Watching The West Wing...

I've just finished watching the last three episodes of this season, and I have to say that I'm getting a little bit depressed about politics. Now some may wonder why it's taken me so long to reach this point, but in the past, I've generally been cynical about politics but never really depressed (though watching The Daily Show certainly hasn't helped.)

For those who haven't been watching, the end of the sixth season of The West Wing covers the run-up to the Presidential elections at the end of Bartlet's second term. It's nice to see a candidate (a Republican no less) who has the guts to say that his religion is not the issue in the campaign, saying:

I don't see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there - if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you, but a lot of them will, and it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.

It's also nice to see the Republican candidate praise and thank the outgoing Democratic President for the sacrifices he made while in office (all the while picking up votes with the Democrats). It's nice to see the dark horse Democratic candidate win by sticking to his principles and defying the party machinery. It's nice to see the Democratic party having a spine and a platform.

It's nice to see all that. And then you watch the news, and you see Democrats who have no spine nor a platform. You see the Republican House majority leader saying that "activist" judges will be held accountable upholding the concept of federalism (in regards to the Schiavo case). You look and wonder whether the provisions of the Patriot Act will be renewed. You wonder how the Republican party lost touch with its core principles (you remember, small government, states' rights, and all that) and how the Democrats lost touch with belief in anything beyond "We're not the Republicans." You wonder whether there will ever be something beyond Red States vs. Blue States. And you wonder what happened to any sort of idealism, at least in national politics. Maybe not the idealism you see in the fictional world of The West Wing, but the ideal that the United States still is one nation.