The West Wing

Here are my thoughts and observations after tonight's West Wing:

- Wow - what a lot of issues to gloss over! Strengthening the borders, the Minutemen, immigration, litmus tests for judges and probably another half dozen other issues thrown about. Don't get me wrong - I like it. It's not like real campaigns take time out to explain the nuances of individual issues.

- Speaking of nuanced - don't think that "I voted for it before I voted against it" wasn't purposeful. I think the writers of West Wing are still looking to make excuses for John Kerry. The thinking must be "Oh if only John Kerry was given the opportunity to explain his votes without being eaten apart by the sharks of the press." The truth is Kerry wasn't eaten alive by the press. In fact Kerry basically avoided them all together. Remember how he avoided the press for about a month and a half before taking questions from Jon Stewart? Most people remember how Kerry flip-flopped on the funding for the war in Iraq but my favorite was how he told Cuban-Americans how he voted for the Helms-Burton Act when in fact he voted against it. Santos did more one-on-one interviews with the press in this show than John Kerry did in the whole last two months of his campaign (sad but true).

- The flip flop for Santos in question is the CAFTA agreement (which is basically free trade with Central America). The truth is - any Democrats who voted against CAFTA almost surely did so because they were in the pocket of the sugar lobby. Special interest politics at its worst.

- Janeanne Garofalo brought nothing to the table tonight. I hope this is the last we see of her.

- Weren't we teased last week about how someone in the White House would be fired this week because of the NASA leak? Well? I'm waiting. Ohh.. now they say next week?

- You can see Vinick starting to wear the black hat in the race. He lied to the lobbyist for the "reverends". Santos would never lie (he probably doesn't fart either). The writers probably didn't intend this but I think the VP candidate Sullivan came off pretty strong. I want my candidates to know where they stand and be unafraid of telling their "friends" "don't cross me". When Aaron Sorkin wrote A Few Good Men - Col. Jessup was supposed to be a bad guy but now he looks like more a hero than Tom Cruise's character. Same vibe from Sullivan tonight.

- You know that Chris Matthews got paid for his appearence. I wonder if Drudge got paid anything? He must have. I hope it was equal to the money Matthews got. If Drudge didn't get paid - I'd be pissed if I were him.