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Abstract
This essay reads the NBC drama The West Wing against the cultural anxieties and ambivalences about the contemporary presidency, arguing that the program presents a powerful and meaningful “presidentiality,” a discursive construction of the presidency with ideological and rhetorical relevance. Specifically, The West Wing mimetically captures a view of the presidency, offering, in the process, a romantic vision of the institution that reflects the postmodernity of U.S. politics and the uncertainty that pervades questions of heroism and hierarchy at the turn of the twenty‐first century. In part, the political drama disrupts images of traditional power politics, presenting a more chaotic, inclusive, and communal portrayal of the presidency. Against this narrative backdrop, however, we contend that the program situates its postmodern rendition of presidentiality within a cathartic portrayal of the presidency, relying on conservative demarcations of presidential leadership ordered by commitments to intellectualism, militarism, masculinity, and whiteness.
