and again and again). Fellow Wing Nuts amongst you will want to know that at the time of writing the episode I've just watched is Dead Irish Writers (S3:E15*). Coincidentally I am also reading the new book by Mary McCormack and Melissa Fitzgerald: 

What's Next? A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew and Its Enduring Legal of Service

For serious devotees of the show, it's a pleasure to hear all the voices of the key players and feel very much part of that world. It was thoughtful of the writers to include a shout-out to us UK-fans! There really are quite a lot of us. I will also point out my credentials - I'm an original fan who watched every week on television when the show first aired. Before buying all the DVDs etc. later. My wife is a more recent convert to the show. That is entirely and deliberately my fault. It was a great joy, when we met to introduce her to the show. With every re-watching there's dozens of episodes where she demands we watch the next one straight away (regardless of what time it is or what we're supposed to be doing). At this point, I like to remind her that as I introduced her as an owner of all seasons, she never had to suffer the pain of waiting for the next episode every week - or the six months(!) from the end of one season to the beginning of the next! I don't think she sympathises very much...

Anyway, I am - we are - big fans of the show. What the book is really about is not so much the show as the ethos that made it possible and then inspired so many to all sorts acts of service in their communities. Perhaps the book is best summed up by the words that Sorkin wrote for his poet laureate:

You think I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth. An artist's job is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky. 

[Season 3: Ep 16]

Yes, fellow fans, I realise that is the next episode in our re-watch.

The consensus and evidence seems to be that Sorkin and all the other great talents behind this show stumbled on enough truth that this entertainment has really changed many many lives, in many places. Great art touches people.

I am most definitely British. Like most Brits, I have conflicting thoughts about our cousins across the Pond. As do, of course many - if not most - citizens of the USA. If we're honest with ourselves we are very European in the UK. The cultural differences between our countries are actually quite stark but we tend to feel the similarities much more strongly. Our shared history and language is unshakable. However, we do have this habit of looking at America with a kind of friendly condescension: You may be bigger, richer, more powerful and more important than us but we're still more right. All cultures have the comforting lies they like to tell themselves. On YouTube you can find the video of Flanders and Swann performing their Song of Patriotic Prejudice in New York in 1967.  It may be apocryphal, but the story goes that this was not the original name and they had to rename it such to show that they meant it ironically. Non-thinking bigots took the words seriously.

Where I am going with this is to make the point that I do not think such a show could ever be made in the UK. The optimism, positivity and hope and simply not part of our political culture. No sane observer would look at US politics without seeing the extreme partisanship and dangerous populism in the US without some concern. We are suffering from that to a minor extent by comparison in the UK. It's still there. It's still real and it's still a problem. However, the British - or perhaps mostly English - mindset of quiet cynicism with which most of us approach any political discussion would make it impossible to make something like The West Wing in a UK context, in my view.

This is why I want to contrast The West Wing with Yes Minister! 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080306/

Yes Minister! which then became (spoiler alert) Yes Prime Minister! was a brilliant show. It remains very popular four decades after its final episode was first broadcast. A successful and very funny sit-com about government and the civil service is no small achievement. In fact, even a cursory analysis points to its genius. The similarities with The West Wing are much more significant than the obvious that they're both shows about politics. They are very different shows about politics. However, they both are built on intelligent, witty writing brought to life by outstanding actors. Paul Eddington is known to UK audiences for various roles but he was sublime as Jim Hacker. His mixture of hubris and insecurity is a treat. Eddington died at the age of 67 from mycosis fungoides, a rare form of lymphoma which he had originally been diagnosed with four decades before. (I learnt when checking the details that Mr T has also had the same disease). This is noteworthy because he'd never spoken about this until his disease became terminal and in a very memorable TV interview when he had only weeks or months left he spoke about his life and work. He was asked what he wanted his epitaph to be. He replied, "He did very little harm." Which was mostly reported as being humble and unassuming which it is. But he followed this with the observation that actually that's not something that many people achieve. Which to me is the really intriguing point here. 

The real star of the show though was Nigel Hawthorne as Sir Humphrey. I suspect for international audiences Hawthorne is best known for his role as King George III in The Madness of King George. 

I am a fan of YM and YPM, I think that much is clear. I would recommend to fellow fans to check out the books. The Complete Yes Minister and The Complete Yes Prime Minister. These are written as Jim Hacker's Diaries. You can hear the voices of the characters Hawthorne and Eddington and Foulds created in the book. It's also very clever as written as Hacker's diary, the story is told by the unreliable narrator that is Hacker. As the audience, of course, we know that there is much more going on than he is aware of. 

It's a very funny show. It is also a deeply cynical one. At the heart of the show is no sense of public service or trying to achieve anything important. Everyone has mostly bad motives and nothing really changes. This construction is what gives rise to the comedy and why the show is genuinely funny. It is also a world away from The West Wing's ethos. I do feel it's the political show that British minds could make though. Other successful shows like The Thick of It or even the original House of Cards, draw on a similar philosophy. Hacker is only interested in ensuring his place in government and winning votes, whilst Sir Humphrey is all about protecting the civil service and making sure no politician stops him and his mates from running the country because after all, they do know best!

