Fans of The West Wing have wanted a revival since around the time the show wrapped its final season, a desire that has been heightened now that we seem destined for a Margaret Atwood-inspired reality. Who doesn’t want to relive Jed Bartlet’s presidency, or at the very least, his sartorial choices, now that we have a racist, misogynist windbag who dresses in tarpaulins trying to make federal law while on the can?
West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is also eager to revisit a time when democracy appeared to be in action and not just a vague concept. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, there’s a standing order from NBC that would allow him to reboot the beloved drama whenever he’s ready. Trump as president holds no appeal for Sorkin, fictionalized or otherwise, so the Newsroom creator wouldn’t bother sending him up on the small screen—“Trump is exactly what he looks like: a really dumb guy with an observable psychiatric disorder.” Instead, Sorkin says he’d cast “Sterling K. Brown as the president, and there’s some kind of jam, an emergency, a very delicate situation involving the threat of war or something, and [President] Bartlet [played by Martin Sheen], long since retired, is consulted in the way that Bill Clinton used to consult with Nixon.” (Everything about that sounds great up until the Clinton/Nixon part.)
Unfortunately, he’s been unable to come up with a way to work Allison Janney’s C.J. Cregg and Bradley Whitford’s Josh Lyman into his fictional White House. But though we’ll have to wait for Sorkin to figure out how to make Sterling K. Brown president and return Bartlet’s crackerjack advisors to the Oval Office, we can take comfort in TV presidents like Scandal’s Mellie Grant, Madam Secretary’s President Dalton, Designated Survivor’s President Kiefer Sutherland, the chief executive played by Keith David on Rick And Morty… basically anyone but the desiccated apricot face who’s best friends with Fox News.