Include my new book, which i will shamelessly plug because of this ongoing, which is called 24 7 cable television. The fragmenting of america from watergate to fox news. The book explores the political strategy behind the president ial embrace of programs like mtv news. And so im just thrilled to be moderating this conversation, which looks at the other side of the equation, how television has portrayed the american presidency and the impact that this has had on Civic Knowledge and engagement. To dig into these questions, i am thrilled to introduce my panelist who are incredibly distant distinguished in their careers their full bios are in program. So i will just give a brief to my left. We have gautham rao, who is an associate professor of history at American University. He is editor in chief of law and history review, which is a leading journal of legal history and author of National Duties custom houses and the making of the american state. He is now at work at a new project which uses the west as a lens into american history. And were going to hear more about that today. Next to him, we have eric lesser, who is a senior counsel at wilmerhale, a leading law Firm Previously was a fourth term member of the massachusetts state senate. And and an Obama White House aide. He has worked for seven sessions as a consultant. The hit hbo series veep, and then have trevor parrygiles, who is a professor in the department of communication and the associate dean, Faculty Affairs and research at the college of arts and humanities in the university of maryland. He is the Award Winning author and editor of four books, including the prime time presidency, the west wing and u. S. National ism. So lets dig in. And to start, im wondering if each of you could talk the unique perspective that you have on Popular Culture in Popular Television, entertainment and the white house. And just in general overview of how you have studied or experience the relationship between the two gautham, do you want to start . Yes, thank you. Its a pleasure to be here today. So i come at this from american devotional perspective, someone whos trained, as an early american historian, but it was really due to my students at American University who i kept making jokes about the west wing. And one day ill teach a class about the west wing and they said, you really should. And i and i was stunned to find that there was a great deal interest among the student body about it, because, lets face it, are a lot younger than i am. And so once i got into it that way, i started really digging into some of the differences between real presidency and to be president see. And what i found was especially on the show, that i specialized on in my work that the west wing, there was a great deal of interest in the writers rooms about what was going on in the world around them. But the challenge was how to package that in an entertaining way for a mass audience. And so thats really been what been focusing on bridging the gap really between those worlds. Trevor, youve youve written extensively about the west wing as well. How did you come to that topic . Oh, well, i was a fan when i was. Ive always been in the relationship between rhetoric, politics and Popular Culture. And so, you know, manna from heaven. In 1998, 1999, when the west wing began. We hadnt really seen an extensive treatment of the presidency on Popular Culture, on television, in way before. And so it was pretty amazing. Since then, become very interested in the larger array of programing on television and in film, specifically in the postcold war era and how weve wrestled with what daniel calls the age of fracture that came after the end of the cold. How Popular Culture comes into provide a set of meanings and understandings about the american presidency and what that what those are telling us. Moreover how they lead us in particular ways to understand the presidency has a specific and powerful institution in American Life. And so thats what looking at now fascinating. And eric, how did you come to serve as a consultant for food . Well. Well, kevin, thanks so much for having me. And thank you to the White House Historical association. Im a big fan and its a great honor to come down here. This does my feeling that dc is about a month ahead of massachusetts terms of weather. So its much nicer, warmer here than it is for where i am. But i am not im not an academic. Im not a researcher. So i really feel humbled to be up on stage with all of you i got wrapped up in this because i was political nerd in high school and love the wing. And i grew up as part of, i think, a generation, especially of those of us who kind of came of age with the Obamacare Campaign in 2008, ive really looking at jed bartlet as our first president. And then and then then, of course, president obama after that. And the perspective i really have here is i was a fan of the show and motivated in part to get into politics from the ideals the show. I worked as a staffer on president ial campaigns which or may not be where the veep influences come in and then worked as a staffer in the white house and then ran for office myself. I was in the state senate in massachusetts for four terms, so then saw the perspective as a candidate, which may or may also be drawn or inspire some veep. And i was oh, i know. Well get into it in a little bit more detail, but i was basically i had wrapped up my time at the white house and i was back in massachusetts and my phone rang. A woman whos, a friend of mine who i know is going to be speaking on a later panel, me, her dad called and said, you know, there was a program getting put together by hbo. Armando iannucci is is creating it. He had done the thick of it and in the loop in the uk was creating this comedy about american politics for hbo what id be interested in, kind of helping out with the accuracy and some of the consulting on the scripts. And it seemed like a great side job to do. I was in law school, so i said yes