President Bartlet:

I’m sleeping better. When I sleep, I dream about a great discussion with experts and ideas and diction and energy and honesty. And when I wake up, I think, “I can sell that."

The West Wing Season 1 Episode 20

The knock on the show has always been that it’s a “liberal’s wet dream”. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. It is idealistic, and I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.

I heard this quote tonight, and thought about how vast the gulf is from the idealism of the show to the utterly cynical, hopeless, and broken place we find ourselves in now.

It’s big, and getting bigger by the day.