SIX YEARS AGO I attended the White House Correspondents Dinner, the annual schmoozefest when the entire Washington press corps sups with the President and his staff, and both sides pretend, for a few short hours, to like one another. The guests of honour on this occasion included several members of the cast of The West Wing, the hugely successful TV series depicting a fictional White House. Here were all the President’s men and women rubbing shoulders with the people who played them on television. There was something deeply eerie in watching the real White House Press spokesman at the time (Joe Lockhart), talking to the fictional White House spokesman (C. J. Cregg, played by Allison Janney), while the former White House spokesman (Dee Dee Myers, who also happened to be a consultant on the programme) looked on.

But that was the point of The West Wing, which has now reached its term limit, and will end in May. It was completely made up, but somehow true; it offered a contrast to real politics, but also identified genuine political dilemmas; it was make-believe that somehow made people believe that politics had a point after all. And it lasted over a full, two-term presidency.

The series was, of course, Hollywood wishful thinking: the stalwart Democratic president, Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Martin Sheen), Nobel laureate, tough yet caring, humane, liberal and loveable, surrounded by his cadre of loyal staffers, trying to deploy power decently in a complicated world. Some of it was insufferably pious. At least once an episode, one of the characters would offer an earnest, thumping soliloquy on the nature of truth, power and the American Way, accompanied by a crescendo of uplifting soundtrack music written by W. G. Snuffy Walden. (In our family of dedicated Wing Nuts, any statement of portentous sincerity is known as a “Snuffy”.)

In The West Wing, Josh, Toby, CJ and the others frantically belt up and down corridors waving pieces of paper and making decisions, loudly, on the hoof. On the few occasions I have been in the White House, by contrast, it has seemed almost deserted. The staffers were all locked away in basement rooms, running the country very quietly and secretly, by e-mail; the only people in the corridors were enormous Secret Servicemen talking to their cuffs.

Right-wing critics dismissed the series as a left-wing fetish, an idealised fantasy of what Bill Clinton could have been if he had not been Bill Clinton. Yet Republicans tuned in as avidly as Democrats; British and Japanese viewers became as thoroughly hooked as Americans.

The show’s success went far beyond partisan politics; it takes more than ideology to make people sit through an hour of television based on whether or not the US Senate will pass the education budget.

What The West Wing managed to do was put the drama back into politics when voters in both America and Britain are deeply alienated by the entire political process. British television writers have done a superb job of lampooning politics with Yes, Minister and The New Statesman, but The West Wing attempted something far harder: to make legislation and administrative bureaucracy into soap opera, to take television drama out of the hospital, squad car and courtroom, and place it in a bunch of offices (with, admittedly, rather good furniture) inside one large Georgian house. Rather than focus on the political collision of Left and Right, the series concentrated on the leaking and spinning, the internal decisions, confusions and compromises that are the warp and weft of political power. This was a series about “the art of the deal, and the thrill of the motorcade”.

It worked because politics has historically produced some of the best stories about the human condition, the nature of honour, ambition and loyalty. Politics offers stark moral choices, and thus the best drama, as Shakespeare understood.

President Bartlet tackled the crucial issues week after week: genocide, terrorism, drugs policy, capital punishment and war, while simultaneously wrestling with human frailties and complex moral choices, his own flawed character and illness, and the frailties of his courtiers.

Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the earliest and best episodes of The West Wing, once described his job as “telling stories about kings and their palaces”, the ancient tradition of saga-telling. Bartlet was always the wise king, enthroned in splendour in his white palace, all-powerful but at one with his subjects. The West Wing gave the glow of virtue back to the presidency when it badly needed shoring up: here was a president who could keep his trousers on (unlike Clinton) and quote Latin verse (unlike Bush). Bartlet’s election came, culturally, just in time.

The series was saved from sanctimony by self-mockery, a knack for bringing its holy characters down to earth with a bump. In one early episode, Sam and Josh, spin-doctor and deputy chief of staff, are walking and talking breathlessly down one of the West Wing’s endless corridors, looking purposeful and important. Then they stop.

Sam: Where are you going?

Josh: Where are you going?

Sam: I was following you.

Josh: I was following you. (Pause.) All right, don’t tell anyone this happened, OK?

The West Wing forgot where it was going a few series ago. Like any US administration, the initial energy began to pall; a few of the stars quit (Sam, Rob Lowe), or died (Leo, John Spencer). By the end of his term in office, Bartlet was a lame duck, and so was the series. After 131 episodes, it is time for a change of regime.

America produces the worst television in the world but also, very occasionally, the best. The West Wing was one of those entertainments that changed the landscape by dumbing-up, reminding viewers that politics, ludicrous and corrupt though it is, can also be funny, thoughtful and important.

Farewell President Bartlet, the best leader America never had.

(Hang on, I think that may have been a Snuffy.)

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