Josiah Bartlet has a lot to answer for. That American president existed only as a creation of television fiction and yet he has had more influence on thinking and writing about our politics than many real-life British politicians.
The last season of The West Wing, the feel-good series about a liberal American president and his improbably attractive, dynamic and idealistic staff, was screened some time ago. Yet it seems to play on an endless loop in the heads of the Westminster classes and those who report on them.
When Tony Blair was in Number 10, some of his staff liked to fantasise that they were acting out a British version of The West Wing. They even put the show's stirring title theme on their answering machines. Mr Blair did not do that, but he did entertain ambitions to turn Downing Street into a discount version of the White House.
After visits to the Oval Office, he used to half-jokingly complain to his aides that they ought to call him "Mr Prime Minister" in emulation of the way that George Bush's staff addressed him as "Mr President".
Mr Blair had a notion to merge Number 10 with the cabinet office in the hope that would create a simulacrum of the West Wing. He was thwarted by resistance from the senior civil service, his own lack of determination when it came to reforming Whitehall, and the power of his rival for the presidency, one Gordon Brown.
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