and that was shortly after the pilot. Fascinating. So each of you have studied this question about the relationship between art and life or experienced it in different ways. So what do you see as the relationship between art and life . Do they mimic one another. I guess ill jump in on that. Thats for the theater. But i, you know, least on the west wing, there is, a great deal of mimicry and those of us who got experience politics in the nineties, i think it was so recognizable, especially in the early seasons, that the show was trying to give us the same that we were seeing with with bill and Newt Gingrich and sort this this battle and scandals everywhere. Right. Hearings, that kind of thing. But, of course, you know, in the aaron sorkin world where the art part kicked in really was that it was going to be a little kinder and gentler. It wasnt to go on all day and night like cnn at that point. And it was going to have a generally happier ending than it had in in the nineties for the clintons. So i do think there was there was a great deal of mimicry. It would be interesting to hear to hear erics perspective as well on this about whether that instinct remains sort of intact moving forward, because obviously the world changes and and politics changes. But certainly from from the perspective i was looking at, there was a great deal of mimicking reality. Yeah, i would say kind of just to go down the line here, i mean, from my perspective, it literally did, you know, art literally did mimic life. I had the sort of privilege of having been on the ground floor of the Obama Campaign from the very earliest phases. And it really is uncanny in certain respects how similar some of the plotlines and especially of later season west wing is to the to the 2008 Obama Campaign. And i wasnt unique in that regard. There a lot of us who were staff members, younger volunteers on the on the campaign in 2007 2000 who kind of lived and breathed the wing and loved every episode and really viewed, again the ideals it represented as really an aspiration in politics. The flip side of that is veep was very much also a little bit of mimicking and poking fun at that. The life of a staff and the life of being a staffer in dc and, you know, im sure well get into this as the conversation goes on, but very much something that became a little bit of a parlor game amongst and people in dc as well which veep character. This person are they a dan are they a jonah . Is this an amy and that became almost like a like a shorthand and a catchphrase around town for describing people if you called. And so this is really a dan character. They kind of know what theyre talking about or this is really an amy character. So honestly, the lines started to be do start to become a little bit blurred. And i think that thats part of what made this show so, so and has given them such lasting the effect that they had on the culture and vice versa, the responsiveness, the plots and the and the storylines had to the culture as they changed around them. Yeah. When we first met eric or when i first met eric, i thought, is he a dan . Where is he saying . I definitely, definitely. Sam yeah. Well, thats the vision we all want. I found that im less interested in whether or not art mimics life as i am. The moments when the artists and the Popular Culture texts go off in wildly different directions, sometimes into the realm of the implausible. So im thinking here of a show called designated survivor that Kiefer Sutherland thing it imagines this world where, you know the secretary of housing and development is the designated survivor and everybody gets blown up. Okay, so the whole show is premised upon hopefully implausible, right . But more later in that show is the situation room. I dont know if youve if seen the program, but the situation room is this amazing facility with huge screens and maps and a lot of Electronic Arts and its this vast, huge space. And we all know the situation room, as we saw on veep, is much smaller, contained environment. And so those moments of implausibility strike me as often very, very in the ways in which Popular Culture is asking us to think the presidency. And sometimes complicated and implausible ways, the extent to which the 25th amendment surfaces a plot device in, Popular Culture programing is way beyond again, hopefully what actually in real life and and im also finding myself very interested in president ial vulnerability in Popular Culture. Text so we had a string of films not to jump on the panel coming later, but we had a string of films where terrorists take over the white house and the president is saved by some secret Service Agent or fbi guy. Gerard butler or whatever. And, you know, its its like, wow, whats driving these plots . How is the presidency positioned in those particular narratives . So, you know, less about mimicking life and more about how is it really pushing our understandings of political meaning and the presidency as an institute . Well, its such a great question about. Accuracy and so what are these shows an accurate portrayal of politics . Weve mentioned that they allude to certain ideas or certain types of characters, but how is accurate . How is accuracy measured . How is it measured by creators . How is it thought about by audiences and how is it thought about by scholars . When were looking at these programs, i mean, i think i want to respond to something trevor said there first before it getting to this point, because i think that fantastic element that that imagine it an element that we see on these shows we can look back at it and say well thats ridiculous. Right. That that the situation room would be this this thing or we know its Something Else, but i think that its very necessary to distinguish to go back to the reality versus art question, its really necessary to distinguish the art from the reality because otherwise no ones going to watch it, right . If its just literally whats on the news. Well, theres a reason