The Great West Wing Rewatch: 7.6 "The Al Smith Dinner"

Joel: So often present day politics is broken down to republicans vs. democrats, us vs. them. Even throughout the show, the playing field is pretty much set up as the democrats that we follow having to go up against a Republican Party that seems set on beating down the democrats. If an action helps one side it automatically hurts the other side. And if something happens that hurts us, we automatically assume that it came from them.
So in this episode we get a third option where a small faction throws a wrench into the whole thing and messes it up for both sides for different reasons. This year we’ve seen more division within both political parties than the past several previous elections, so today, rewatching this episode, it almost serves as a warning, a taste as what’s to come. The ad in question clearly thinks it’s speaking for the Republican party and it’s supporters. It’s attacking Matt Santos, the democratic candidate, and therefore must be good for the Republican Party as a whole. But the ad also causes plenty of headaches over on the republican side of things. This ad doesn’t speak for the party as a whole, but instead speaks for a small faction of like minded people who consider themselves to be anti-democrats. But this ad looks like it might be doing just as much harm to the republican candidate as the democrat one. Now the republicans look like they’re the first ones to go negative in this campaign. This also brings to light Vinick’s position on abortion which isn’t as much in line with mainstream republicans as perhaps the party would like. Politics is a much more complicated game than a two sided us vs. them. Each of the two sides actually represent two dozen different sides, and while we get to see some of that in the primaries, it all seems to go away once we’re on the national stage with the two main parties facing off. This episode really called to attention that different opinions and beliefs still fight each other within the same party, something that is more and more apparent the closer we get to the election (both the fictional one and the real one).

Chris: The problem with two candidates both agreeing not to go negative with their campaign ads is that those two campaigns aren't the only people that run political ads and politics is such that anyone that goes negative, whichever party the belong to now becomes the responsibility of the candidate of that party since they're not the figure head of said party. And how quick was the opposing side ready to fire back once the negativity seal was broken? All it takes is one shot for any squeaky clean election to turn into a mud slinging contest. Also, this shows what I dislike about playing party politics because then you have people like Santos who toes the party line even though it's against his personal beliefs and the only reason he's able to get away with is because he's a debate wizard...which is why it's smart of Vinick to put off the debate as long as possible.

A good president rehires Will Bailey to replace Toby.