It will surprise no one who reads this blog (both of you) that I have many conversations about politics and issues and policy. Every now and then I have to point out that Yes Minister is not a documentary! There is, I think, an insidious and ubiquitous view that it's kind of true which is partly why populist politicians can get away with bashing the civil service to deflect from their own failings. We will come back to populism but firstly cynicism is really bad for democracy. It's a body blow, in fact.

I have complex views about democracy. I think Churchill summed it up best when he said that democracy is the worst form of government, apart from every other form of government. The simplistic idea that people vote for and get the things they want is actually dangerous, in my view. It is the door to mob rule and populism. Of course, the notion of a government proposing a policy and winning support for it and then doing it because it's what most people want is a good one. Of course, we want politicians to run on a manifesto and then do what they say. But it is actually far more complicated than that. For most issues, the general public cannot possibly be informed enough on the complexities to have a meaningful viewpoint. President Bartlett says this directly when talking about a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and Josh Lyman spends most of an episode marvelling at a poll that says a majority of people think the foreign aid budget is too high and a majority also want it cut. It's the difference between the two numbers that he cannot let go of - the apparent proportion of people who think it's too high but don't want it cut... In another episode, Josh is battling to get an emergency aid package to Mexico approved. I don't know how many viewers would know that this is based on real events during the Clinton Presidency. I presume that Dee Dee Myers was responsible for that storyline. The show mirrors the real story pretty well. Clinton himself has written on the fact that at the time there was polling that showed a majority of Americans didn't want Clinton to bail out Mexico but he did it anyway. And as is the truth of these things, voters respond to the results of effective leadership. The economic cost to the US or not doing this would have been far greater and so, in the end doing the right thing pays off politically. 

Another great example from my side of the ocean is Tony Blair flying to Belfast in 1998 to help secure the Good Friday Agreement that led to peace in Northern Ireland. It's not perfect but a quarter of a century later, Northern Ireland is a different place. I grew up in an age when killings were at least a weekly occurrence in Belfast and attacks in mainland Britain were frequent and always feared. The Manchester bombing stands out as a particularly vile crime. I also walk to work past the memorial to the victims of the Birmingham bombing in the 1970s. That one is most famous for the six men who spent years in prison for a crime they had nothing to do with. In essence, they were imprisoned for being Irish in the wrong place and the wrong time. The Belfast / Good Friday Agreement changed all that. Like most of these messy political negotiations, it almost failed. Tony Blair as prime minister was keeping a watching brief from London and the plan was meant to fly in once an agreement was reached. It wasn't happening. Blair decided to go to try to hammer out a solution. This was a big political risk and he was strongly advised against it. When it all fell apart as it most likely would, he would lose a lot of political capital. Remember that this was three decades in to this version of the conflict which was built on 300 years of distrust and abuse by both sides. Tony Blair went because he knew it might work if he was there and definitely wouldn't if he wasn't/ I'm not suggesting he deserves all the credit or necessarily most of it but my point is about an example of a politician doing the right thing even though it might cost them politically. This is what leadership looks like. John Major, Blair, predecessor deserves similar credit. He was instrumental in getting the peace process started. Arguably it's his greatest legacy as Prime Minister and it was a big political risk for him at the time and probably won him zero votes. Again, this is what leadership looks like, which brings me to my main point.

The genius of democracy is not that people get what they want. That is but a part. The genius of democracy is that the governing are accountable to the governed. We can draw these two threads together by talking about populism.

For our purposes here, I will define populism as a political theory of offering simplistic answers with popular appeal to complex problems. The key point being that such answers do not work. But they do win votes. In some situations they can be a very effective political strategy. Which brings me back to cynicism. 

We know that our politicians are flawed. We know that some of them are very flawed. There are plenty of people who want the power, prestige, attention, the limelight or even just the wealth that follows. These grifters often resort to populism. It is of course foolish to lionise our leaders and assume that all have this deep sense of service and desire to make things better for all of us. It is a similar and equal fallacy to assume they're all the same and just in it for themselves.

This is so dangerous to democracy. It leads to voter apathy and poor turnout. Both the UK and US have this problem. The US more than the UK, but in both nations more than a third of people, typically do not vote. Some politicians deliberately cultivate poor voter engagement when it helps them win. The bottom line though is that this mentality allows the governing to rule of the governed without the necessary constraint. Politicians inevitably are more likely to pursue policies that appeal to people who are more likely to vote. This often leads to a confirmational bias for the cynical and hence only deepens the problem.

There are plenty of politicians who deserve our disdain. There are lots - including lots I disagree with - who are trying very hard to do the right thing. Apparently, Abraham Lincoln did what he thought was right even though it meant losing half the country.... sorry I digress, I think the WW offers us a view of public service and political engagement that is desperately needed in all democratic countries. I think that it is Melissa Fitzgerald's work with drug treatment courts that exemplifies my point best. I learnt about this amazing work from the West Wing Weekly Podcast but it gets quite a lot of mentions in the book... You see every politician can win votes by standing up and saying "I'm tough of crime, I'm tough of drugs and if you break the law, you're going to prison." That will always be popular. Our prisons are full and busting, many lives are wasted and no one is safer and drugs continue to destroy lives. It's much harder to win votes by advocating for treatment programs that actually work. 

My message to every voter is to find out about politicians and leaders who want first and foremost to do the right thing and make all of our lives better. Then vote for them. We need to put our cynicism aside. They are not all the same. We also need to fight back against populist, simplistic, and ultimate false, answers.

What's Next? 

Yes, Minister!