youve changed the channel or chosen Something Else to watch. Right . And so i think you need some element of that. The question is, of course, when the fantastic gets so wild, whats that telling us about what we really want in our leaders . But in of the realism question one of the knocks on the west wing, theres an entire cottage industry, west wing haters out there. One need only use a Search Engine and youll find them quickly on the internet. But the big knock on the west wing is that its ruined politics, that it has poisoned peoples minds to expect that the great of American Life can be solved with a great speech with jed bartlet standing up and saying, ill tell you how is the reality on the show is that they lose more often than they win, though. And and so part the show is about i think sort of realizing the limits of president ial power. And so i think thats something i try to emphasize in my work a little bit, that this is not just about the presidency being able to do all the great speakers and orators and all that, although it might be why people into politics perhaps is that a bad thing . Im not sure. But certainly i think its its more realistic in that sense than its given credit for typically. Yeah, i would say to kind of to kind of jump on that and challenge that thats that argument about about the west wing. I actually think the wing was a was a sober show in the sense that jed bartlet the way i interpreted him he was certainly an idealist. An idealist. But part of what made the show compelling is he was also pragmatic . And it showed the wrestling with the staff over issues and questions and the other big break and, i mean, the the experts, the academics who know this better than me. But i think one of the things that was very pathbreaking about west wing was the role it had depicting the staff historically shows about president s was, you know, one one person, usually one man out in front is the hero who saves everything. And that was how a lot of people had consumed history. The west wing was one of these one of the first shows that tried to go behind the scenes of that and show the team that supports leader. I thought that that was that was important and inspiring to people who might not be the elected official themself all of us but are doing their part. You know, you know, to support the mission across the board. So, you know, i think that the show actually really really motivated a lot of a lot of good participation in government and in politics and. It was interesting to see how the storyline. You know changed as the times change with these with these other shows, veep and others. And you know to the point about accurate see the consumers of these shows and the audiences are sophisticated, especially for, you know, an hbo audience. Its a sophisticated viewer. And it was not lost on the writers and on the producers that the consumers of these shows follow the news. So i would actually say theyre not documentaries and theyre not supposed to be documentaries and theyre not supposed. But theres a difference between something thats realistic and something thats factual. It has to follow a plot, it has to follow. In our story arc, theres a comedy element that has to keep people engaged. And so in that way, its maybe a little more honest than the way the news sometimes politics, which presents things as as as as maybe one side or the other, but the at least what i could say for veep is a lot of time and effort was put into making it feel realistic. I mentioned tammy haddad. I was involved for seven seasons. I needed mcbride. I was another consultant who i know has been very engaged and active at the White House Historical association for a long time. Jeremy bash, who had worked at the cia and at the pentagon and had worked in the Clinton House and in congress, was also an adviser. So there was a big team of people supporting that, and it was important to, the writers and to the creators to give it that feel of realism, because the consumer wanted that, but the people consuming the content wanted that. Well, thats exactly the point, right . Theres a feel of realism. The shows wont work unless they have that feel of realism. And they in the way that, you know, presumably csi new orleans or wherever they are this month, has to have a certain realistic feel to them or else audiences arent going to buy them. I get i think thats right where i worry that often academics are preoccupied with teasing out or somehow charting the accuracy versus the the fantastical and gautham. I think youre absolutely right. You know those those little moments of 25th amendment are useful plot devices. Mike concern is that they tell that this is somehow how the presidency works. Its the paradox of the realism, right . Because they need to have a certain realism in order for the narrative to work. But that realism sets up a whole lot of expectations. And then audiences extrapolate out from the realistic to fantastical, assuming that that somehow is realistic. So, you know, thats thats where i get a little, little nervous, i guess, especially in this era of theories and, you know, conspiracy rhetorics, where i think sometimes were too primed to believe the fantastical and its too easy sometimes. Thats just my take. Well, that gets into the question of gotham. Youre teaching a course and it uses the west wing. What are the pros cons of using these types of programs as sources as a way perhaps engage students . But how you how do you dissect them and how do you encourage your students to consider them . Yeah, its a great question and a real challenge. Now, the advantages, of course, you tell students this is a class about tv, theres a very good chance youre going have a lot of students and. A substantial waiting list, which i which the class always does, is always folds. And its always a great crowd. And the disadvantages just want to watch tv. So you have to force them to read things. But i think the, the, the way we do it in the cl