“Shakespeare wrote about kings and queens, but did what he write affect the monarchy?” he asks. “I don’t know, but I doubt it.”
O’Donnell balks at the notion that “The West Wing” may be galvanizing young people to become involved in politics.
“‘The West Wing’ is an extremely naive entry into politics and political thinking,” he says. “When I was at Harvard, the thing that was the threshold that brought people into politics was the [Vietnam] war. I would be amazed if a TV drama would be the thing, with the war in Iraq and with Sept. 11, that would get students interested in politics,” he says. “Now is an extremely contentious time. It couldn’t be more interesting than now.”
Still, Attie recognizes the intertwined nature of politics and entertainment, a linkage his trajectory typifies. “As a speechwriter, I was on the showbiz side of politics. Now I’m on the politics side of showbiz, and it may just be a few steps to the right or the left.”
Ivy in the White House
In addition to weaving their real-life political experiences into the show, Attie, O’Donnell and Goffman have also found their Harvard ties useful in fleshing out their characters. When Goffman maps out the show’s dialogue and issue-oriented debates, he utilizes strategies that he learned at the KSG. Attie, meanwhile, looks to the personality types that he encountered at Harvard when he crafts characters.
“We want to present smart, erudite, ambitious people, so it made sense that some of them went to Harvard and had that pedigree,” he says.
The show is full of Ivy-educated characters: Josh went from Harvard to Yale Law School, former staffer Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) did time at Princeton, First Lady Abigail Bartlet (Stockard Channing ’65) graduated from Harvard Medical School, and her chief of staff, Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker), went to Brown and Yale Law.
In fact, President Bartlet himself would have been a Harvard alum, but Martin Sheen, a diehard fan of the Fighting Irish, insisted that his character had graduated from Notre Dame.
But Attie is careful to point out that the show does not project an all-Ivy portrait of Washington politics. He highlights Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), who went to City College, and asserts that an Ivy League degree is not necessary to a successful political career.
“In Washington, you have a lot of people with sheer grit and tenacity. The question is, at the end of the day, can you get the job done?” he says. “No matter what your knowledge of rare birds or Latin phraseology, you still have to be able to connect with people.”
O’Donnell similarly downplays the importance of a Harvard degree in Washington, and for that reason, he “willfully abstained” when the writers created the character of Ryan Pierce.
“He certainly is not modeled on anyone I know. I never like the TV or movie Harvard characters. The fact of the matter is that most people who go to Harvard went to public schools and weren’t in final clubs,” he says. “I didn’t even know that final clubs existed until I was a senior. The thing that I care about least is that Ryan and Josh talk about Harvard. I would have preferred that he didn’t go there.”
The writers demurred about whether Harvard students can expect the show to throw more nods in their direction, but Goffman hinted that viewers haven’t seen the last of Ryan Pierce. If Eli Attie’s fond memories are any indication of the writers’ fidelity to fair Harvard, it seems that the University will continue to play a role in “The West Wing.”
“The students are just so incredible,” he says. “You just never have a better peer group than that. I have had a lot of great experiences since college, met a lot of interesting, important people. But the smoking section in the Dunster dining hall on a Tuesday night was the best place to be.”
—Staff writer Jessica E. Gould can be reached at gould@fas.harvard.edu.